Warhol Superstars and Factory Icons
The brightest and best stars of Andy Warhol's Factory
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Joe Dallesandro's still hangin' . . . after battles with drug addiction and alcohol, brushes with the law, three broken marriages and numerous love affairs, plus the suicide of his only sibling Bob. One of the most beautifully photographed wild guys to come out of the Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey "Factory" era, the slight and slightly androgynous Dallesandro became an improbable pioneer of the male sexual revolution and the first film actor to be glorified as a nude sex symbol. The Morrissey/Warhol movies were known for their bizarre, amateur standing, yet Joe and his completely uninhibited, walk-on-the-wild-side demeanor managed to hold an entire underground audience captive. Joe's dangerous street mentality and raw erotic power became a definitive turn-on to both gay and straight audiences and his fame eventually filtered somewhat into the mainstream.
Born humbly as Joseph Angelo D'Alessandro III in Pensacola (located on Florida's panhandle) on New Year's Eve in 1948, his parents, Joe II and Thelma, were teenagers when Joe was born; his father was a Navy man stationed there and his mother had a wild streak of her own. Joe (then age 5) and younger brother Robert were placed into a New York adoption facility after Thelma was given a five-year prison sentence for auto theft and the father decided he was unable to care for them alone. Brought up in a series of foster homes, Joe became notorious for his delinquent behavior at school -- which was often ignited by his short stature and even shorter temper. Frequent runaways, he and his brother eventually returned to live with their grandparents but Joe quickly drifted towards a life of crime (thievery, burglary, etc.) via his association with street gangs.
At 15 "Little Joe" was caught stealing a car and sentenced to a juvenile rehab facility in New York's Catskill Mountains. During this time he started his famous "Little Joe" tattoo body markings. He escaped from the facility and lived a nomadic life in Mexico for a time before returning to the US (Los Angeles), where he gained unexpected acceptance in the California gay scene. The wanderlust teen found it profitable to exploit his sulky good looks and smoothly-muscled physique by posing nude for various photographers in the mid-'60s. Sometimes billed as "Joe Catano", Dallesandro hit many of the underground studios in both California and New York, working most notably for Robert Henry Mizer, who founded the Athletic Model Guild (AMG), and Bruce Bellas, aka Bruce of Los Angeles. A little magazine called Physique Pictorial, which was passed off as a bodybuilding publication, was, in truth, geared heavily toward its gay subscribers. Many were clients of Mizer, who photographed thousands of buff young men (some even out-of-work military servicemen) in various stages of undress from 1945-1993. Joe became Mizer's most famous model and can be seen featured in Thom Fitzgerald's docudrama Beefcake (1998), which chronicles the Mizer AMG era.
Back in New York during the summer of 1967, the 18-year-old, while visiting a friend in Greenwich Village, was invited to sit in and watch Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey shooting an impromptu marathon movie in Warhol's building apartment. Morrissey's camera quickly found its way toward the ambivalent, good-looking Joe and the rest is history. Joe wound up shooting a wrestling scene with another guy clad only in his underwear. A year later that 23-minute footage found its way into The Loves of Ondine (1968), an 86-minute mishmosh of Warhol's eccentric ideas. Joe's image in his jockey shorts was used for the primary ads in The Village Voice. The movie, which featured his extended improvised wrestling scene, was reviewed by Variety and Joe himself, surprisingly, received raves for his charismatic good looks and natural acting ability, and was touted as a possible legit performer.
Young Dallesandro instead became Morrissey's protégé. Although Joe displayed beefcake appeal in Warhol's Lonesome Cowboys (1968), which was investigated by the FBI for rumors of an on-screen rape, and San Diego Surf (1968), the only Warhol feature film never released, it was Morrissey's film trilogy that led to Joe's subsequent idol worship. The first, Flesh (1968), placed Joe front-and-center as a male hustler á la Midnight Cowboy (1969). Intended for female and gay audiences, Joe hit counterculture fame as the first actor to offer extensive full-frontal nudity and the movie also managed to filter successfully out to mainstream audiences.
Morrissey's second feature, Trash (1970), was anointed a "masterpiece" and "best film of the year" by none other than Rolling Stone magazine. In it Little Joe plays a heroin junkie living in New York squalor with girlfriend Holly Woodlawn (Warhol's well-known transvestite actress). The last of Morrissey's trilogy, Heat (1972) takes place in the vicinity of L.A.'s Sunset Boulevard with a long, pony-tailed Joe as a cold-hearted ex-child star who beds down everyone, including seamy "Midnight Cowboy" actress Sylvia Miles and her lesbian daughter, in order to resuscitate his long-dormant career. This attention led to Joe's making the cover of Rolling Stone in April 1971. He was also photographed by some of the top celebrity photographers of the time, including Francesco Scavullo, and Richard Avedon. Singer/songwriter Lou Reed utilized Little Joe's identity in his pop hit "Walk on the Wild Side". In Europe Morrisey's films were praised even more, while Dallesandro was placed on an erotic pedestal.
