With “In Cold Blood,” author Truman Capote created a new genre, the “non-fiction novel.” His goal was to bring the strategies and techniques of fiction—artistic selection and the novelist’s eye for telling detail—to the writing of non-fiction. He wanted to show that a factual narrative could be as gripping and as insightful as the fictional thriller.
In his book, he transported the readers to the high plains of western Kansas. “The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.”
By the third page, when four shotgun blasts the prairie silence, the reader is hooked. “The most perfect writer of my generation,” Norman Mailer had called Capote.
“In Cold Blood” had huge influence on other writers. Until its publication in 1966 writers of talent felt they had to follow in the footsteps of Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Faulkner and write fiction. Non-fiction was for historians and journalists. Capote opened a new
path.
In the decades that followed many of the best writers in America found their subjects in the gritty world of real events. Capote’s influence extends into the twenty-first century, and writers who may never have read “In Cold Blood” write the way they do because of Capote’s style.
In 1967, a year after the book came out, director Richard Brooks came to Holcomb to make the screen version. Avoiding Hollywood slickness, Brook shot in black and white and cast unknowns Robert Blake and Scott Wilson as Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. However, he did cast well-known TV and film actor John Forsythe (later in Charlie’s Angels and Dynasty) as Alvin Dewey.
Shooting took place in the Clutter house and other real-life locations. Brooks filmed 7 of the original jurors, the actual hangman, and Nancy Clutter’s horse, Babe. Truman arrived during the shoot, attracting enormous attention and press coverage, until Brooks, seeing him as a distraction, asked him to leave. Truman obliged, but not before he posed with Blake and Wilson for the cover of Life magazine.
A great commercial and critical success, the film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay (Brooks), Best Cinematography (Conrad L. Hall), and Best Music (Quincy Jones).
Two drifters, played by Robert Blake and Scott Wilson, murder a Kansas family just for kicks. They are caught, tried and executed
A chillingly effective adaptation of Truman Capote’s celebrated nonfiction novel, the movie set the standards by which subsequent docudramas would (and should) be made and evaluated.
In Cold Blood occasionally indulges in naïve psychology. However, even by today’s standards, its violence is shocking.
Oscar Nominations: 4
Director: Richard Brooks
Screenplay (Adapted): Richard Brooks
Cinematography: Conrad Hall
Original Music: Quincy Jones
Oscar Awards: None
Oscar Context:
The film was released the same year as “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate.” It dealt in a more extreme fashion with the issues of rootlessnes and alienation portrayed in those more popular, Oscar-winning movies.
Brooks’ effort failed to received Best Picture nomination because Columbia, which also released “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” put its promotional effort behind that film, under the assumption that it had a better chance at the award than “In Cold Blood.”
Brooks lost the directing Oscar to Mike Nichols, and the writing Oscar to Stirling Silliphant, for “In the Heat of the Night.” Burnett Guffey won for cinematography for “Bonnie and Clyde.” The scoring award went to Elmer Bernstein for “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”
Cast
Robert Blake as Perry Smith
Scott Wilson as Dick Hickock
John Forsythe as Alvin Dewey
Paul Stewart as Jensen, the reporter
Gerald S. O’Loughlin as Harold Nye
Jeff Corey as Walter Hickock, Dick’s father
John Gallaudet as Roy Church
James Flavin as Clarence Duntz
Charles McGraw as Tex Smith, Perry’s father
Will Geer as Prosecuting Attorney
Sammy Thurman as Flo Smith, Perry’s mother
John McLiam as Herbert Clutter
Ruth Storey as Bonnie Clutter
Brenda C. Currin as Nancy Clutter
Paul Hough as Kenyon Clutter
Vaughn Taylor as Good Samaritan
Jim Lantz as Officer Rohleder
Donald Sollars as Clothing Salesman
Sheldon Allman as Reverend Jim Post
Harriet Levitt as Mrs. Hartman
Mary Linda Rapelye as Sue Kidwell
Sadie Truitt and Myrtle Clare, residents of Holcomb, Kansas
