Jack Dunphy
| Jack Dunphy | |
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Truman Capote and Jack Dunphy stone at Crooked Pond in the Long Pond Greenbelt in Southampton, New York
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| Born | John Paul Dunphy August 22, 1914 Atlantic City, New Jersey |
| Died | April 26, 1992 (aged 77) New York City |
| Occupation | Novelist, playwright |
| Nationality | American |
| Partner | Truman Capote |
John Paul "Jack" Dunphy (August 22, 1914 – April 26, 1992) was an American novelist and playwright, well known today for his long-term relationship with American author Truman Capote.
Dunphy was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and was raised in a working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His sister was Gloria Dunphy. He trained in ballet under Catherine Littlefield, danced at the 1939 New York World's Fair, and toured with the George Balanchine company in South America in 1941.
He married another Philadelphia dancer, Joan McCracken. They later appeared in the original Broadway production of Oklahoma! in 1943, in which McCracken played Sylvie and Dunphy danced as one of the cowboys. Dunphy also danced in The Prodigal Son, a ballet performed on Broadway in conjunction with The Pirates of Penzance in 1942.
Dunphy enlisted in the U.S. Army in January 1944 during World War II. During his service, he published his first work, "The Life of a Carrot," in Short Story magazine.
When he met Capote in 1948, Dunphy had written a well-received novel, John Fury, and was just getting over a painful divorce from McCracken. In 1950 the two writers settled in Taormina, Sicily, in a house where the author D. H. Lawrence had once lived. Ten years older than Capote, Dunphy was in many ways Capote’s opposite, as solitary as Capote was exuberantly social. Though they drifted more and more apart in the later years, the couple stayed together until Capote's death.
When Capote died in 1984, his will named Dunphy as the chief beneficiary. Eight years later, Dunphy died of cancer in New York, at age 77. Dunphy and Capote had separate houses in Sagaponack, New York. Following their deaths some of the money from their estates was donated to The Nature Conservancy, which used it to acquire nearby Crooked Pond on the Long Island Greenbelt between Sag Harbor, New York and Bridgehampton, New York and their ashes were scattered by the pond where a marker commemorates them. Joanna Carson, the third wife of Johnny Carson, has maintained that she also has some of Capote's ashes (a claim Dunphy denied) which she had kept at her Bel Air, Los Angeles home in the house where Capote died. After the ashes in California were stolen and returned, she bought a crypt for Capote's ashes at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Brentwood, California; although it is unclear if the ashes were ever deposited there.
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