Carrington House friends in the community, including Truman Capote. In 1957, Capote developed a novella there that would become "Breakfast at Tiffany's". Other guests included New York City Ballet co-founder Lincoln Kerstein, fashion designer Bill Blass, actor Henry Fonda, actress Gertrude Lawrence, and actress Katharine Hepburn. Carrington owned the house for almost fifty years, then sold it to the US government as part of Fire Island National Seashore under the condition that he be able to live there for the rest of his life; he died on July 3, 1975. National Park Service Ranger Bob Freda lived there for the next twenty
Truman Capote tape recorder in favor of semi-fictionalized "conversational portraits". These pieces formed the basis for the bestselling "Music for Chameleons" (1980). Capote underwent a facelift, lost weight and experimented with hair transplants. Despite this, Capote was unable to overcome his reliance upon drugs and liquor and had grown bored with New York by the beginning of the 1980s. After the revocation of his driver's license (the result of speeding near his Long Island residence) and a hallucinatory seizure in 1980 that required hospitalization, Capote became fairly reclusive. These hallucinations continued unabated and medical scans eventually revealed that his brain mass had