Charles Bukowski - American author

After deciding to throw the party, Capote had to select a guest of honor. Throwing the party for himself would have been viewed by his society friends as vulgar. Rather than selecting from amongst his stable of beautiful society women he called his "swans", Capote chose The Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. "Truman called me up that summer and said, 'I think you need cheering up. And I'm going to give you a ball.'...I was...sort of baffled....I felt a little bit like Truman was going to give the ball anyway and that I was part of the props."

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Capote enlisted Evie Backer, who had decorated his apartment in the United Nations Plaza, for the event's decor. Initially Capote planned to cover the ballroom's white and gold walls with heavy red drapes but Backer and Capote's friend Babe Paley convinced him to abandon this idea. Instead he brought in the color with red tablecloths. Rather than flowers, Capote had the tables adorned with gold candelabra wound with smilax and bearing white tapers.

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Capote spent a total of $16,000 on the ball.

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Capote purchased a black-and-white composition book and spent most of July sitting by his friend Eleanor Friede's pool compiling his initial guest list. Capote carried the book with him everywhere he went for the next three months, constantly adding and deleting names

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Before the ball, many of the guests attended one of sixteen small private dinner parties that Capote's friends had been drafted to host.

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The Black and White Ball was credited with starting an immediate upsurge in masquerade and costume parties. It has been described as "a pinnacle of New York's social history"

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