Not Gore Vidal’s coinage — an anonymous Hollywood quipUnknown — an anonymous “Hollywood cynic”In print by 1 March 1978 · named only as ‘a Hollywood cynic’
Gore Vidal really did deliver the line — “Good career move,” said down the telephone from Ravello when his editor Jason Epstein rang with the news that Truman Capote had died on 25 August 1984 — but he was repeating, not inventing. The same gibe was already in print on 1 March 1978, aimed at Elvis Presley and credited to nobody more specific than “a Hollywood cynic”, and Vidal flagged its second-hand origin himself in a letter to Paul Bowles.
“Death Was a Good Career Move” Gore Vidal, on being told of Truman Capote's death, August 1984 (recalled in his own words in George Plimpton, ed., Truman Capote, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1997, p. 430). Vidal did not coin the line: the same gibe was in print on 1 March 1978 in Esquire, aimed at Elvis Presley and credited only to "a Hollywood cynic." Chronology traced by Quote Investigator. quotle.info · Verbatim: “Good career move.”
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Gore Vidal. Use the credit shown above instead.
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In context
Evoking the themes of mortality and success. Theme: "Death Was a Good Career Move". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Provenance
What Vidal actually said
Popularly credited to
Gore Vidal, on Truman Capote’s death, 25 August 1984
Actually originated by
An unnamed “Hollywood cynic”, about Elvis Presley
Earliest in print
“The Murder of Sal Mineo”, Esquire, 1 March 1978, p. 118
Vidal’s own account
Truman Capote, ed. George Plimpton (1997), p. 430
Jason Epstein at Random House told me the news about Truman’s death over the phone. I was here in Ravello. I said, “Good career move.”
Vidal’s own account, 1997
Gore Vidal, recalling August 1984, in George Plimpton’s oral biography of Capote (1997), p. 430 — the fullest first-person record of the remark. Six years earlier Esquire had printed the same gibe about Elvis Presley in the form “a smart career move”, with no name attached to it. Quote Investigator ↗
1 March 1978 — the joke enters print, and it is about Elvis. Peter Bogdanovich, writing in Esquire, reports that a Hollywood cynic was heard to call Presley’s death a smart career move. Presley had died the previous year; the speaker is not named. Quote Investigator ↗
1981 — the wording settles.Time quotes “Good career move” in a review of This Is Elvis on 25 May 1981, and again on 2 November 1981, this time from “one Hollywood kibitzer”. Still no author — only a job description. Quote Investigator ↗
August 1984 — Vidal re-aims it at Capote. Capote died in Bel Air on 25 August 1984 at Joanne Carson’s house; Vidal, in Ravello, took the call from his editor Jason Epstein and answered with the line. He told the story himself in 1997, adding that he said nothing to the press — Epstein did the spreading. Wikipedia: Truman Capote ↗
1999 — Vidal is caught crediting his source. Fred Kaplan’s authorised biography prints an undated letter from Vidal to Paul Bowles that opens the joke with “As someone said when word broke that Elvis Presley was dead”. The borrowing is on the record in the borrower’s own hand. Quote Investigator ↗
No public-domain claim is possible here. The quip’s originator is unknown — the earliest citations name only “a Hollywood cynic” — so there is no author or first publication to attach a status to, and the popular sentence “Death was a good career move” has no documented source at all. Every text in which the remark is actually recorded is a modern, in-copyright publication: Esquire (1978), Time (1981), George Plimpton’s Truman Capote (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1997) and Fred Kaplan’s Gore Vidal: A Biography (1999). Quote the three words with attribution; do not reproduce the surrounding passages.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What the internet gets wrong
This is one of the internet’s favourite Gore Vidal lines, and unusually for such a line he really did say a version of it. The credit still fails on two counts: he did not invent the joke, and the sentence that circulates is not one anybody spoke.