Acting pay was practically non-existent so Dallesandro, now a husband (to wife Leslie, who was the daughter of one of his dad's girlfriends) and father (their son Michael), received "Factory" pay by answering phones, checking in and checking out film prints, acting as a projectionist, handling security and even running the building's elevator. Morrissey's hot trilogy was followed by the European cult films Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974), both eclectic X-rated blood spillers and ultimate cult items.
Tired of being just a gear in the Factory machinery, Joe stayed on in Europe after filming the two 1974 gorefests and decided to see if his Warhol Superstar status could trigger foreign box-office career a la the recently transported Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. Joe made 18 feature films overseas throughout the rest of the 1970s. They were a mixture of styles: the sex-farce One Woman's Lover (1974); the gritty, grimy crime yarn The Climber (1975) ["The Climber"]; _Louis Malle's adult version of Alice in Wonderland, Black Moon (1975); The Margin (1976) ["The Streetwalker"] co-starring softcore erotica star Sylvia Kristel; the sexually taunting Madness (1980) as a car thief-turned hostage taker; Jacques Rivette's surrealistic Merry-Go-Round (1980); Tapage nocturne (1979) ["Nocturnal Uproar"] as a self-absorbed actor; and Queen Lear (1982), a Franco-Swiss co-production in which he plays a bisexual.
The best of Joe's European films, and his personal favorite, is the sexually-charged Je t'aime moi non plus (1976) ["I Love You, I Don't"], Serge Gainsbourg's film wherein he plays a gay garbage truck driver who has the hots for a very boyish café waitress Jane Birkin (Gainsbourg's wife at the time).
Returning to the States in 1980, Joe's work became more erratic than erotic, but some of his roles have earned a bit of attention. More noteworthy was his gangster Lucky Luciano in Francis Ford Coppola"s The Cotton Club (1984); another gangster in the Bruce Willis starrer Sunset (1988); his religious zealot in John Waters' mainstream Cry-Baby (1990); his psychotic paratrooper in Private War (1988); his trailer park scum who lusts after 'Drew Barrymore' in Guncrazy (1992); his sleazy photographer in _L.A. Without A Map (1998)_, and his brain-damaged hit man in Steven Soderbergh's The Limey (1999). On TV he made standard guest appearances on such popular shows as Miami Vice (1984), Wiseguy (1987) and Matlock (1986).
The Teddy Award, an honor recognizing those filmmakers and artists who have contributed to the further acceptance of LGBT lifestyles, culture, and artistic vision, was awarded to Joe in February of 2009. A biography, "Little Joe: Superstar" by Michael Ferguson was released earlier in 2001 and a filmed documentary, Little Joe (2009), has been released with Joe serving as writer and producer. The thrice-married and divorced actor has two sons, Michael and Joe, Jr. Glimpsed here and there these days, he later managed a hotel in the Hollywood area.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Composer
He formed the group The Velvet Underground with Welsh multi-instrumentalist John Cale, second guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Maureen Tucker in New York in 1965. The group soon became a part of Andy Warhol's Factory scene, which housed a great number of the most freaked and experimental artists at the time. The German singer and actress Nico sang in the group for a short period-- but the original line-up began to split up. The group, at its best, made only four original albums: "The Velvet Underground & Nico" (1967), "White Light/White Heat" (1968), "The Velvet Underground" (1969), and "Loaded" (1970). They stand today as milestones in the history of rock.
In 1970, Lou Reed began his solo career. His second album, "Transformer" (1972), was produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson, long-time admirers of the Velvets. That year, he had his first--and still only--top 20 song, "Walk on the Wild Side." Through the 1970s, he made a prolific number of albums with "Berlin" (1973), "Rock 'n' Roll Animal" (1974), and "Street Hassle" (1978) as the artistic highlights of this period. On St. Valentine's Day 1980, Lou Reed married Sylvia Morales, and that was another turning point in his career. The following album, "The Blue Mask" (1982), stands as one of his best and most composed. In 1989, he made "New York"--a love letter to his city with its good and bad, and with a heavy criticism of American thought.
In the 1990s, he continued to be one of the most sharp-tongued rock 'n' roll poets of his time. In 1990, he once again collaborated with ex-Velvet-partner John Cale. Their album, "Songs for Drella," was a very personal tribute to friend and artist Andy Warhol, who had recently died. In 1993, The Velvet Underground was re-formed with its original line-up, and toured in Europe in 1993. In 1997, Lou Reed, along with former Velvet band mates John Cale, Maureen Tucker, and the late Sterling Morrison were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.
Lou Reed stood as one of the most important songwriters of our time and has served as inspiration to a multitude of artists such as David Bowie, Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails, U2, David Byrne and Patti Smith.- Director
- Writer
- Cinematographer
Born in New York City in 1938, Paul Morrissey studied literature at Fordham University. In the early 1960s, following a stint in the Army and jobs in insurance and as a social worker, he began directing short independent films.
