Sometimes the seventies seem so long ago, so far away, and the lives we led then so utterly different from the lives we lead now. If I didn’t have the yellowed clippings and my giddy journals, I would find it hard to believe, for example, that one night in May 1971—about the same time as Andy’s Whitney retrospective—the leading intellectuals of New York gathered at Town Hall to hear Norman Mailer, Germaine Greer, and Jill Johnson of the Village Voice debate the pros and cons of anal intercourse.
The so-called debate was more like a three-ring circus, with Germaine Greer representing the heterosexual mainstream of the Women’s Movement, and Jill Johnson championing its lesbian wing, and both of them hurling insults and obscenities at Norman Mailer, who was arduously defending the position he had staked out in Harper’s magazine the previous month: The asshole was meant for waste, and waste alone.
In the early seventies, with Women’s Lib very much the movement of the moment, and Gay Lib the coming thing, this was considered reactionary heresy, and the audience, in an array of trendy regalia from real Mao suits to YSL Mao suits, let Mailer know it. “Fascist pig!” they shouted. “Heterosexual McCarthyite! Chauvinist motherfucker!” The finale of this spontaneous piece of Living Theater came when Johnson invited two of her girlfriends onstage to demonstrate lesbian lovemaking.
“I’ve never seen anything so disgusting in my life,” Candy Darling said to me in her best Bette Davis voice, as the women on stage tongued each other’s nipples. “Real ladies don’t behave this way.”
In the seventies only fake women wanted to be real ladies, it seemed.
Andy Warhol’s Women in Revolt took the sexual turmoil one step further, casting Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Holly Woodlawn as Women’s Liberationists. Filmed on and off in late 1970 and early 1971, it went through a series of titles, including Andy Warhol’s Sex and Andy Warhol’s PIGS (“Politically Involved Girls”), which was Paul’s favorite because he relished the tagline “Only Pigs could follow Trash.” Candy preferred Blonde on a Bum Trip, because she was the blonde. Jackie and Holly countered with Bum on a Blonde Trip. The movie premiered at the first Los Angeles Filmex as Sex, an homage to Mae West, but opened at a small theater in Westwood as Andy Warhol’s Women, an homage to George Cukor. Neither title convinced Hollywood distributors that this extremely oddball comedy was in any way traditional, and it finally opened in New York, in early 1972, at a seedy movie house on East 59th Street off Third Avenue, which Warhol Films had rented, because no distributor would take it. The final title there was Andy Warhol’s Women in Revolt, and it was picketed by real revolting women.
The problem was not the film’s title, but its basic premise, which made a mockery of the entire sexual revolution. And, in 1971, attacking any aspect of the revolution was taboo. The counterculture had become Culture, and Andy, who had as much to do with that as any artist or activist of the time, was hated all the more for betraying his avant-garde roots.
Andy, as usual, denied everything. He told Grace Glueck of the New York Times, “I don’t know what it’s about.” And added, “I think everyone’s doing such great work now. Girl artists, for instance.… At the last Whitney Biennial, it was the first time you couldn’t tell their work from the men’s.”
Fred Hughes went further: “We’re for equal pay, day-care centers, free abortions.”
“And lipstick for both men and women,” finished up Andy. At least he didn’t call them girls again.
But with scenes like Holly Woodlawn rimming a muscleman then screeching, “Women will be free!” before diving back in, the denials were not believed, so Andy blamed everything on Paul, who was only too happy to hint that Candy, Jackie, and Holly were really playing Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan, respectively.
Paul told David Bourdon (Art in America, May–June 1971):
Andy is despised by Gay Liberation and the Women’s Revolt, whatever it is, because Andy just presents it and doesn’t take a position. An artist’s obligation is not to take a position ever, just to present.…
It’s hard for Andy or any of the female impersonators to put down the movement … because it’s a subject that neither Andy nor the female impersonators have the vaguest notion about. I don’t know anything about it either. I hear a little bit about it on the talk shows—equal pay, etcetera blah blah. But the logical extension of what they obviously want is to be a man, so why not have men represent them?
