Truman Capote Movies

A boy in the deep South learns the joys and sorrows of first love in this comedy-drama based on the short story by Truman Capote. Billy Bob Murphy (Joe Pichler) is a thirteen-year-old boy growing up in a small Alabama town in 1947. Billy Bob's mother Elinore (Sheryl Lee) lost her husband during World War II, and has been struggling to raise her son on her own. Billy Bob's best friend is Preacher Star (Jesse Plemons); Preacher has a pronounced mischievous streak, which is hardly tempered by the fact his Dad has a drinking problem and his older brothers are teenage thugs in training. When thirteen-year-old Lily Jane Bobbitt (Tania Raymonde) moved into town with her mother, a strange woman who never speaks, both Billy Bob and Preacher are entranced; groomed to act like a "lady" and convinced she's destined for stardom in the movies, Lily Jane isn't like any of the girls in town. But Billy Bob not only has Preacher as a rival for Lily Jane's affections, his best friend's coarse personality makes her wonder if Billy Bob is the sort of young gentleman who is worthy of her company. Lily Jane also earns the enmity of many of her schoolmates when she befriends Sister Rosalba, a girl her age from the town's African-American neighborhood. As Billy Bob struggles with first love, he also has to deal with his mother's budding romance with Speedy, the local auto mechanic (Christopher McDonald. Children On Their Birthdays was the first film directed by Mark Medoff, a noted screenwriter and playwright who received an Oscar nomination for his work on the film Children Of A Lesser God. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Jonathan Kaplan remakes Richard Brooks' 1967 masterpiece that takes the viewer inside the mind of a pair of killers during a shocking murder of a farm family in 1950s Kansas. Anthony Edwards and Eric Roberts star in this version. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Based on the novel by Truman Capote, this often-witty coming-of-age drama looks at a young man growing up with an unusual family in the Deep South in the 1940s. After the death of his parents, Collin Fenwick (Edward Furlong) finds himself living in a small town with two of his aunts, Dolly (Piper Laurie) and Verena (Sissy Spacek). Verena is the more stable of the two, an entrepreneur who controls a number of local businesses and rules the roost with a firm hand. Dolly, on the other hand, is a gentle eccentric who claims to hear the voices of the dead as the wind whistles through the grass, and has developed a homemade concoction that supposedly cures dropsy. Dolly's potion attracts the attention of Morris Ritz (Jack Lemmon), a smooth-talking con man from Chicago who wants to snatch the formula away from her. Along the way, Collin also gets to know Catherine (Nell Carter), Verena and Dolly's quick-witted house maid; Amos (Roddy McDowall), a barber who is also the town's one-man rumor mill; Charlie Cool (Walter Matthau), a charmingly cynical retired judge with an opinion about everything; and Sister Ida (Mary Steenburgen), an accordion-toting traveling evangelist who has had a heroic brood of 13 children without benefit of marriage. The Grass Harp was directed by Charles Matthau, the son of Walter Matthau. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This adaptation of a Truman Capote story centers on a woman who finds what she desires only to have it not work out the way she thought it would. ~ Rovi