In 1965, he was introduced to Andy Warhol, who asked him to contribute ideas and bring new direction to the film experiments he had been recently begun presenting -- others had been suggesting, and in a very limited sense, directing these early experiments, but they remained in a static, relatively primitive state. From then on, Morrissey not only directed all of the films but signed a management contract with Warhol putting him in charge of all operations at the Warhol studio with the exception of the sales of artwork. It was Morrissey's idea that Warhol's celebrity name be used to promote a rock n' roll group; to that end, he discovered 'the Velvet Underground', added Nico to the band and signed them all to a management contract. While administering the very successful early years of the group, he continued to add story ideas, casting, cinematography and direction to all of the film experiments that Warhol presented from My Hustler (1965) and Chelsea Girls (1966) through Imitation of Christ (1967) and Bike Boy (1967); Morrissey acted as the films' distributor as well.
After Lonesome Cowboys (1968), which was written, produced and directed by Morrissey from start to finish, he assumed total control of all subsequent films presented by Andy Warhol -- from the art house/cult classics Flesh (1968), Trash (1970) and Heat (1972) to his more mainstream successes with the Carlo Ponti/Jean-Pierre Rassam productions Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974).
Morrissey parted company with Warhol in 1975 when the artist chose to concentrate on his painting and business activities. Morrissey went on to pursue financing for his later films, one of the very few American film directors to remain independent of any Hollywood film companies, independent or otherwise.
He was always responsible for his films in their entirety, working consistently with mostly young unknown actors, writing and directing with no outside interference of any kind. Once financing from "independent" sources no longer allowed him the freedom from interference that he previously enjoyed, he stopped making films.- Actress
- Additional Crew
Woodlawn was born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl in Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico. Her mother, Aminta Rodriguez, married the baby's father, a German-American sailor in the U.S. Navy stationed in Puerto Rico, but they divorced when his military service ended. When Woodlawn was nine, her mother moved to New York and remarried, to Joseph Ajzenberg, a Polish Jewish immigrant whom she met while waiting tables at a resort in the Catskills Mountains. The new family eventually relocated to Miami Beach, Florida.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Jane Holzer was born on 23 October 1940 in Palm Beach, Florida, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Spring Breakers (2012), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) and Coronet Blue (1967). She was previously married to Leonard Holzer.- Edie Sedgwick was a bright social butterfly whose candle of fame burned brightly at both ends. Born into a wealthy White Anglo-Saxon Protestant family of impressive lineage, Edie became a "celebutante" for her beauty, style, wealth and her associations with figures of the 1960s counterculture.
Edie was born in Santa Barbara into a prominent family plagued by mental illness. Her father, Francis Minturn Sedgwick (1904-1967), was a local rancher who had experienced three nervous breakdowns prior to his 1929 marriage to Alice Delano De Forest, Edie's mother. Francis also suffered from bipolar disorder, and his doctors told Alice's father, the Wall Street financier Henry Wheeler De Forest, that the couple should not have any children. They eventually had eight: Edie was the fourth of five daughters and the second-to-last of the Sedgwick children born from 1931 to 1945. Edie later told fellow Warhol superstar Ultra Violet that both her father and a brother had tried to seduce her when she was a child. She once found her father in flagrante delicto with another woman, and after she tried to tell her mother about his offense, her father denounced her as insane and called the doctor. In Edie's confession to Ultra Violet, she claimed, "They gave me so many tranquilizers I lost all my feelings."
The Sedgwicks were an old line of WASPs whose lineage included Judge Theodore Sedgwick (1746-1813), who had served as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and later Speaker of the House of Representatives in the time of George Washington. The Judge's wife, Pamela Dwight Sedgwick (1753-1807), had lost her sanity mid-life. The roots of the mental illness that plagued the Sedgwick family likely extend as far back as Pamela Dwight Sedgwick.
Edie was raised on a 3,000-acre ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, bought with money inherited from Alice's father. The family fortunes improved even further in the early 1950s, when oil was discovered on the ranch. The Sedgwick children were educated in a private school constructed on the ranch, and given daily vitamin B shots by a local physician.
Despite their prosperity, Edie's upbringing was plagued with trauma. Her brother Minty was an alcoholic by age fifteen and eventually committed suicide at the Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut in 1964, the day before his twenty-sixth birthday. Her other brother, Bobby, also was troubled by psychiatric problems and was institutionalized after suffering a nervous breakdown in the early 1950s while attending Harvard. He crashed his motorcycle into a bus on New Year's Eve 1964 and died two weeks later.