Although Paul didn’t come out and say it, and Andy certainly would have denied it, Women in Revolt is essentially Andy’s revenge on Valerie Solanis. PIGS was his answer to SCUM. It was hilariously funny, a parody of parody, and nobody laughed more than Andy at screening after screening, when Candy Darling declaimed, “Women’s Liberation has showed me just who I am and just what I can be.” Or when a worried Holly, dragging a long red sequined scarf, turned to Jackie, in a proper black-and-white polka-dot dress, and moaned, “They’re going to say we’re lesbians.” And Jackie snapped back, “No, they’re not going to think we’re lesbians. A schoolteacher and a model—those are lesbians?”
Andy had rarely used transvestites in his movies before Women in Revolt. The one exception was Mario Montez, who had starred in Hedy and Harlow for Andy and in Flaming Creatures for Jack Smith. Still, the Puerto Rican postal worker only dressed in drag for the camera. Candy, Jackie, and Holly were almost always in drag—in the movies, on the street, and at home. After the shooting Andy was close to very few real women, that is, strong, contemporary women. He preferred the company of transvestites—and socialites, another throwback to the days when women lived to wear jewels given to them by men.
Maybe that’s why he liked Candy Darling so much, the transvestite as socialite, the boy from Massapequa who wanted to be a Park Avenue lady. In Women in Revolt, Candy played an heiress lured into the movement for her money. Most of her scenes were filmed in Kenny Jay Lane’s opulent Murray Hill townhouse, and the renowned costume jeweler decked Candy out in his very real-looking fakes. Candy was in her glory on the days she was shot, finally the leading lady instead of the bit player she had been in Flesh, her previous Factory film.
Later, over dinner at Max’s, she never tired of repeating her favorite line from the movie: “I’m young. I’m rich. I’m beautiful. Why shouldn’t I sleep with my brother?” Then she’d take a tiny bite out of a big Max’s hamburger, chew it carefully so as not to mess up her perfectly outlined lips, smile seductively as if at a camera, and do her version of Marilyn Monroe’s mouthwash commercial from The Seven Year Itch: “I had Limburger cheese and bagels for breakfast, garlic dressing and Gorgonzola for lunch, steak and onions for dinner—but you’ll never know. Because I use Kissing Sweet.” The only problem was that Candy didn’t have very good teeth. She called them “my fangs.” (She called her penis “my flaw.”)
Her dinner-table pièce de résistance, which I witnessed at least a hundred times in the three years I knew her, and which never failed to stop all other conversation, was her impersonation of Kim Novak in Picnic. “I want to go to the picnic, Mother.” Her eyes would fill with tears. “Please let me go to the picnic.” Then she’d snap right out of it and laugh slyly—“That Kim. She really was something.”
Candy Darling’s will was so strong, so convincing and demanding, that even her mother always called her son Candy. Teresa Slattery’s only child was born in Brooklyn in 1946, and named James, after his father. In the early fifties, James and Teresa Slattery divorced, a major trauma for Irish Catholics at that time, and little Jimmy Slattery moved with his mother to Massapequa Park, Long Island, five miles from where I was growing up in Plainview. The process that transformed Jimmy Slattery into Candy Darling started at the movies. As Candy later told David Bailey in a 1972 documentary for British TV:
The first picture I saw that impressed me was The Prodigal with Lana Turner and when I was a child I used to fill up the bath tub and put blue food coloring in to make the water blue like in Technicolor. I used to bring all of my mother’s plants into the bathroom and I had a yellow towel that I would put on my head for blonde hair, for Lana’s hair. My mother had an ocelot coat and I used to put her coat which cost I think several thousand dollars on the floor of the bathroom and I would go into the blue water with the blonde towel on my head, and makeup … blue eye shadow … and get out of the water and slip into my mother’s high heels, walk on the ocelot coat with the plants all around and … I was Lana Turner in The Prodigal. A few years later I discovered Kim Novak in The Eddie Duchin Story. I was always attracted to women with white hair. I thought it was the prettiest.
Sometime around 1963 or 1964, still in his teens, Jimmy Slattery started calling himself Hope Slattery and taking the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan to hang out in the Village gay bars or to see a Fifth Avenue doctor who specialized in hormone injections that helped turn unhappy boys into something resembling girls. Gradually, shot by shot, Hope shed whiskers and sprouted breasts. She became an actress, making an off-off-off-Broadway debut at Bastiano’s Cellar Studio on Waverly Place in a campy musical satire called Glamour, Glory and Gold.
