Remembering... Marie Rudisill

From my perspective, there's nothing better than a dirty talking old lady - that's comedy gold, right there... Half the fun is in the shocked audience reaction, as if a person could get to the age of 70, 80, or 90 and not have already heard and said everything. Hell, I'd got there by the age of 12; if you think anything I say is shocking now, wait 'til I'm 80 motherfucker.

Marie Rudisill, who passed away on this day in 2006 at the age of 95, was one such lady - a fearlessly outspoken woman with impeccable comedy timing, who began appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 2000; what I didn't know until I began researching this post, though, is that Marie Rudisill was Truman Capote's Aunt Tiny, about whom he frequently wrote - not much of it nice. I have to admit, that kinda blew my mind a little bit.

Rudisill wrote a book about life with her famous relative - which is how she came to be invited on The Tonight Show in the first place - entitled Fruitcake: Memories of Truman Capote & Sook; another book - The Southern Haunting of Truman Capote - followed. In all Rudisill published 8 books late in her life, including cookbooks and juvenile fiction.  Her memoirs, however, have been frequently rubbished by others who had been there...
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