Edie suffered from bulimia in school, which continued into her adult life. Edie was first institutionalized in the fall of 1962 at the Silver Hill mental hospital (where her brother Minty later died). After wasting away to ninety pounds, she was transferred to the far stricter Bloomingdale, New York Hospital's Westchester County facility. On a furlough from Bloomindale, she became pregnant and had an abortion.
In the early 1960s, Edie lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while attending Radcliffe College. Edie studied sculpture and spent her time partying and driving her Mercedes. At her therapist's office, she met recent Harvard graduate Chuck Wein, who was living a bohemian existence and styled himself as an Edwardian dandy. After she turned 21 in 1964, Eddie left Cambridge for New York, moving into her invalid grandmother's 14-room Park Ave. apartment and spent her nights at the top clubs and discotheques.
Wein came to New York, as well, and became determined to transform Edie into a social butterfly. In January 1965, she was introduced to Andy Warhol, one of the new gods of Pop Art. Wien began bringing her to his work-living space "The Factory" on a regular basis. Warhol had no illusions about Chuck Wein, but he apparently was attracted by the hustler's blonde good looks. Blessed or cursed with the soul of a promoter, Wein was continually plotting a strategy to move Edie up into the New York demimonde and further into society.
During her visits with Wein to The Factory, Warhol began inserting her into his films. She made her first two brief appearances in "Vinyl" and "Horse." Andy took both Edie and Wein to Paris in April 1965 for an opening of a show.
When he returned to New York City, Warhol announced that he was crowning Edie "the queen of The Factory," and commissioned screenplays for her. Wein became his new screenwriter and assistant director, beginning with "Beauty No. 2," which starred Edie and premiered at the Cinematheque on July 17, 1965. "Beauty No. 2" made Edie Sedgwick the leading lady of underground cinema. Her on-screen persona was compared to Marilyn Monroe, and she became famous among the independent film glitterati. Her association with Warhol helped secure both his reputation and hers.
Edie appeared in Vogue in August 1965 as a "youthquaker," as well as a fashion layout for Life magazine in the September 1965 issue. On February 13, 1966, Edie (along with Warhol and Wein) were photographed for The New York Times Magazine. With the glamorous Edie in tow, Warhol made the rounds of parties and gallery openings, and the dynamic duo generated reams of copy and free publicity. Thousands of fans mobbed them at an opening at the University of Pennsylvania. Originally an outsider, Warhol was now wooed by wealthy socialites and becoming a major part of the art establishment.
In 1966, Warhol approached his musical "discovery" Lou Reed with a proposition. According to Reed, "Andy said I should write a song about Edie Sedgwick. I said 'Like what?' and he said, 'Oh, don't you think she's a femme fatale, Lou?' So I wrote 'Femme Fatale' and we gave it to Nico."
Her newfound celebrity would prove to be her undoing, after many urged Edie to leave Warhol for the mainstream cinema. One of these people was Bob Dylan's assistant Bob Neuwirth, who became Edie's lover, wooing her with the promise of starring in a film with his enigmatic boss. Edie was under the impression that Albert Grossman, Dylan's manager, was going to offer her a film contract. She also briefly appeared in D.A. Pennebaker's documentary "Don't Look Back."
Though Edie reportedly also harbored amorous feelings for Dylan, it is unlikely that her feelings were returned or ever consummated. However, Edie is one of the women pictured on the inner sleeve of Dylan's classic "Blonde on Blonde" album (released May 16, 1966), and she was rumored to be the inspiration of the song "Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat." In February 1966, Warhol told her about Dylan's secret marriage to Sara Lownds. Edie was devastated. According to Paul Morrissey, a Factory regular, Edie realized that "maybe [Dylan] hadn't been truthful."
Edie's and Warhol's relationship was further strained by her dissatisfaction with her decreasing role in Warhol's life. They also argued over money. Edie had always picked up the tab when the Factory regulars hit the town, and she attacked Warhol over his failure to pay her money from the films she had been in. Warhol claimed that the films were unprofitable and told her to be patient.
Edie's last known film with Warhol was "Lupe." (She may also have appeared in "The Andy Warhol Story," a lost film for which the footage was either lost or destroyed.) In February 1966, Edie decided to part ways with Warhol. According to Gerard Malanga, a Factory regular, "Edie disappeared and that was the end of it. She never came back."
In the tapes Edie made for "Ciao! Manhattan," she admitted that she had become addicted to her affair with Neuwirth. While they were together, she was consumed by lust, but when they were apart, she turned to pills for comfort.
She tried modeling again and appeared in the March 15, 1966 edition of "Vogue." Her modeling career never took off, however, as the fashion industry shunned people with drug problems. She then turned back to acting, auditioning for Norman Mailer's staging of "The Deer Park," but Mailer turned her down. Edie "wasn't very good," Mailer remembered. "She used so much of herself with every line that we knew she'd be immolated after three performances."
