The Real Holly Golightly

Holly, aka Lula Mae Barnes, was based upon Lillie Mae Faulk, Capote's mother. (Via A Conservative Blog for Peace.)

Lillie Mae Faulk – much like Lula Mae Barnes – was a beautiful Southern orphan (seen here in the headscarf), and God, she hated the country. Unlike Breakfast at Tiffany’s readers, she was not charmed by the fact that she was a southern orphan being sort-of, kind-of raised by her Aunt Jennie. Presumably, like Holly, she spent her youth in the South running through briar patches and stealing chicken eggs – but all she wanted to do was move to New York. Andreas Brown, a literary archivist claims:

“Lillie Mae Faulk was said to be a great Southern beauty. Not in the sense that we consider great beauties today but at that time she was considered a very attractive and charming woman. By all accounts the prettiest girl thereabouts, just an inch or so about five feet, dark blond hair, barely sixteen, but today what we might refer to as a bubblehead. She certainly was irresponsible, childlike, a case of arrested development in the sense that she pursued adolescent values well into her thirties. She married the first fellow who came along who had any money.”

That fellow was Arch Persons. He came from a good family and wooed her with a sports-car, which he said he could use to drive her to every city she wanted to go to. And oh, Lillie Mae was on it. They married after a few weeks – and then Arch ran out of money on their honeymoon. Completely. He was actually broke. They were forced to return to the small town of Monroesville. In many ways, it sounds similar to Holly’s marriage at 14 to Doc Golightly, except that Arch turned out to be a con man. (Read entire article.)

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