Babe Paley Was Considered the Most Fashionable Woman in New York

It’s Babe Paley’s twin betrayals that fuel the plot of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. When the series opens, Truman Capote is comforting his friend who has just learned that her husband Bill Paley has been unfaithful. The pair have been deep and dear friends for nearly two decades. Capote, like many others, considers her the most beautiful and glamorous women in New York City. He once wrote, “Mrs. P. had only one fault: she was perfect; otherwise, she was perfect.” He would soon break her heart with the publication of “La Cote Basque, 1965” in Esquire in 1975. It was a thinly veiled account of the lives of wealthy women that left his friends devastated when they realized he was talking about them.

Below, get to know the real Paley and her relationship with the famous writer.

All three Cushing sisters.

She was part of a famous family.

Paley, who is played by Naomi Watts on the show, worked as an editor at Vogue for seven years and was a fixture on best dressed lists. Born Barbara Cushing in 1915, Paley grew up outside Boston, the daughter of a wealthy and socially connected surgeon who was also a Pulitzer Prize winner. She graduated from Winsor School and made her society debut in 1934. Paley and her sisters became famous for each marrying powerful men and were known as The Fabulous Cushing Sisters, the New York Times explained. Middle sister Betsey was married to James Roosevelt, son of FDR, and Jock Whitney, a monumentally wealthy newspaper publisher and the Ambassador to Britain. The oldest, Minnie, first married Vincent Astor and later married the artist James Whitney Fosburgh. Paley’s first husband was oil heir Stanley Mortimer Jr. In 1947, she married Bill Paley, the executive who took CBS from a small radio network to one of the most powerful media companies in the world. They were wed shortly after the completion of Paley’s divorce from Dorothy Hart Hearst, who was once married to John Randolph Hearst.

Babe Paley.

She was celebrated for her style.

Paley is considered to be one of the best dressed women of all time. Her look was wildly emulated. When she was photographed with a scarf tied to her purse, it became an instant trend. When she refused to dye her hair as it went gray, many women followed her lead.

Babe Paley at home, wearing a Jean Schlumberger starfish brooch in 1963.

She had four children.

Paley had a son and a daughter from each of her marriages. With Stanley Mortimer, Jr. she had Stanley Mortimer III and Amanda Burden. Burden was the New York City Planning Commissioner from 2002 to 2013 and a major force behind the creation of New York City’s High Line. With Bill Paley, she had son William C. Paley and daughter Kate Cushing Paley. William worked as a drug counselor before relaunching La Palina Cigars, a company that once belonged to his grandfather.

Her children have spoken about the sides of Paley that were less visible to the press. “She wasn’t the warmest person in the world. She had her own intimacy,” William said to Washingtonian magazine in 2013. Burden told New York Magazine that their relationship was not a close one. “It was her choice, not mine,” she said.

Babe and Bill Paley outside the restaurant La Côte Basque.

She and Truman met on a plane.

Paley was a part of a group of women that included C.Z. Guest, Slim Keith, and Lee Radziwill. They were known as society’s swans and they orbited around Truman Capote, who became a bon vivant of New York City after the incredible success of In Cold Blood. The series premiere of Feud illustrates the moment in 1955 where Paley and Capote first meet: She and her husband were heading to their Jamaica home on their private plane with friends David and Jennifer Selznick who asked if their friend Truman could come along.

“Babe looked at him and Truman looked at her, and they fell instantly in love,” Jennifer Selznick later recounted in author Gerald Clarke’s biography Capote, which was excerpted in Vanity Fair. “I had a few jealous pangs because up until that time I had been his best friend—we really did adore each other. By the time we got to Jamaica, not only was Babe absolutely enchanted with him, but so was Bill. Truman was almost adopted by them. The three of them became inseparable.”

Gloria Guinness, Truman Capote, and Babe Paley in 1957.

Their friendship was deep.

Very, as Truman told it. “She was the most important person in my life, and I was the most important person in hers. I was her one real friend, the one real relationship she ever had. We were like lovers; she loved me and I loved her. The only person I was ever truly in love with was her. She once joked that her analyst said that she loved me more than anyone else, more than Bill or her children, and he thought she should have an affair with me. It was one of those jokes that wasn’t actually a joke. He was right; we had a perfect rapport. We had an understanding: if I suspected she was feeling bad about something, no matter what time of the year it was, I would send her lilies of the valley, without any note. And she would do the same for me. She once told me that she had bought her funeral plot on Long Island and that there was a place for me, because she wanted me to be buried beside her. I was her sounding board and the only one who really knew her. She always said to me, ‘There’s only one person in the world who could hurt me, really hurt me, and that’s you. You could do something. I don’t know what it would be. But I know that you’re the one person in the world that could ever really, really hurt me.’”

Feud is now streaming via FX on Hulu.