On a brisk November night in 1966, a 20-year-old model who had recently dropped out of college went to a ball. The ball, of course, was Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball at The Plaza Hotel, and the young cygnet was my mother, the actor Candice Bergen. Already mythologized, the masked ball for 540 people has intrigued new fans of the TV series, Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, which recently aired its episode chronicling the storied event.
For years, friends and colleagues have tagged me on Instagram on Easter Sunday when nostalgic fashion folk post a now famous photo of my mother dancing—she still can’t tell you with whom—across the parquet floors of the Plaza Hotel ballroom, a white mink Bunny mask made by Halston clutched in one hand. My mom and I have called each other Bunny for at least 20 years, since we had a very fluffy cream-colored Golden Doodle with whom we also shared the nickname. So, for me, the phantom of the silk-eared rabbit mask loomed large. Sadly, like Cinderella with her fairy godmother, my Bunny returned her fuzzy ears and mink-trimmed, jet-black column dress to Halston the morning after the ball.
Despite missing the bunny mask, it wasn’t until watching Feud that I realized we had never really discussed what it was like to attend what the New York Times called “the party of the century.” What did she remember? Who did she go with? Was it really so grand a time? Below is an edited transcript of our, at times trying, conversation.
Malle: Have you seen the windows at Bergdorf for the show?
Bergen: What are the windows at Bergdorf? What show?
Malle: I told you already! Ryan Murphy has done a show about Truman Capote’s Swans, and they’re really going big with it. Every marketing opportunity, including the Bergdorf windows, which have been transformed into odes to the black and white ball.
Bergen: Well if they don’t have my bunny mask, they’re nothing.
Malle: Okay, I guess our interview has started. Was it your idea to do the bunny mask?
Bergen: No, I inherited it.
Malle: From who?
Bergen: Marisa Berenson. Halston made it for her and I think she got a better offer. It was all just very hectic. It came to me a couple of days before the ball.
Malle: What were you going to wear before that?
Bergen: I had no idea.
Malle: How were you invited to the ball?
Bergen: I don’t remember—I was invited like everybody else with an envelope! It wasn’t a last-minute thing.
Malle: Well, you just said it was!
Bergen: Just what I wore! I don t remember the invitations.
Malle: Well, according to Babe Paley, invitations should always be sharp edge, never deckled. There’s a scene of her going over the planning with Truman, and she’s horror-struck that there are white tablecloths: she said never have white tablecloths. So apparently there were red tablecloths at the Black and White ball. Do you remember that?
Bergen: Wow, how do you know all this?!
Malle: I watched the show!
Bergen: What show?
Malle: Oh God. Can, the show is based on a book called Capote’s Women, and it’s about the feud between him and the Swans after he published the Esquire essay called “La Cote Basque.” Do you remember that? Did you know any of the Swans? Were you Team Swans or Team Capote?
Bergen: I didn t care. I was new.
Malle: So how were you invited to the ball? Did you know Truman Capote or he just plucked you out?
Bergen: I barely knew him, I met him at a thing. I was 20. I had just moved to New York after being kicked out of Penn. I went by myself. There were dinners arranged at people’s houses beforehand and I was invited to Amanda and Carter Burden’s at the Dakota. And there were buses outside of the dinners to take you to the Plaza. Nice buses, with bars.
Malle: Who was on your bus?
Bergen: I don’t know! It was 50 years ago.
Malle: Was it like a standing bus? Because that’s a big thing with the Met. Celebrities get sprinter vans so the women can stand and not wrinkle their dresses.
Bergen: I don’t think that was thought of yet. People didn’t take themselves as seriously.
Malle: Did Halston just call you and say, I have this leftover Marisa Berenson dress? And would he call you directly? You didn’t have a stylist? Or even an agent then right?
Bergen: An agent? No! Stylists didn’t exist. I knew Halston a little bit through Joe Eula. It was a black velvet column with white mink trim across the top and the bottom. It was very chic. And then the white mink bunny mask, but a big bunny, like huge ears with pink satin lining and a pink nose.
Malle: And what shoes?
Bergen: Hélène Arpels, who was the shoe goddess at the time. And a small black crocodile evening bag.