The playwright of this shoestring extravaganza was another boy/girl named Jackie Curtis, a tough and brilliant street kid, who was raised by his grandmother over her bar, Slugger Ann’s, on Second Avenue and 10th Street. It was Jackie who came up with the name Candy Darling and wrote the play for her in one week on amphetamines. In fact, Jackie was torn between being a writer-director and an actress-Superstar, between being a man and a woman. Unlike Candy, who desperately wanted people to believe she was a woman and hated being labeled a drag queen or transvestite, Jackie said, “I got balls under my ballgown and I don’t care who knows it.” Candy was a true believer; for her Hollywood was holy, and twentieth-century American culture began and ended at Twentieth Century-Fox. Candy wanted to be the flawless blond bombshell of the Fabulous Fifties. Jackie was too original for that. He/she was closer to what the seventies were about, mixups and mixtures, one day James Dean, the next Joan Crawford, or Lucille Ball. The only thing that Jackie never changed was his/her name.
Jackie and Candy were best friends, archrivals, writer and muse, director and star. They lived together on and off, first at the seedy Hotel Albert, a druggy rock-star hangout, and later in various dark walkups in the East Village. When Jackie dressed as a man, they were something of a content, complementary couple—Jackie full of energy and orders, Candy all languor and rouge. Then Jackie would put on a wig, a dress, heels, and the fireworks would start. Suddenly, they were Crawford and Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.
“You bitch.”
“You hussy.”
“Who discovered you anyway?”
“Who sells the tickets to your idiotic plays? You think they come to see you? Or that tramp Holly?”
“Who gave you your name?”
“My mother gave me my name. Contrary to those vicious rumors you’ve been spreading around town about me, I’m a woman—and I’ve got the tits to prove it.”
Despite their bickering, the old-fashioned drag queen and the new-fangled boy/girl shared a truly creative relationship. After Glamour, Glory and Gold, Jackie wrote and directed two more plays for Candy: Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit in 1969, and Vain Victory: The Vicissitudes of the Damned in 1971.
Glamour, Glory and Gold—which Candy called G.G.G.—marked the theatrical debut of Robert De Niro. Jackie liked to brag that he’d “begged” for the part, so his mother, who owned a small printing company, could get the job of running up the posters and programs. De Niro played all ten male roles, opposite an assortment of drag queens, and his performance, Andy always said, was a tour de force.
Andy met Jackie and Candy a month or so before G.G.G. “One hot August afternoon during the Love Summer of ’67,” according to Popism, “Fred and I were out walking around the West Village on our way to pick up some pants I was having made up at the Leather Man. There were lots of flower children tripping and lots of tourists watching them trip. Eighth Street was a total carnival. Every store had purple trip books and psychedelic posters and plastic flowers and beads and incense and candles.…
“Walking just ahead of us was a boy about nineteen or twenty with wispy Beatle bangs, and next to him was a tall, sensational blond drag queen in very high heels and a sundress that she made sure had one strap falling onto her upper arm.” Jackie recognized Andy and asked him for an autograph on a paper bag from a boutique called Countdown that contained, Jackie told Andy, “satin shorts for the tap-dancing in my new play, Glamour, Glory and Gold.… I’ll send you an invitation.” Andy thought Jackie was funny, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off Candy.
Andy and his Factory entourage attended the opening of G.G.G., and after that Jackie and Candy occasionally ventured into the back room of Max’s hoping to regain Andy’s attention. Before he was shot he held court there almost nightly. Andy liked Max’s because it was close to the new Factory, it was cheap, and he could pay his bills with paintings. The owner, Mickey Ruskin, made similar deals with other painters and sculptors, who all hung out in the front room by the bar; Larry Rivers and John Chamberlain were the hottest stars of that scene. Andy and the Superstars reigned in the back room.
Jackie and Candy desperately wanted to be admitted to the club, but they didn’t become full-fledged members until the following year, when Paul put the two of them in Flesh. They only have one scene, but it is memorable. They sit together on a sofa, reading old movie magazines aloud, while Geri Miller, the topless go-go dancer, gives Joe Dallesandro, the wandering addict, a blowjob. Jackie mocks being shocked, but Candy, ever the lady, doesn’t deign to notice. For Candy, the only thing happening on that set was the birth of her movie career.
