BEST KEPT BOY IN THE WORLD

BEST-KEPT BOY IN THE WORLD is the first book ever written about Denham (Denny) Fouts (1914-1948), the twentieth century's most famous male prostitute. He was a socialite and muse whose extraordinary life started off humbly in Jacksonville, Florida. But in short order he befriended (and bedded) the rich and celebrated and in the process conquered the world.

No less an august figure than the young Gore Vidal was enchanted by Denny's special charms. He twice modeled characters on Denny in his fiction, saying it was a pity that Denny never wrote a memoir. To Vidal he was “un homme fatal.” Truman Capote, who devoted a third of Answered Prayers to Denny's life story, found that “to watch him walk into a room was an experience. He was beyond being good-looking; he was the single most charming-looking person I've ever seen.” Writer Christopher Isherwood was more to the point: he called Denny “the most expensive male prostitute in the world.” He thus served as the source for the character Paul in Isherwood's novel Down There on a Visit and appears as himself frequently in his published diaries. In his short life, Denny achieved a mythic status, and BEST-KEPT BOY IN THE WORLD follows him into his rarified world of barons and shipping tycoons, lords, princes, heirs of great fortunes, artists, and authors. Here is the story of an American original, a story with an amazing cast of unforgettable characters and extraordinary settings, the book Gore Vidal wished Denny had written. Attorney, author, avid gardener, Arthur T. Vanderbilt II served as deputy attorney general of New Jersey and is now a partner in a private-practice law firm. He's the author of thrity books, including Fortune's Children about the famous Vanderbilt family history (his family history), Gardening in Eden, and Changing Law, a biography of his grandfather Arthur T. Vanderbilt, which won the American Bar Association's Scribes Award.