LOS ANGELES -- Truman Capote was eulogized Tuesday at a memorial service attended by relatives and friends from the worlds of literature, show business and society as a gentle, giant spirit who 'died of a full, deep and rich life.'
'His aura, his karma, or whatever you want to call it -- you could tell when he was a block away,' said actor Robert Blake, who starred in the film adaptation of Capote's best known work, 'In Cold Blood.'
'Everytime he came on the set, I felt great,' Blake told the somber crowd during an emotional eulogy. 'Ithink he taught me more about life and acting out there in Kansas than all the rest put together.'
Joanne Carson, former wife of entertainer Johnny Carson, greeted mourners at the chapel and spoke briefly in a quivering voice to about 100 people at the service, quoting the last paragraph of his novella, 'A Christmas Memory:'
'And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose, like a kite on a broken string.'
'Truman has taken away a big, big part of me,' she said of the loss, 'but Truman has left an even bigger part of himself with me.'
Capote died in his sleep Saturday at Ms. Carson's Bel-Air mansion at the age of 59. He had been a guest at her home since last Thursday while working on 'Answered Prayers,' a novel about the rich he had been writing about for years.
An autopsy failed to determine the cause of death and toxicological tests were being conducted.
'People are going to ask what did he die of?' bandleader Artie Shaw said in his eulogy.
'He died of everything. He died of living a full, deep and rich life.
'We know he didn't commit suicide. Truman somewhere along the line, near the end of his life, seemed to lose the life wish.'
'There was something of the amusement of the nursery, a kind of child-like fun about him,' novelist Christopher Isherwood said. 'He was one who truly made life less odious.'
The service at the Westwood Village Mortuary -- also attended by writers John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, and Wallis Annenberg, wife of the former U.S. ambassador to England -- was to be followed by cremation. Capote's ashes were to be flown to New York, the writer's home.
Blake said he and Capote became friends after filming 'In Cold Blood,' the story of the murder of a Kansas family that pioneered the non-fiction novel.
'I always felt inferior around him,' the actor said. 'I could understand the pot shots he got, because he took giant steps. He walked with authority. He always liked people who got in trouble.
'If you didn't get in trouble he thought that something was wrong with you.'
Financier Armand Deutsch described Capote as a 'gallant fighter, a delicate mechanism.'
Capote's attorney, Allan Schwartz, recalled the angry reaction of Capote's celebrity friends when a published excerpt of 'Answered Prayers' featured many of them as thinly disguised characters.
Schwartz said he told Capote at the time, 'What did they think they had around them, a court jester? They forgot they had a writer.'
