‘Feud: Capote vs. The Swans’ Is Basically a Walking Tour of a Forgotten New York
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While the subjects portrayed in Ryan Murphy’s forthcoming series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans include a real-life who’s who drawn from New York’s Social Register—and Eleanor Lambert’s International Best Dressed List—during the 20th century’s final bastion of American high society, there are certain other elements just as important as the title characters.
Based on biographer Laurence Leamer’s book Capote’s Women, the FX series chronicles Truman Capote’s banishment from the reigning social set in a story spanning four decades. Starring Tom Hollander as Capote, with Naomi Watts as Barbara “Babe” Paley, Diane Lane as Slim Keith, Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest, and Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill, we watch the Breakfast at Tiffany’s author go from entertaining his elite circle of friends with an unparalleled brand of social commentary and wit, to becoming an outcast for betraying their confidences. But as we watch his relationships unravel, we’re treated to glimpses of a bygone era in the form of meticulously constructed sets depicting the lifestyle of Manhattan’s upper crust in the 1960s and 1970s.
From the apartments of Babe Paley and Truman Capote to the now infamous restaurant La Côte Basque and from Kenneth Salon to the Plaza Hotel’s ballroom (the site of Capote’s 1966 Black and White Ball, the filming locations of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans transport us to the forgotten world of a Chanel-clad bon ton.
Barbara “Babe” and William Paley’s Apartments
Filming location: Steiner Studios, Brooklyn
Designed by the architecture firm of Starrett & Van Vleck, 820 Fifth Avenue—the iconic 12-story Upper East Side Beaux Arts apartment building at the corner of East 63rd Street—was completed in 1916 and remains one of the most exclusive properties in New York City. The Paleys bought their 6,500-square-foot apartment in 1965 and moved in almost immediately. Spanning the entire ninth floor, the 20-room residence was an upgrade, to say the least, from their three-room Billy Baldwin–designed pied-à-terre in the St. Regis that the couple called home since marrying in 1947.
Naturally, Babe enlisted Baldwin to outfit their sprawling new apartment, and the result was a magnified version of their previous home. “The apartment is fairly well known to those who know interiors,” says Capote production designer Mark Ricker. “When they bought the apartment, they loved what he’d done [at the St. Regis] so much, they had him replicate it.” One of the most memorable elements of Baldwin’s design was the campaign-style rooms tented in printed cotton fabrics.
To recreate several rooms in the apartment for the series—including the living room, Babe’s bedroom, art gallery, and library—Ricker’s team had plenty of historic imagery to work with. “We pulled from the reference material as much as possible [to get] the scale of the furniture, the color, and tone,” he adds. “I found a floor plan of the apartment and highlighted the rooms we wanted to replicate, and the set designers went to town.”
From the butter yellow walls of the living room to the pristine rows of leather-bound books lining the shelves of the library, for these well-dressed sets no detail was too small—or too big—like Pablo Picasso’s seven-foot canvas, Boy Leading a Horse. Now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the artist’s Rose Period work was one of many to find itself on a set wall. “We reprinted and painted on top of it,” says set decorator Cherish Hale. “We printed everything to the actual scale—about 40 pieces—because they were real art collectors.” Ricker had graphic designers reproduce bolts of fabric to upholster the walls and furnishings, and his team even built an array of furniture pieces that would have been nearly impossible to source, like a pair of red lacquered Ming-leg tables that appear in the apartment’s gallery hall.
Truman Capote’s United Nations Plaza Apartment
Filming location: Steiner Studios, Brooklyn
In 1965, the same year Babe and Bill Paley upgraded to their sprawling Upper East Side abode, Capote moved from a rented Brooklyn Heights basement apartment to one on the 25th floor of 860 United Nations Plaza that he bought for $62,000 (or about $590,000 today) using his royalties from In Cold Blood.
“I found the floor plan, and there were a fair number of photos,” says Ricker. “I added a couple [additional] elements like a passthrough in the kitchen to open [the set] up a bit more for shooting.” The designer even had Capote’s views of the East River and the United Nations reproduced. “We went to the [actual] apartment—that a lovely woman lives in now—so that we could photograph the view and blow it up to put outside the [set] window.”
Reproducing the apartment—where Capote was photographed by Horst P. Horst for magazines including Vogue and by Arnold Newman in 1977 for a now iconic image of the author in repose on his Victorian rosewood sofa—was a dream for the production team. “He had such an eclectic, sort of playful [aesthetic],” explains Ricker. “I had the sense he bought whatever he liked and just threw it all together.”
The Horst and Newman photos, along with research materials like the catalog from Bonhams & Butterfields’ November 2006 sale, The Private World of Truman Capote, were central to reimagining one of the production’s principal sets. “I’ve done a fair number of projects based on real people,” Ricker adds. “And when you’ve got the reference [materials] and they’re as fabulous as Truman, there’s no point reinventing the wheel.”