A group of new prisoners, including a political science professor, Jonathan Paige (Alan Alda), and a student, Allan Campbell (Kristoffer Tabori), arrive at a state prison, along with a new guard, Brian Courtland (Clu Gulager). Paige is a serving a year for manslaughter -- he accidentally killed a driver who had run down and injured his wife -- but his education doesn't prepare him for what he finds in prison. Nor does Courtland understand everything he sees in his new job, where he hopes to do some good. The warden (Dean Jagger) is spoken of as being on "short time," as though he were serving a sentence; the guard captain, Pagonis (G. Wood), is totally cynical about his work and his job; and one veteran guard, Brown (Roy Jenson), seems to be serving some of the prisoners -- and that small group of inmates have more to do with the running of the prison than does the administration. First among them is Hugo Slocum (Vic Morrow), a lifer who controls the flow of drugs and other contraband to the cons, wielding money and power without challenge until Paige gets assigned by the warden to the prison pharmacy, and -- thanks to his own sense of righteousness -- blocks Slocum's pipeline, a move that could get the professor killed. Meanwhile, Paige is trying to understand Lennox (Billy Dee Williams), the lifer he works with in the pharmacy, and discovers in him a true political visionary and leader, who lives the stuff that Paige has only ever lectured about. Lennox is black and proud, and a killer, and also (incidentally) smarter than Paige; he is also respected as a leader by the other blacks in the prison and feared just enough by the whites, including Slocum, to stay alive. Paige should only learn from him, but the professor is too set in his ways and too arrogant in his assumptions to do that. Complicating things further, Slocum has taken a decidedly physical liking to Paige's cellmate, Allan, a college student who is in on a marijuana charge and too naïve to recognize why the tough con is being so good to him until he rejects Slocum's advances. In retaliation, Allan is gang-raped on Slocum's orders, and later kills himself. Nor has Slocum forgotten about Paige or the pharmacy -- when Paige tries to reach out to another inmate, Sinclair (Edward Bell), who shows promise as a writer, Slocum destroys Sinclair's work and targets him, as well. Before he's killed, however, Sinclair reveals to Paige that, as Slocum's sometime bagman and former bookkeeper, he's recorded every transaction for the past eight years -- including every hit ordered by Slocum and how it was paid off, including the bribes to guards to look the other way -- and he passes the book with that record to the professor. It comes down to a do or die situation for Paige and Slocum, as each now has the power and the need to destroy the other to stay alive; the only question is whether Paige will figure out in time that he may have to back up his good intentions with lethal force. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

This trilogy begins with "Miriam" in which the title character (Susan Dunfee) watches as her longtime nanny Miss Miller (Mildred Natwick) slowly sinks into insanity. In "Among The Paths to Eden," Mary (Maureen Stapleton) is a lonely woman searching for a husband among the widowers paying respects to their dearly departed at a local cemetery. "A Christmas Memory" concerns the childhood recollections of a woman who slowly loses her mind. The last segment is narrated by the author and was shown on ABC television, winning both an Emmy and Peabody Award. The success of the program prompted Capote and Eleanor Perry to expand this feature to a trilogy. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Narrated by the author himself, this heart-warming made-for-television drama takes place in his childhood and recalls the time he helped bake a truckload of fruitcakes for friends and family with his ancient cousin. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In an idealized New York City during the early '60s, Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) is a charming socialite with a youthful zest for life who lives alone in a nearly bare apartment. She has such a flippant lifestyle that she won't even give her cat a name, because that would be too much of a commitment to a relationship. Maintaining a childlike innocence yet wearing the most perfect of designer clothes and accessories from Givenchy, she spends her time on expensive dates and at high-class parties. She escorts various wealthy men, yet fails to return their affections after they have given her gifts and money. Holly's carefree independence is changed when she meets her neighbor, aspiring writer Paul (George Peppard), who is suffering from writer's block while being kept by a wealthy woman (Patricia Neal). Just when Holly and Paul are developing their sweet romance, Doc (Buddy Ebsen) appears on the scene and complicates matters, revealing the truth about Holly's past. Breakfast at Tiffany's was nominated for several Academy awards, winning Best Score for Henry Mancini and Best Song for Johnny Mercer's classic tune "Moon River". ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Humphrey Bogart stars as one of five disreputable adventurers who are trying to get uranium out of East Africa. Bogart's associates include pompous fraud Robert Morley, and Peter Lorre as the German-accented "O'Hara", whose wartime record is forever a source of speculation and suspicion. Becoming involved in Bogart's machinations are a prim British married couple (Edward Underdown and blonde-wigged Jennifer Jones). As a climax to their many misadventures and double-crosses, the uranium seekers end up facing extermination by an Arab firing squad. The satirical nature of Beat the Devil eluded many moviegoers in 1953, and the film was a failure. The fact that the picture attained cult status in lesser years failed to impress its star Humphrey Bogart, who could only remember that he lost a considerable chunk of his own money when he became involved in the project. Peter Viernick worked on the script on an uncredited basis. Beat the Devil eventually fell into public domain, leading to numerous inferior editions by second and third-tiered labels. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi