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The second season of “Feud” highlights the late New York socialite Babe Paley and her husband Bill.
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In the first episode, Babe confides in Truman Capote after learning about her husband’s affair.
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In the series, Happy Rockefeller is cast in the role of the other woman, which was never confirmed.
One of the first scenes of “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans” shows Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) rushing to the aid of his dear friend Babe Paley (Naomi Watts) in her hour of need.
Capote arrives at her large Manhattan apartment, sends away the florist and the cook, and gets rid of Babe’s children with the promise of accompanying her to a matinee performance of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Once they are alone, a distraught Babe pours out everything to the man she never imagined would one day betray her trust.
She reveals to Capote that her husband, television giant Bill Paley (the late Treat Williams) – yes, Paley stands for the Paley Center for Media – was having an affair behind her back. An affair that she already knew about, but thought was long over.
After Capote consoles her, insists that she take a Valium, and suggests that she use the opportunity to wish for a beautiful new piece of jewelry from her unfaithful husband, she muses that the only person who could ever truly hurt her would be Capote himself. “And that would never happen,” Capote promises.
But he betrayed them, namely through a barely veiled portrait of the couple, which he incorporated into a short story published a few years later.
Capote revealed Bill Paley’s infidelity in a short story published in 1975
When “La Côte Basque 1965” appeared in the November 1975 issue of Esquire, Capote fired a literary missile at New York society. Few of the glamorous and wealthy women with whom the writer surrounded himself were spared the satire in the article, which recounts several hushed conversations held and overheard in the eponymous restaurant.
Capote’s friendships with his so-called “swans” were the side issue; many of them, including Babe Paley, never spoke to him again.
According to Laurence Leamer’s book Capote’s Women (on which this season of Feud, from executive producer Murphy and head writer Jon Robin Baitz, is based), Paley witnessed one of the most humiliating moments in history laid bare for all to see.
In “La Côte Basque 1965,” the character Lady Ina Coolbirth (presumably based on Slim Keith) tells her dining partner about a salacious incident she had heard about Sidney Dillon, the “conglomateur” husband of glamorous housewife Cleo Dillon.
The story essentially revolves around Sidney having a stressful night trying to remove menstrual blood from his bedsheets after sleeping with another woman in his wife’s absence.
This incident is reenacted in the pilot episode of “Feud,” but it ends a little differently. While in the story “La Côte Basque 1965,” the husband manages to hide his thwarted night of love from his wife by removing the stains from the sheets, in “Feud” we see Babe walk in as her husband is still frantically scrubbing – and then takes care of the sheets herself.
There are conflicting theories about the identity of the woman with whom Bill Paley had an affair
According to Vanity Fair, after the story was published, there was little doubt that the Dillons were intended as stand-ins for the real Paleys, especially since Capote had not attempted to change any of their characteristics.
However, it was not immediately clear who the other woman was. In his story, Capote describes her as “an ugly beast and lawful wife of a former governor of New York.”
Leamer’s Capote’s Women suggests that the woman in question was Marie Harriman, the wife of W. Averell Harriman. According to an obituary in the New York Times, she was an acquaintance of Capote.
However, “Feud” casts the role with another former First Lady of New York: Margaretta Fitler “Happy” Rockefeller (played by Rebecca Creskoff), the wife of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, who was Governor of New York from 1959 to 1973.
In a note by author Melanie Benjamin to the novel “The Swans of Fifth Avenue”, which is loosely based on Capote and his circle of celebrities, it is stated that at the time of the publication of “La Côte Basque 1965”, the prevailing opinion was that the woman was Rockefeller.
However, she adds: “It is more likely that the woman in the story was a mixture of the many women with whom Paley had affairs.”
“Feud: Capote vs. The Swans” airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET on FX.
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