Producers for the new Broadway rendition of Breakfast at Tiffany’s wanted to get a very special guest to attend the premiere: Author Truman Capote’s ashes.
Representatives for the show say that producers reached out to Johnny Carson’s ex Joanne Carson ( the current owner of Capote’s ashes ) to travel from Bel Air to New York for an appearance at an Edison Ballroom after party. They offered complimentary first-class round-trip airfare for the two.
“[Joanne] Carson was Capote’s closest confidante in his later years,” said an insider, “and she keeps a portion of his cremated remains in an urn in her Bel Air home, in the room in which he died in 1984.”
Carson turned the offer down – because she didn’t want to give thieves a chance to steal Capote’s ashes.
“His ashes were my sanity for . . . years,” Carson once said of Capote. “Truman often referred to me as his very own Holly Golightly come to life. He always told me you could be anything you wanted but, whatever happens, never be boring.”
Keeping the ashes where they are due to the threat of theft sounds paranoid, right? It’s actually not. People have tried, and sometimes succeeded , to steal Capote’s ashes several times in the past. The most famous incident saw the ashes stolen from Carson’s own house during a Halloween party in 1988, along with $200,000 in jewelry. Capote’s ashes were later mysteriously returned.
“We did try to get him here,” confirmed a representative for the show. “Joanne says he always wanted to [see] Holly Golightly open on Broadway, and we thought it would have been poignant for the entire company. I think ultimately the risk of theft was just too high, but he was certainly there in spirit.”
Breakfast at Tiffanys is adapted from the 1958 novella of the same name, written by Truman Capote. The story was adapted into a 1961 film starring Audrey Hepburn. The 2013 play is said to be a closer adaptation to the novella, and stars Game of Thrones actress Emilia Clarke as Holly Golightly .