By the end of 1966, Edie's star had gone into eclipse and she never recovered. She was badly addicted to drugs and in six months, she spent $80,000. A typical breakfast in this period was a saucer filled with speed. To support her habit, she stole antiques and art from her grandmother's apartment, and sold them for money. She also turned to dealing but got busted, was briefly incarcerated, and was put on probation for five years. Then, in October 1966, Edie's apartment on East 63rd St. caught on fire by candles. She suffered burns on her arms, legs and back and was treated at Lenox Hill Hospital.
In 1966, Edie returned home to California, where she was committed to a mental hospital. After she was discharged, she moved back to New York and took a room at the Chelsea Hotel, where her drug addiction worsened. By early 1967, her drugged-fueled behavior was so erratic, Neuwirth broke up with her. Edie subsequently took up with her fellow Warhol superstar Paul America. He and Edie Sedgwick became lovers, united in their common lust for drugs, and they lived together for a brief time at the Chelsea Hotel and indulged heavily in speed. Their relationship was an on-again/off-again affair, and eventually, friction over control issues forced them apart.
America later appeared with Edie in the long-gestated film "Ciao! Manhattan". This was supposed to be Edie's breakout role, but the film's execution by Warhol acolytes was amateurish. Shooting on "Ciao! Manhattan," which would prove to be Edie's final film, commenced in April 1967. The shooting was anarchic, with the filmmakers and the actors addicted to speed, which was injected by a physician with whom the production company had set up a charge account. At one point, America left the set and never returned.
After America's departure, Edie wound up in Gracie Square Hospital, where she learned of her father's death, on October 24, 1967.
After her discharge, Edie shacked up in the Warwick Hotel with the screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson, who attracted the fragile Edie with the promise of a screenplay written for her, but ultimately he was unable to deal with the erratic behavior stemming from her drug abuse and left. Edie wound up in Bellevue Hospital, and after being discharged due to the intervention of her personal physician, she overdosed on drugs and was committed to Manhattan State Hospital. By late 1968, Edie was a physical and emotional wreck: by the time she returned to the family ranch for Christmas, she was barely able to walk and talk, the result of poor blood circulation in her brain. She recovered and moved into an apartment near U.C. Santa Barbara in 1969, but by August, she was institutionalized again after a drug bust. She met her future husband, Michael Post, during her stay in the psychiatric ward of Santa Barbara's Cottage Hospital, though upon her discharge, she became the moll of a motorcycle gang in order to obtain drugs. Known as "Princess" by the bikers, she was very promiscuous, sleeping with anyone who would supply her with heroin. She was institutionalized again in 1970.
Edie was furloughed from the hospital in the summer of 1970 to finish filming "Ciao! Manhattan," the last parts of which feature her clearly in the throes of drug dependency. Under the supervision of two nurses, she played out her scenes, including a shock treatment scene (electro-convulsive therapy) filmed in a real clinic. Ironically, she was soon back at the clinic for real, suffering from delirium tremens, where she received actual shock treatment therapy. She underwent a minimum of 20 electro-convulsive treatments from January to June 1971.
Edie married Michael Post on July 24, 1971, managing to stay clean until October. However, that fall, she was prescribed a pain pill to treat a physical debility. In addition, her doctor prescribed barbiturates, possibly to help her sleep, and frequently boosted their effects with alcohol. On the night of November 15, 1971, Edie went to fashion show at the Santa Barbara Museum and was filmed for the last time in her life. The television documentary "An American Family" was being filmed at the museum that night, and Edie - attracted by the cameras as a moth is to flame - walked over and began talking to Lance Loud, one of the subjects of the documentary.
After the fashion show, Edie went to a party but was asked to leave after her presence caused another guest to rave at her for being a heroin addict. Edie, who had been drinking, called her husband to come retrieve her from the soirée. Back at their apartment, Edie took her prescribed pain medication and they both went to sleep. That morning, when Post awoke at 7:30 AM, he found Edie dead next to him. Her death was ascribed as "acute barbiturate intoxication" and was ruled an "Accident/Suicide" by the coroner. Edie is buried in the tiny Oak Hill Cemetery in Ballard, California. - Viva was born Janet Susan Mary Hoffmann in Syracuse, New York, to Mary Alice (McNicholas) and Wilfred Ernest Hoffmann, a well-to-do lawyer. She is the first child of a devout Catholic family, and is of German, Irish, English, and one eighth Italian, ancestry. Her parents had eight more children. She told her mentor, Andy Warhol, that her father was a religious fanatic and her mother worshiped the Irish-Catholic Witch-Finder General Joseph McCarthy, insisting that the children watch the televised Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954.
Janet Hoffman was educated in parochial schools and attended a Catholic college, Marymount, in Tarrytown, New York. She spent her junior year in college abroad, studying art at the Sorbonne in Paris, boarding at a convent. Hers was a life that made her ache for rebellion, and rebel the young Ms. Hoffman eventually did. She became the first non-anonymous performer to perform an act of sexual intercourse on screen, in Warhol's Blue Movie (1969), at the end of the turbulent decade that was the 1960s.
