Jack Dunphy

Jack Dunphy, born John Paul Dunphy on August 22, 1914, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was an American dancer, novelist, and playwright who died on April 26, 1992, in New York at the age of 77. Raised in a working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he trained in ballet under Catherine Littlefield and performed at the 1939 New York World's Fair before touring South America in 1941 with the George Balanchine company.

Dunphy's Broadway career spanned 1942 to 1943. In 1942, he danced in The Prodigal Son, a ballet presented on Broadway alongside The Pirates of Penzance. The following year, he appeared in the original production of Oklahoma!, performing as one of the cowboys. His then-wife, Philadelphia dancer Joan McCracken, appeared in the same production in the role of Sylvie. In January 1944, Dunphy enlisted in the U.S. Army, and during his military service he published his first written work, a piece titled "The Life of a Carrot," in Short Story magazine.

His literary career began in earnest with the novel John Fury, published by Harper and Brothers in 1946, which drew on the working-class Philadelphia milieu of his upbringing. The book received praise from critic Mary McGrory in The New York Times, who called it a remarkable first novel. A French translation was published by Calmann-Lévy in 1949, and Arno Press issued an English reprint in 1976. Dunphy went on to publish several additional novels, including Friends and Vague Lovers (Farrar, Straus and Young, 1952), Nightmovers (William Morrow, 1967), An Honest Woman (Random House, 1971), First Wine (Louisiana State University Press, 1982), and The Murderous McLaughlins (McGraw-Hill, 1988).

When Dunphy met writer Truman Capote in 1948, he had recently completed a painful divorce from McCracken. Ten years older than Capote, Dunphy was by temperament his opposite — solitary where Capote was exuberantly social. In 1950, the two settled in Taormina, Sicily, occupying a house previously associated with writer D. H. Lawrence. Their relationship grew increasingly platonic following the 1975 publication of Capote's story "La Côte Basque, 1965" in Esquire magazine, though they remained close friends. Capote dedicated his short story "One Christmas" to Dunphy's sister, Gloria Dunphy. When Capote died in 1984, his will named Dunphy as the chief beneficiary. Dunphy published a memoir of their relationship, Dear Genius: A Memoir of My Life with Truman Capote, through McGraw-Hill in 1987.

As a playwright, Dunphy wrote several works produced in New York. Saturday Night Kid opened at the Provincetown Playhouse on May 15, 1958, for a ten-day run. On February 19, 1960, Too Close for Comfort played a single performance at the Lucille Lortel Theatre — then known as the Theatre de Lys — as part of a double bill with his play The Gay Apprentice, presented through the American National Theater and Academy Matinee Series. A one-act sketch, Squirrel, was performed at the same theater as part of the ANTA series on April 10, 1962. His other plays include Light a Penny Candle and Café Moon.

Dunphy and Capote maintained separate houses in Sagaponack, New York. Following both of their deaths, funds from their estates were donated to The Nature Conservancy, which used the money to acquire Crooked Pond on the Long Island Greenbelt between Sag Harbor and Bridgehampton, New York. Their mingled ashes were scattered near the pond, which is marked by a commemorative marker. Dunphy has been portrayed on screen by Bruce Greenwood in the 2005 film Capote, by John Benjamin Hickey in the 2006 film Infamous, and by Joe Mantello in the FX television series Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.