Best Kept Boy
Christy Has Optioned The Film Rights To Arthur Vanderbilt’s Book “Best-Kept Boy In The World.”
This is the first,and only, book ever written about Denham (Denny) Fouts, who was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1914; when he was 19, he traveled to New York City to find employment during the Depression, and was bagging groceries and quickly discovering that his remarkable looks were opening doors, with men showering him with gifts. He met the author Glenway Wescott who took Denny under his wing and advised him how to turn his looks into a good life, not by being a street hustler, but by being “kept’ by a very wealthy man. Denny liked the idea and was a quick study and it wasn’t long before an elderly shipping tycoon took him to Europe and introduced him to the “good life” of the super wealthy.
Denny’s conquests were extraordinary; from the largest land owner in Great Britain, to the young heir of an enormous British fortune, to the man who would become the King of Greece. Denny died in his early thirties of a genetic heart disease, and it is likely he would have disappeared into the mists of history, had it not been for three famous authors who became good friends (none of them were a sexual partner): Christopher Isherwood, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote. Each was fascinated by Denny, and wove him into their short stories and novels, and of course he appears also in their memoirs.
A recent comparable is “Call me by your Name” starring Armie Hammer and the then unknown Timothee Chalamet.