Reportedly, she had had a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized by her parents when she stayed in Paris to try to become a painter, supporting herself by modeling. She moved to New York City in the early 1960s, intent on becoming a fashion illustrator. Living with a photographer, she remained involved with the arts, and one night at a gallery opening circa 1963, she introduced herself to Warhol. They did not click then, nor did they the second time their forking paths brought Warhol into contact with his future movie queen.
It was a different story in 1965, when they met again and engaged in conversation at a party thrown by fashion designer Betsey Johnson. Not lacking in courage, Hoffman soon went over to Warhol's loft-living/work space, "The Factory", to solicit Warhol for money to pay her rent at the Chelsea Hotel, where she lived with her sister in a room that cost $16.00 a week. Of the encounter, Warhol wrote in his memoir "Popism". "She'd done it with all the nonchalance of somebody asking for their paycheck - except that I didn't even know her! What she essentially said was 'I need twenty dollars and you can afford it.'" It was an attitude that would lead to the break-up of their professional and social relationship four years later.
Warhol's movies were always transgressive, and he had decided to move into pornographic production, "nudies" as he called him. (Hard-core porn would come later in the decade). He became entranced with Viva, as he believed he could use the striking, well-educated women in his films (which were pointedly homo-erotic and featured male "flesh" in abundance).
Andy Warhol thought Viva's tedious voice could work to his advantage in dealing with the censors. Warhol was concerned about the "without redeeming social value" phrase in the legal definition of obscenity under the Warren Court in the 1960s. Many decisions finding a film "pornographic," and thus not legally protected by the First Amendment, hinged on whether there was or was not redeeming social value. One of Russ Meyer's nudies had been condemned as obscene and withdrawn from exhibition by the courts as its attempt at inserting redeeming social value had been too transparent and obvious and was felt, by the judges, to be a cynical ploy to make an otherwise objectionable film legally acceptable.
Confronted with Hoffman, Warhol the avant-garde filmmaker had a brainstorm that would make her famous for slightly more than 15 minutes: the Machiavellian Warhol became convinced that he might be able to outfox the censors if he used a woman who "could look beautiful, take off her clothes, step into a bathtub, and talk as intellectually as Viva did".
"Redeeming social value" was the legal fiction that Warhol enlisted Viva to provide in order to make genuinely pornographic movies without getting busted for obscenity. Viva's reflection was beautiful in Warhol's bloodshot eyes and - ever the Catholic rebel - she was willing to go fully nude on screen and even do the nasty.
Warhol's directorial method was to encourage improvisation among his actors while his cinematographic technique entailed aiming a camera at them and shooting continuously for the entire length of a 1,200-ft. reel of 16-mm film, approximately 33 minutes of running time. (Joe Dallesandro once saw Warhol direct a film by reading a newspaper with his back to the unmanned camera that was shooting the actors!) He believed that Viva, with her continuous stream of intellectual babble, would provide him with the legal fig leaf of "socially redeeming value" that would enable him to become a profitable pornographer.
Viva made her debut in The Nude Restaurant (1967), though another movie she had made for Warhol, Bike Boy (1967), was screened first. Playing a waitress in a restaurant patronized by only men (including a bemused Taylor Mead and real-life Army deserter Julian Burroughs), Viva wore only a G-string throughout the entire movie, as did all the male patrons. (A first version of the film, featuring an all-male cast completely in the buff, has been lost.)
But it was Blue Movie (1969) that made Viva infamous for 15 minutes - at least. It was shot in October 1968 at David Bourdon's apartment in Greenwich Village. Although Viva and Louis Waldon actually do have sexual intercourse in the film, they spend more time involved in social intercourse to give Warhol that fig leaf of "socially redeeming value." For 33 minutes, the length of one uninterrupted 1,200 foot 16-mm reel of film stock, Viva and Waldon made love. For the rest of the 132-minute movie (three more reels worth of film shown at the pubic premiere), they spend time talking about the war in Vietnam, cooking food and taking a shower. (The blue tint that gave the alternate title of the film its punning quality was not planned but actually was the result of an error. Warhol had correctly used tungsten film for shooting indoors, but he did not compensate with a blue filter for the sunlight streaming into Bordon's apartment, resulting in the blue tint on the exposed negative.)
Viva was cast in a speaking part in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969), as "Gretel McAlbertson", the woman throwing the party with her "brother" who invites "Joe Buck" to her soirée. The party scenes -- which featured other Warhol regulars -- were filmed in late June 1968, two weeks after Valerie Solanas's unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Warhol.
In November 1968, Viva wanted to go to Europe, and Warhol provided her with a round-trip plane ticket to Paris. In January of the following year, she sent Warhol a nasty letter from Paris that threatened that she would turn on him unless he sent her money. Her disappointed mentor decided to ignore her. She followed up with new threats in February 1969, in a telegram. Again she was ignored, as Warhol had more pressing concerns on his mind. He had to have an operation related to complications from his June 1968 shooting, and when he was in the hospital, Viva sent another telegram to "The Factory", announcing her marriage.