Holly Woodlawn, the third of Women in Revolt’s transvestite trio, also came to Warhol Films via G.G.G.—though she had to wait almost three years before Paul cast her in Trash, which she ended up stealing. Holly liked to compare herself to Hedy Lamarr, but she actually came across as Jackie Mason impersonating Carmen Miranda. I call Holly “she” because Holly was more like Candy than Jackie, a pseudo woman, not a walking sexual question mark. But if Candy was a lady, Holly was a tramp. Holly’s real name was Harold Santiago Rodriguez Franceschi Dankahl Ajzenberg. She shortened it to Holly, just Holly, after Holly Golightly, Audrey Hepburn in the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Harold hadn’t read the book.
It was Jackie Curtis who added Woodlawn, evoking not only the film capital but Forest Lawn cemetery as well. And it was Jackie who launched Holly’s show-biz career by putting her in the chorus line of A Reindeer Girl, the play that preceded G.G.G. Theirs was another imperfectly perfect match.
Holly Woodlawn’s life story reads like a Jackie Curtis play. A passionate but flighty Puerto Rican mother, a handsome but cold German father, who walked out on his wife, and a clever but kind Jewish stepfather, who took mother and child from the slums of San Juan to the Bronx, and then to Miami Beach, where stepdaddy Ajzenberg worked as a captain at the nightclub of the Fontainebleau Hotel.
Like Candy, Holly always traced her flight into fantasy to the first time she saw Lana Turner in The Prodigal, though she also claimed to have been swayed by Connie Francis in Where the Boys Are: “Being from Florida, it was only natural.” At age fifteen, Harold Ajzenberg hitchhiked to New York, metamorphosing into Holly as he made his way north. In Atlanta, he shaved his legs. In South Carolina, he plucked his eyebrows. In Virginia, he cut his trousers into short-shorts. In Philadelphia, a department-store cosmetic salesman taught him to do his makeup. Arriving finally in New York, he was a she, in a long black gown, high silver heels, and trailing “twelve yards of black iridescent turkey boa.”
Then, the way Holly has told it in nightclub routines and press releases, she became, in rather rapid succession, a 42nd Street prostitute, a Brooklyn housewife, a suburban mistress, a Saks Fifth Avenue salesgirl, and a high-fashion model. No one has ever seen the tear sheets from Vogue or Bazaar, but Holly always saw herself as a much more convincing glamour girl than she ever was, a femme fatale instead of a figure of fun—that was part of Holly’s bittersweet comic appeal.
A few days before the fall 1970 premiere of Trash in New York Holly was arrested for impersonating the wife of the French ambassador to the United Nations and trying to cash checks in her name. How did she ever think she could get away with it? Or was she really trying to be caught? Andy stubbornly refused to bail her out of jail—she was transferred from the Women’s House of Detention to the all-male Tombs after the stripsearch—though on other occasions I saw him give Holly checks for a couple of hundred dollars without a question. Holly always had to sign a receipt made out by Vincent that read “for promotion of Andy Warhol Films,” so maybe it was just that Andy thought that bail was not tax deductible.
Larry Rivers ended up bailing Holly out just in time for the premiere at the big Cinema One opposite Bloomingdale’s. A few days later, after it had sunk in that Andy Warhol Films had finally made it uptown, Holly came to the Factory in a rage, screaming about how little she was paid and how much the movie was making. There was some validity to her claims, and she certainly wasn’t the only Superstar to have made them. Andy Warhol Films paid actors $25 per day of shooting, and they had to sign a release every day, which stated that they had no claim to any additional sums whatsoever and forever. Those who refused to sign weren’t given another day’s work. The threat usually worked because everyone knew there were plenty of would-be Superstars hanging around Max’s, there were no scripts that had to be followed, and it wasn’t very expensive to reshoot 16mm film.
