Truman Capote goes Hollywood, according to Bennett Cerf

After Other Voices was published, Truman came wafting into the office one day and told me that Vogue wanted him to go to Hollywood for two weeks to write the impressions of a young writer who had never before been there. They offered him two thousand and expenses for two weeks, and Truman demanded cash immediately—twenty one-hundred-dollar bills, which was probably more money than he’d ever seen at one time. Truman brought them in, rolled up with a rubber band around them, to show me. So he went to Hollywood for the first time, and I couldn’t wait to hear his story.

When he came back after two weeks, he reported to me: “I spent the first week with Greta Garbo and the second week with Charlie Chaplin.” It’s absolutely true. He had gone to Hollywood with a letter of introduction to someone who had a party that first night. Greta Garbo met Truman there and took him right home with her. She said, “You’re not going to a hotel. You’re going to stay with me.” After a week, at another party, Charlie Chaplin kidnapped him from Greta Garbo, and he spent the second week with Chaplin….

At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf: Bennett Cerf, Christopher Cerf: 9780375759765: Amazon.com: Books.