Viva had met and married Michel Auder, a French filmmaker whom she brought back with her to the States. While in New York, she telephoned Warhol to tell him she had signed a contract with the prestigious publishing house G.P. Putnam to write an autobiographical novel. She informed Warhol that she was taping their conversation for use in her book, which she intended to call "Superstar", an expose of the New York demimonde.
Thus, Viva and Warhol parted ways, and she signed up to star in Agnès Varda's Lions Love (... and Lies) (1969), which was shot in Los Angeles. She went off to California with her new hubby in tow. She eventually made 13 movies in addition to the Varda picture, including such films as the Kris Kristofferson vehicle Cisco Pike (1971), the non-Woody Allen-directed Woody Allen movie Play It Again, Sam (1972), Dino De Laurentiis's megalithic Flash Gordon (1980), and Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas (1984), but they were just bit parts. She never made another film with Warhol after the break-up, and never achieved anything close to the notoriety she did as one of his superstars.
In addition to her 1970 memoir "Superstar", she wrote a book about giving birth,"The Baby", which was published in 1975 by Alfred A. Knopf. - Actress
- Composer
- Music Department
Model and singer Nico was born in Cologne, Germany in 1938. She was a part of the Andy Warhol "scene" in the 1960s. A member of The Velvet Underground experimental rock band (with John Cale), circa 1967, she made several solo albums during the 1970s. A heroin addict for the latter part of her life, she finally had kicked the habit and become clean before her death. On July 18, 1988, while bicycling in Ibiza, Spain, she suffered a minor heart attack which caused her to collapse and fall from her bicycle, resulting in a head injury that lead to her death. She was 49 year old.- Actress
- Writer
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The noted outré underground celebrity Ultra Violet was born Isabelle Collin Dufresne on September 6, 1935, and a convent-raised French bourgeois heiress. A coiffured society deb in those days, she moved to New York in 1953 where she spent a decade surrounding herself with modernist artists like John D. Graham, John Chamberlain, and Salvador Dalí, the last of whom triggered her career as a painter.
It was through her relationship with Dali that she eventually met pop icon Andy Warhol in the early 1960's and changed her name to Ultra Violet, evolving into one of Warhol's more accessible and unforgettable trashy-chic East 47th Street "Factory" superstars. An exotic vamp in style and attitude, Ultra Violet seemed to pick up quite a bit of makeup tips from silent star Theda Bara and made her Warhol debut with The Life of Juanita Castro (1965) and went on to appear next in Warhol's I a Man (1967) before her cameo inclusions in other counterculture cult films such as the odd Norman Mailer film Maidstone (1970) and The Secret Life of Hernando Cortez (1969).
Ultra Violet made her legit film debut playing herself as a decadent party guest in the Oscar-wining x-rated film Midnight Cowboy (1969), and went on to offer a flash of weirdness in such bizarre, offbeat films as The Phynx (1970), Dinah East (1970) (starring Jeremy Stockwell as a 50's movie queen who is actually a man), Simon, King of the Witches (1971) (as a high priestess), The Telephone Book (1971) (as a whip lady), Curse of the Headless Horseman (1972) (as a Countess), Savages (1972), Bad Charleston Charlie (1973) and a New York character named Lady MacBeth in the Jill Clayburgh drama An Unmarried Woman (1978).
Her best-selling 1988 autobiography "Famous for Fifteen Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol" detailed her rise in celebrity, and her play "You Are What You Eat" was performed in Czechoslovakia in 1992. She also appeared several Warhol documentaries, including Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1990) and Andy Warhol's Factory People (2008).
As a visual artist with political and spiritual overtones, her mixed-media works have been displayed worldwide. She opened an art studio in Nice in 1990, creating a movement called "L'Ultratique," publishing two manifestos in the early 1990's. Her work was included in the Audart exhibition that commemorated the tenth anniversary of Warhol's death.
In 1973, suffering from acute depression, the lilac-haired Ultra Violet had a reawakening after a near-death experience. In the 1980's renounced her excessive lifestyle and became a disciple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which she practiced for the rest of her life. Slowly parting ways from the Factory scene, she, as such, took a more independent focus on her art. A bi-continental resident, Ultra Violet divided her time in later years between her studio in Nice and her penthouse apartment in Manhattan.
Diagnosed with cancer, her last New York exhibition entitled "Ultra Violet: The Studio Recreated" occurred at the Dillon Gallery in Chelsea. A few weeks later, the 78-year-old NYC artist died on June 14, 2014. She was taken back to her homeland and buried in France.- International Velvet was the Andy Warhol "superstar" who was the immediate replacement for Edie Sedgwick in the Warhol retinue. Born Susan Bottomly into a venerable New England family (her father served as a district attorney in Boston), she attended boarding school, but was expelled four times. In 1966, the rebellious deb met Warhol at a party in Boston. Simultaneously, her modeling career was launched independent of Warhol when she was featured on the front cover of "Mademoiselle" magazine. She was 16 years old.
