Elvis Presley gave me the only dinner party I've ever heard of his giving, in Las Vegas. I had a house in Palm Springs and he had a house there--he and his manager, Colonel Parker. So I used to see Elvis occasionally. He lived very near me and he was going to open at this big hotel in Las Vegas. He was making a sort of comeback. He hadn't appeared in public in a long time and he invited me to come up to see it, 'cause I had never seen him. In fact, I really had never heard any of his records, either. So he said if I would come up he would give this dinner party for me. I was more curious as to who in the world he would invite to this dinner party than I was about anything else, so I went with a friend. The one and only time I've ever been to Las Vegas.
We saw the opening show and the dinner party was in between shows. I can't say that I was at all impressed by his performance. So we went down to this apartment he had there in the hotel and the dinner party consisted of about eight young men [Presley's entourage, the so-called Memphis Mafia] and one old friend of mine who had flown in all the way from Honolulu to come, mainly because she was a fan of Elvis'. She loved Elvis, and guess who it was? [Tobacco heiress] Doris Duke! So we had this dinner party. This table was full of orchids up and down and everything looked very fancy in a gauche, peculiar way. But the dinner was incredible. It was all kinds of different things, fried pork and fried chicken and fried catfish....He was nice, I sort of liked Elvis.
--Truman Capote
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