Natural Blonde, Signed Presentation by Liz Smith ("La Côte Basque," Lee Radziwill)
[Signed Presentation by Liz Smith] Smith, Liz. Natural Blonde, A Memoir. First Edition. 2000. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition. Book is warmly inscribed on the title page, “For Fredda, don’t let this corrupt your morals, Love, Liz Smith, 2004.”
Gossip columnists are much disparaged and sometimes rightly so. Liz Smith was one of few to transcend the stereotype. She was sometimes too Pollyannaish. She landed big scoops, however, because boldfaced names trusted her more than they did her contemporaries. One such person was Truman Capote, who sat for an interview with her as he dealt with the backlash from “La Côte Basque.” As Liz writes in this memoir, it was all anyone in New York talked about for months, and her cover story on it for New York magazine fed the flames, rather than smothered them (as Capote might have hoped). One scoop in this memoir is from Capote himself (so it may or may not be true). He claimed that it he heard about the stained sheets incident directly from Bill Paley. Truman thought that gave him carte blanche “to unilaterally decide when it was all right to print” it. It was also to Liz Smith whom Capote turned when Lee Radziwill refused to support him in the defamation lawsuit brought by Gore Vidal, and to whom Radziwill made her unfortunate gay slur when refusing to defend Capote. From then on, Lee Radziwill was one of the few celebs about whom Smith had little good to say (Barbra Streisand was another).
“[T]here was no doubting that the legendary Mr. Paley had his charms and plenty of sex appeal.”
--Liz Smith