Carol Matthau Dies at 78

Carol Matthau, a Frank and Tart Memoirist, Dies at 78
By WOLFGANG SAXON


Carol Matthau, whose outspoken memoir of her life and three marriages to two
famous men brought her notoriety far beyond her own wide circle of Hollywood
and literary celebrities, died on Sunday at her home in Manhattan. She was 78.

The cause was a brain aneurysm, said her son Charles Matthau, a film director.

Mrs. Matthau was the widow of the actor Walter Matthau, to whom she was married
from 1959 until his death three years ago at 79. She was previously wed twice
to the author and playwright William Saroyan.

With the publication of "Among the Porcupines: A Memoir" (Random/Turtle Bay) in
1992, the mercurial wit that was both loved and feared by friends like Maureen
Stapleton, Oona O'Neill, Gloria Vanderbilt and Truman Capote became public
property.

For example, when a Swedish starlet flirted with Mr. Matthau and he asked her
age, Mrs. Matthau said she interjected, "For God's sake, Walter, why don't you
chop off her legs and read the rings?"

In an interview with The New York Times shortly after the book's publication,
she said: "I married Saroyan the second time because I couldn't believe how
terrible it was the first time. I married Walter because I love to sleep with
him."

She was a friend of Capote for decades and laid claim in her memoir to having
been his muse for Holly Golightly, the blithe spirit of his "Breakfast at
Tiffany's." She also figured in the "Côte Basque" section of his "Answered
Prayers" and defended Capote long after other unwitting celebrity subjects
turned against him.

Rejecting the Holly Golightly part later in life, however, she said there were
only two roles she coveted: Mary Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey
Into Night," and Amanda Wingfield, or, as she put it: "The lady who sells
magazine subscriptions on the telephone. You know, `The Glass Menagerie.' "

Ms. Matthau had begun an acting career before her marriages and also published
a novella about her own childhood under the pen name Carol Grace, "The Secret
in the Daisy," in 1955.

Carol Grace Marcus Matthau was born in Manhattan and never knew her father; she
grew up in foster homes until she was 8, when her mother married Charles
Marcus, an executive with the Bendix Aircraft Corporation, who adopted her.

Moving to Fifth Avenue, she went to the Dalton School, became friends with Oona
O'Neill, the daughter of the Eugene O'Neill who later married Charlie Chaplin,
and started meeting other people in the theater.

As told in "Among the Porcupines," Saroyan, the Pulitzer Prize laureate, dated
her when she was still in her teens, and they were married in 1943.

They had a son, Aram, and a daughter, Lucy, who died earlier this year. The
union with Saroyan, who was well known for his difficulty, was far from happy.
After the second divorce, they parted company for good. By then she had met
Walter Matthau and studied Method acting with Sanford Meisner at the
Neighborhood Playhouse.

She understudied Jayne Mansfield in "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" and
married Matthau in August 1959. After that, she listed herself as a homemaker
and freelance writer.

Mrs. Matthau is survived by her two sons, Charles, known professionally also as
Charlie Matthau, of Manhattan, and Aram Saroyan of Los Angeles; a sister,
Elinor Pruder of Brooklyn; and three grandchildren.