11/16/2023 0 Comments Truman capote harold halma photoTo promote the book, Harold Halma took a photo of the then-23-year-old author reclining and gazing into the camera. The photo was published on the backcover of the novel, and instantly became the literary world’s pinup equivalent. Random House used it in “This is Truman Capote” ads, and large blowups were displayed in bookstore windows. The book made its debut at #9 on the New York Times Best Seller list, and gave Capote notoriety he yearned. One woman said, “I’m telling you: he’s just young,” to which the other responded, “And I’m telling you, if he isn’t young, he’s dangerous!” Although Capote publicly noted that it distracted readers from the book, he privately enjoyed the sensation it made, and delighted in retelling of this anecdote: Walking on Fifth Avenue, Halma overheard two middle-aged women looking at a Capote blowup. The picture was reprinted along with reviews in magazines and newspapers, some readers were amused, but others were outraged and offended. The Los Angeles Times reported that Capote looked “as if he were dreamily contemplating some outrage against conventional morality.” The novelist Merle Miller issued a complaint about the picture at a publishing forum, and the photo of “Truman Remote” was satirized in the Mad (making him one of the first four celebrities to be spoofed in the magazine). The humorist Max Shulman struck an identical pose for the dustjacket photo on his collection, Max Shulman’s Large Economy Size (1948). The Broadway stage revue New Faces (and the subsequent film version) featured a skit in which Ronny Graham parodied Capote, deliberately copying his pose in the Halma photo. ![]() In Capote: A Biography (1988), Gerald Clarke wrote, “The famous photograph: Harold Halma’s picture on the dustjacket of Other Voices, Other Rooms caused as much comment and controversy as the prose inside.
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