Holly had worked five days on Trash, for a total fee of $125. And Trash grossed $1.5 million in the United States, and at least as much in Germany and other European markets. Of course, not all the gross went to Andy Warhol Films, and no one could have predicted such success. Still, it seemed unfair, and Andy must have sometimes sensed that it was, because he often gave those Superstars who were in his good graces extra money for rent or a new dress or a night on the town. The key, however, was to be “in his good graces”; his largesse was based on his idea of good behavior, and he was always in control. What he hated most was when Holly demanded a percentage of the profits, which would have been a fair and logical way of recompensing contributors to highly risky projects. But Andy, Paul, and Vincent always said it would be “a bookkeeping nightmare.” It would also have meant that people like Holly Woodlawn, Viva, and all the other Superstars would have had a business relationship with Andy Warhol Films that lasted longer than one day.
So Holly made scenes at the Factory, and Andy said she was “drunk” and walked away, and Vincent didn’t buzz her through the bulletproof door for a few weeks until she “calmed down” and “behaved like a normal human being,” until she was a good girl who would not throw a tantrum, draw a gun, and pull a Valerie.
Eventually the tension inherent in that way of working, the psychological state of siege at the Factory, became too much. Perhaps that’s why Women in Revolt was the last Andy Warhol movie made in the old Factory style: no budget, no script, no contracts, no professionals. L’Amour, the other movie under production at the Factory in 1970 and 1971, represented the beginning of a new era at Andy Warhol Films: There was a budget, financed by a syndicate of art collectors put together by Fred Hughes; a script, which the money men required Paul to write before they’d sign a check; contracts, which were so complicated that they later almost led to a lawsuit; and a partially professional cast, including Michael Sklar and Max DeLys, a French actor who was a rising star in Italy, as well as Superstars Jane Forth and Donna Jordan, who played American mannequins gold-digging in Paris, i.e. themselves.
Women in Revolt was also the last Andy Warhol movie on which Andy directed—that is, photographed—some scenes. It was almost as if he couldn’t let go of the old do-it-yourself, movie-a-day way of working. Perhaps it was also a tiny act of rebellion, the first sign of what was to come, against Paul Morrissey, who had seized control of the Factory camera, and thus of the content of the movies, while Andy was in the hospital, too weak to do anything but acquiesce to the making of Flesh in his absence.
According to Jackie Curtis, Andy picked up the camera again when he/she refused to be filmed by Paul, complaining, “He only makes Joe look good.” Ed McCormack described life on the set of Women in Revolt for Interview:
Paul asks Jackie to take her place for the shooting of the scene and Jackie ignores him. Paul takes Jackie’s arm and started pulling her around like a Raggedy Ann Doll, and Jackie pulls away, with great unhand-me-you-cad flourishes of indignation. Paul turns his back … and Jackie slams him in the ass with her protest sign. Paul turns around and shakes his finger in Jackie’s face.… Meanwhile, Andy Warhol, who has apparently learned from past experience to stay well out of the line of fire, is standing quietly in the shadow of the equipment truck parked at the curb, watching them fight it out.… His Dilly Dally head of straw … is blowing in the ides of March and a small vague smile of amusement appears on his lips as he watches the conflict between Paul and Jackie, shivering visibly. After a while, satisfied that the filming is going well, Andy announces in his non-voice as soft as a ghost of a small cough that he’s going back to the Factory “to get some work done.”
I went back to the Factory with Andy, who suggested calling Candy, which I did. He got on an extension and told her that Jackie was “being terrible to Paul. This is your big chance to get a big scene for yourself, Candy. But you better be nice to Paul and do what he tells you and not complain and not wear too much lipstick because you’re supposed to be a rich girl and, uh, rich girls don’t do that anymore.”
“I know what rich girls do, Andy.”
“And you’ve got to think up some new lines, Candy. You can’t keep using that same old Kim Novak stuff.”
“For $25 a day, I’ve got to write my own lines, too?”
“This could be your big break, Candy. Oh, I’ve got to go. Uh, Fred wants me. Talk to Bob.”
Holly Woodlawn, who had agreed to work for $25 per day again after word leaked from the Factory to Max’s that Women in Revolt was going to be a Candy Darling vehicle because Holly was “too difficult,” claimed she only worked in the movies for a pittance because “Andy Warhol could turn anyone into a star.” There certainly weren’t many other movie producers willing to cast transvestites. Candy Darling had flooded the producer and director of Myra Breckinridge with letters, pleading for the lead, but, as Candy put it, “They decided Raquel Welch would make a more believable transvestite.”
