[1] Capote's friend, author Dominick Dunne and his wife Lenny had given an extravagant, no-expense-spared, black and white ball at their Santa Monica home in 1964 for their tenth wedding anniversary.
Attendees at the Dunnes' ball included such luminaries as Ronald and Nancy Reagan, the Bloomingdales, Peter Lawford and Patricia Kennedy, David Niven, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood and Hope Lange to name but a few.
Rather than selecting from amongst his stable of beautiful society women he called his "swans", Capote chose The Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham.
[6] The menu, to be served at midnight, consisted of scrambled eggs, sausages, biscuits, pastries, spaghetti and meatballs and chicken hash, a specialty of the Plaza and one of Capote's favorite dishes.
[8][9] Capote purchased a black-and-white composition book and spent most of July sitting by his friend Eleanor Friede's pool compiling his initial guest list.
[14] Six days after the ball, on the December 4 episode of the television panel show What's My Line?, panelist Arlene Francis wore the mask she had worn at the party, transformed into a blindfold.
[15] In anticipation of selling the contents of the Plaza Hotel, Christie's Auction House recreated the Black and White Ball in 2006 at Rockefeller Center.
[16] TV chef Ina Garten recreated a scaled-down version of the event for a themed dinner party on her daytime cookery show Barefoot Contessa.