The search for decorator items and furnishings—from collections of paper weights to a taxidermy rattlesnake—was more like a fun scavenger hunt. “Somehow, Cherish [the set decorator] was actually able to find one of those vipers,” Ricker says gleefully.
La Côte Basque
Filming location: Steiner Studios, Brooklyn
As central to the disintegration of Capote’s relationship to his swans—as are the characterizations of Babe, C.Z., Slim, Lee, and Truman themselves—is the title location of a chapter in his unfinished novel, Answered Prayers, that was excerpted in the November 1975 issue of Esquire, “La Côte Basque, 1965.” Opened by Henri Soulé in the late ’50s, La Côte Basque was, as the New York Times put it, “the high-society temple of classic French cuisine” that served poularde étuvée, coeur de filet Perigourdione, and grenouilles Provençale to the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis, Nan Kempner, Wallis Simpson, Diana Vreeland, Mary Wells, and—of course— the swans.
It was also a site for sharing gossip between friends—musings and secrets that, once made public, would prove as deadly to Capote’s career and social standing as the venom once produced in life by his taxidermized rattlesnake. But recreating the restaurant’s interior wasn’t as easy as one would expect.
“There aren’t many images,” says Ricker, who found the best [interior] photo on the cover of an old menu. “I also tracked down the 1992 movie Light Sleeper with Willem Dafoe and Susan Sarandon that was shot there, so I got screenshots of every [scene].”
Originally located at 5 East 55th Street—on what is now the site of Ralph Lauren’s equally popular see-and-be-seen restaurant, the Polo Bar—La Côte Basque eventually moved a block over to 60 West 55th Street in 1995, some 20 years after the story that solidified Capote’s bleak future. Its doors closed for good in 2004, though the address is now home to Alain Ducasse’s neighborhood favorite, Benoit New York.
To bedeck the high-end French eatery for Capote vs. The Swans, the design team pored through archival imagery of the original location and went to town. “It was this playful, themed restaurant that purported to be on the Basque coast with little striped awnings and fabulous murals by Bernard Lamotte,” explains Ricker. “We hand-painted versions [of those murals], had all the tufted leather banquets and chairs made, and actually [pieced together] the bar from drugstore cabinetry designed for [the production of] Westside Story—then we worked really hard to get the beautiful colors of caramel and butterscotch that would envelop you in the space with the swans.”
Kenneth Salon
Filming location: The Women’s National Republican Club, Manhattan
Kenneth Battelle was widely considered the first celebrity hairdresser and became as legendary as the beau monde bouffant hairdos he set atop the heads of Jacqueline Kennedy, Babe Paley, and Brooke Astor. His eponymous salon opened in 1963 at 19 East 54th Street—inside an Italian Renaissance Revival–style palazzo between Madison and Fifth—that was designed by none other than Billy Baldwin.
The interior decorator mixed untold yards of floral and paisley cotton fabrics, installed lacquered bamboo chairs and mirrors at stylized workstations, and even set a potted palm tree at the center of a divan de milieu (a large circular ottoman) for added drama. While Ricker’s team didn’t take all of the available references literally, the salon set makes a memorable impact. “We recreated it to a degree,” he adds. “And it comes off really well in the show.”
Bonwit Teller
Filming location: Brooks Brothers’ former HQ at at 346 Madison Avenue, Manhattan
With its flagship building located at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, luxury department store Bonwit Teller was an epicenter for high style for the most fashionable women in New York City. Rivaling Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman, the retailer had outposts wherever its clientele could be found—Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Palm Beach among them.
“We recreated the entire department store, which was shot in a now defunct Brooks Brothers on Madison Avenue,” explains Ricker. “And I heard through the grapevine that the escalators [in one scene] were one of Ryan’s [Murphy] favorite things, as we see Babe and C.Z. headed up to the glove department.”
In April 1981 the flagship location was moved to 57th Street and, within 20 years, the last location in Syracuse, New York, closed its doors for good.
The Plaza Hotel’s Grand Ballroom
Filming location: On-site in the actual Plaza Hotel Grand Ballroom, Manhattan
Simply known as the Plaza, the 18-story, château-style building was completed and opened in 1907 and has remained an icon of New York City for the past 117 years. And of all the historic moments for the hotel, the most memorable occurred in its grand ballroom on the evening of November 28, 1966, when Capote hosted his famous Black and White Ball in honor of Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post.
“It was probably one of our easier sets, because it was famously sort of lacking in decoration,” says Ricker of the red tablecloths and gold candelabras his team laid throughout the already opulent space. “Whether it was Truman or Babe’s idea, they decided that all the guests in masks and costumes would be the decoration.”
While we can only speculate what Ricker’s production team spent to recreate the masquerade ball, Capote was only out $16,000 (or about $150,000 today). “What [decor] there was at the actual ball, we replicated,” Ricker explains. “There was a specificity that those who know the ball will find.”
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