Basically Candy, Jackie, and Holly had no choice but to work for the Factory, no matter how difficult Paul was, no matter how miserly Andy was.
The filming went on like this for most of 1971, a day here, a weekend there. By December, Jackie was persona non grata at the Factory; Holly had stopped coming by for handouts because she had a manager in Dallas who got her a paying part in an almost-aboveground movie called Is There Sex After Death?; and Candy had a big solo finale, the most closeups, and top billing in Andy Warhol’s Women in Revolt.
Despite weekly screenings at the Factory all fall of 1971, Women in Revolt still didn’t have a distributor. Nobody would touch it, not Cinema Five, not smaller art-film distributors like New World Films; even the Germans were wary. Finally, Andy decided to rent the Cine Malibu, a small sexploitation movie house on East 59th Street, and we launched the run with a celebrity preview on February 16, 1972. It was Ash Wednesday, and both Andy and Candy sported small black smudges on their foreheads at the dinner Fred Hughes and I had pushed Andy to give after the preview. It was in Candy’s honor, and she had chosen Le Parc Périgord, an extremely conservative restaurant on Park Avenue at East 63rd Street. Andy would have preferred Pearl’s or Elaine’s, which were much more fashionable, and much less expensive, but Candy insisted, “I hate that artificial light at Pearl’s. It’s so unflattering. I don’t know why all the new restaurants insist on having it. I think certain things are nice and refined and should be kept that way. You know I believe in tradition, Bob. Restaurants should have carpets on the floor, upholstered seats, and be dark.”
I recorded that night in my journal:
Candy was in her glory. Everyone laughed with Candy and cooed and oohed and ahed. “How witty you are, Candy.” “How quick you are, Candy.” “How beautiful you are, Candy.”
“Oh, Candy,” said Andy. “What time of the month do you have your period?”
“Every day, Andy. I’m such a woman.”
After dinner, [we] walked around the corner to Scavullo’s townhouse, where the real party would soon begin. Francesco whisked the group past the Pinkertons at the door and up to his bedroom, where everyone settled in to watch the TV reviews of Women in Revolt.
“A rip-off,” said Channel 4.
“Looked as if it were filmed underwater,” said Channel 2.
“It proves once again that Andy Warhol has no talent. But we knew that since the Campbell’s Soup cans,” said Channel 7.
Everybody laughed, Paul the loudest. Andy, taping, seemed genuinely puzzled, bewildered—he liked Women in Revolt. By this time the house was packed with scores of guests, many of whom made their way to the bedroom to give Candy a kiss—D.D. Ryan, Barbara Loden, Sylvia Miles. Downstairs two huge sitting rooms were filled with lilies—what else for Ash Wednesday?—and glamorosi: George Plimpton, Kenny Jay Lane, Halston, Giorgio di Sant’Angelo, Diane and Egon von Furstenberg, Countess Marina Cicogna. Gloria Vanderbilt Cooper called for an invitation and then fell ill with flu that very morning. “I want to come so badly,” she cried to Scavullo.…
WWD’s Rosemary Kent was positioned firmly at the door, ordering her photographer: “Get her—he’s nobody—forget him—quick, quick, it’s Silva Thin!” Silva Thin is WWD’s favorite drag queen, the only one permitted at Candy’s party, though at the last minute Holly Woodlawn’s name was put on the list. Jackie Curtis, Candy’s arch enemy, stood outside in the cold, along with hundreds of other would-be crashers.
“My God, what are they giving away in there,” sighed a weary Pinkerton.
“Would you believe a transvestite?” said a guest.
The next morning Andy called Candy and asked, “How was your party, Candy?”
“But Andy, you were there.”
“I know, but you tell me anyway. I want to live my life through yours.”
The next afternoon, about a dozen women in army jackets and pea coats, jeans, and boots were outside the Cine Malibu waving protest signs. Vincent, who stood beside the ticket booth counting the customers to make sure that Andy Warhol Films, Inc. wasn’t cheated, called the Factory to describe the scene, and I called Candy. “Who do these dykes think they are, anyway?” she joked. “Well, I just hope they all read Vincent Canby’s review in today’s Times. He said I look like a cross between Kim Novak and Pat Nixon. It’s true—I do have Pat Nixon’s nose.”
The White House on the Square now had its First Lady.