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CoinageGore Vidal Borrowed, not coined
Vidal said “Good career move” when Jason Epstein telephoned him in Ravello with the news of Capote’s death in August 1984 — his own recollection, printed in George Plimpton’s 1997 oral biography. But the gibe was already six years old in print, and in an undated letter to Paul Bowles quoted in Fred Kaplan’s 1999 authorised biography, Vidal introduces it with “As someone said when word broke that Elvis Presley was dead”. He knew exactly where he had got it. Quote Investigator ↗
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Wording“Death was a good career move” Nobody’s sentence
No source records anyone saying this. Vidal’s words were three: “Good career move.” Esquire in 1978 had “a smart career move”; Wikipedia’s Capote article, following Jay Parini’s 2015 biography, has “a wise career move” ↗; the Irish Times has “Great career move” ↗. The long form is the shape the joke assumed in circulation, not a transcript.
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OriginSue Mengers Legend, not evidence
A Buffalo News column of 11 February 1990 credited the Elvis version to the Hollywood agent Sue Mengers — thirteen years after Presley’s death in 1977, and hedged in the column’s own words as legend. Quote Investigator notes the suggestive coincidence that Peter Bogdanovich, who printed the line first in 1978, was a Mengers client, but no contemporary citation names her. Quote Investigator ↗
✓The remark is genuine Vidal and genuinely second-hand: a floating Hollywood gibe about Elvis Presley, in print by 1 March 1978 with no author’s name on it, which Vidal re-aimed at Truman Capote in August 1984 knowing perfectly well where he had found it. Quote Investigator ↗
Context
Why the line stuck to Vidal
A joke needs a target, and this one had a spectacular one. The Vidal–Capote feud was the best-documented literary grudge in America — conducted on talk shows, in print, and eventually in court, where Vidal sued Capote for slander in 1975. So when Capote died in Bel Air on 25 August 1984 and Vidal answered the news with three words, the line found the owner it would keep. It was funnier coming from him than from an anonymous agent in a Beverly Hills office, and funnier lines migrate toward famous mouths.
But the paper trail runs the other way. The quip is on the page six years before Capote died, pointed at Elvis Presley, and its early citations conspicuously decline to name anyone: Esquire called the speaker “a Hollywood cynic” in 1978, and Time called him “one Hollywood kibitzer” in November 1981. Only in 1990 did a columnist pin the Elvis version on the agent Sue Mengers, thirteen years after the fact and prefaced with “Legend has it”. What survives is not an author but a shrug.
As someone said when word broke that Elvis Presley was dead…
The chain of citations, 1978 to 1999
1 March 1978 — Peter Bogdanovich, writing in Esquire about the murder of Sal Mineo, reports that a Hollywood cynic called Presley’s death “a smart career move.” The speaker is unnamed. 25 May 1981 — Time, reviewing This Is Elvis, quotes the cynic in the form that stuck: “Good career move.” 2 November 1981 — Time again, now a “Hollywood kibitzer”. 3 May 1985 — an Ohio columnist still has it as a plural, ownerless thing: cynics in the entertainment racket. Quote Investigator ↗
November 1989 — American Photographer is the first of the citations Quote Investigator gathers to attach the remark to Vidal and Capote. 1997 — Vidal tells the story himself in George Plimpton’s oral biography. 1999 — Fred Kaplan’s authorised biography prints an undated Vidal letter to Paul Bowles that credits the Elvis version out loud, which is as close to a confession of borrowing as a wit ever gets. Quote Investigator ↗
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1925–2012 · American novelist, essayist and screenwriter
Gore Vidal (3 October 1925 – 31 July 2012) was an American novelist, essayist, playwright and screenwriter, as famous for his televised feuds as for Myra Breckinridge or Lincoln. His running war with Truman Capote ran for years and reached a courtroom: in 1975 Vidal sued Capote for slander over a claim that he had been thrown out of the Kennedy White House. When Capote died in 1984 Vidal reached for a line that was already circulating in Hollywood — and, in a private letter, said so plainly. The wit here is in the aim, not the invention.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Earliest documented instance
Peter Bogdanovich, “The Murder of Sal Mineo,” Esquire 89 (1 March 1978): 118 — the earliest currently known instance, aimed at Elvis Presley and credited only to “a Hollywood cynic.” Gore Vidal’s use of the line, on the death of Truman Capote, is recorded in his own words in George Plimpton, ed., Truman Capote: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1997), 430. Chronology traced by Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Death Was a Good Career Move” (4 August 2012).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Death Was a Good Career Move’?” Last verified 7 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/death-was-a-good-career-move/