Jack Dunphy; Novelist, Capote Friend

Jack Dunphy, a novelist and onetime Broadway dancer whose lengthy relationship with author Truman Capote became the basis for a popular memoir, died of cancer in a New York City hospital Sunday. He was 77.

Best known for his critically acclaimed 1946 novel “John Fury,” Dunphy also wrote “Dear Genius: A Memoir of My Life With Truman Capote” in 1987, three years after Capote’s death. He also was a playwright and short-story writer and appeared in the 1987 cable TV biography: “Unanswered Prayers: The Life and Times of Truman Capote.”

He began his artistic career as a dancer, performing with the George Balanchine company in South America and dancing in the original “Oklahoma!” on Broadway. When he appeared in “Oklahoma!” it was with his wife, Joan McCracken, another dancer. But they divorced shortly before Dunphy met Capote at a party in 1946.

Although the two men traveled extensively together, Dunphy was said to resent the attention Capote attracted because of his flamboyance. Gradually, the relationship became more platonic although Capote once said that Dunphy, who was a frequent fiction contributor to several national magazines, “is my family.”

When Capote died in 1984, his will named Dunphy as his heir.