Malle: By who?
Bergen: I don’t know! A crocodile! It wasn’t a designer bag.
Malle: Did you know a lot of people?
Bergen: A few. I was overwhelmed. There were like 500 people there!
Malle: Did you dance? There’s a picture of you dancing.
Bergen: Oh God, I look so surly. I don’t know who I was dancing with there but I remember dancing with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and he was wearing a black velvet executioner’s hood. It was a bold choice.
Malle: Did you know him before the party?
Bergen: Just vaguely.
Malle: And then were you closer with him after?
Bergen: I just danced with him! I didn’t go home with him!
Malle: Who else did you dance with?
Bergen: I don’t know, because we were all masked. Norman Mailer! I danced with him. Peter Duchin did the music.
Malle: Who was the best dancer of the people you danced with?
Bergen: Nobody. It was the most self-conscious gathering of famous people I’d ever been at. The level of awareness was so intense with everybody looking at everybody else.
Malle: Like Instagram before Instagram?
Bergen: Yeah, it was like Instagram times 400.
Malle: Why do you think that was the case with this event? Because it was Truman or because of the people invited?
Bergen: There was such a buzz about it, people were crazed beforehand. Did you get the invite? Did you not? What are you wearing? People trying to get the invite…
Malle: Who were people excited to see?
Bergen: Mia [Farrow] and Frank [Sinatra]. They had just gotten married. Frank was all surly.
Malle: Why?
Bergen: Because he was Frank Sinatra! He didn’t want to be there. There was a big frisson around them. Even though they had bad masks—simpler masks. They were like dime store masks, which was kind of chic, Frank’s had little whiskers. They didn’t have to have fancy masks because they were Frank and Mia.
Malle: It looks like Mia was a butterfly and Frank looks like Batman.
Bergen: Are you fact-checking as we’re talking?!
Malle: Had you ever been to a party like that before?
Bergen: No. No one had. I want to know who paid for it. Because he couldn’t have—but he must have. And Kay Graham was sitting up on a balcony.
Malle: She was the honoree of the ball, that he threw the Swans over for. So she was sitting in the rafters looking down?
Bergen: She wasn’t hanging from the ceiling. It was a seat of honor! The party was a weird figment of Capote’s imagination. It was celebrating him but he felt to be modest—to pretend to be modest—he should hang it on someone else. So he told Kay Graham, it was in her honor and she went, “Why?”
Malle: Did you know any of the Swans?
Bergen: I knew Babe Paley through my parents because Bill Paley was the head of CBS and my father was a star on CBS.
Malle: How late did you stay?
Bergen: Not late. There were a number of people who left early, who just went “fuck this shit” and left. I stayed for drinks and dessert.
Malle: Do you remember what dessert was?
Bergen: No! Good grief. That must be written somewhere.
Malle: Do you remember speaking to Truman at the ball?
Bergen: Yeah, I said “Hi” and “Thank you.” I must have said a couple of words and then I sent him a groveling note. A thank you note. I had made a comment about the party to someone in the press I don’t remember, but it wasn’t good.
Malle: What was the gist?
Bergen: I don’t know, it was stressful! I was a wreck before. It was so, so much. All of New York was talking about this thing.
Malle: Was there sort of a feeling afterward that nothing was going to compete with it?
Bergen: No, it was a huge rat fuck! I remember a woman accosting me about the war as I walked in. It was the very beginning of Vietnam and before I started protesting, and she rightly was asking all these people if it was appropriate to be having a ball.
Malle: What did you say?
Bergen: I said I agreed with her and went in.
Malle: Were you nervous at all?
Bergen: Yeah! Just walking into this room full of hundreds of notable, famous people. That party had a greater impact than any of his books, and he was a wonderful writer.
Malle: I feel like there was so much anticipation. Was it disappointing at all by the time you actually got there?
Bergen: I think it was for some people. I think it was overwhelming. I think that was my comment that I got into trouble for.
Malle: The New York Times said at the 50th anniversary of it that Truman Capote hosted the best party ever. Was it the best party ever?
Bergen: Not for me.