Bottomly hooked up with Warhol after she moved to New York City that summer. She began living at the Chelsea Hotel, financed by her allowance from her family. Warhol factotum and superstar Gerard Malanga shacked up with Bottomly at the Chelsea for the first couple of months of her stay in Gotham. According to Warhol, the smitten Malanga wrote poems about her.
Warhol's personal and professional relationship with Edie Sedgwick, his greatest creation and - for a time in 1965, his constant companion - had fractured due to the erratic behavior linked to her drug use (addicted to speed, she was a raving paranoid by 1966). Edie had virtually abandoned Warhol to became an acolyte of Bob Dylan, becoming a virtual "sex slave," in her own words, to Dylan's right-hand man, Bob Neuwirth. She took Edie's place, and Warhol began escorting her to clubs, restaurants and art shows.
The Machivellian Warhol used Bottomly in the mind-games he played with his own acolytes, the assistants, hangers-on and others who hung out with him at The Factory, his industrial loft living/work space. He played Bottomly off against the others in the Wahol crowd while exploiting the well-heeled Bottomly, who like fellow "poor little rich girl" Edie Sedgwick, had family money that she used to pick up the tab for Warhol's gallivants about town. Unlike Edie, Bottomly's well-to-do and influential father, a member of the Eastern Establishment, introduced Warhol to to potential financial backers.
Warhol rechristened her "International Velvet" (Warhol had recently discovered the great rock 'n roll band The Velvet Underground and had become their manager and promoter) and gave her a role in his film Chelsea Girls (1966), which was shot in the summer of 1966. Her sequence, in which she co-starred with Mary Woronov, was actually filmed in her own room at the Chelsea Hotel. International Velvet also appeared in two other sequences in the movie, which was Warhol's most successful film, critically and financially, of the 1960s.
Velvet and Woronov both appeared in the movie Superboy (1966) which has never been screened in public. She later appeared in **** (1967), Warhol's 25-hour long "movie" consisting of all the footage shot from August 1966 through September 1967. **** (1967) was only screened once and was later cut up into a two-hour version and into other films with normal running times.
Velvet broke up with Malanga and launched an affair with tyro fashion designer David Croland, who later become known for his fashion illustrations. She met Croland at a party she attended with Warhol; instantly smitten, they became lovers that night at another party, in the bathroom of a Fifth Avenue apartment. They soon shacked up together in a hotel room paid for by Velvet, registered as "Mr. & Mrs. Bottomly" as she was the one with the checkbook.
Velvet and Croland eventually broke up when she pursued an affair with the French movie actor and director Christian Marquand, a good friend of Marlon Brando who was directing him in the movie version of Terry Southern's "Candy." Marquand cast Velvet in a bit part in the movie, but it did nothing for her career. Under Marquand's spell, she moved to Italy to perform with Julian Beck's Living Theatre and stayed there for months.
Velvet arrived back in New York on June 2, 1968, the day before Warhol was shot. The day of Warhol's attempted assassination by Valerie Solanas, she ended her relationship with Croland for good, after finding out that Warhol would survive.
While Warhol recovered in the hospital during late June 1968, Velvet had an acting gig in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969). She was also one of the Warhol crowd who appeared in the psychedelic party scene. By this time, dynamics at The Factory began to change. After getting out of the hospital, Warhol began to be less accessible to the pubic, and Viva was becoming the new "queen" of The Factory. Velvet realized her time was over and it was time to move on. After Midnight Cowboy (1969), International Velvet went back to being Susan Bottomly. - Actress
- Producer
Brigid Berlin was born on 6 September 1939 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for Serial Mom (1994), Ciao Manhattan (1972) and Bad (1977). She was married to John Parker. She died on 17 July 2020 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
- Director
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Widely known for his frequent collaborations with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, a creative partnership which lasted 10 years and produced over 20 films, Ulli Lommel is one of the most consistently creative filmmakers to come from the New German Cinema movement.
The son of German comic performer Ludwig Manfred Lommel, Ulli Lommel began his career in show business as a child. His second feature film as a director Tenderness of the Wolves (1973) brought Lommel to New York, where he began working with Andy Warhol at The Factory. The Warhol / Lommel years spawned several features, including Cocaine Cowboys (1979) and Blank Generation (1980), both of which were directed by Lommel and feature Warhol in an acting role.
In the summer of 2013 Lommel went for nine months to Brazil, where he wrote a book and also made a film about Campo Bahia, the official camp for the German National Soccer Team. His autobiography, entitled Tenderness of the Wolves, is due out in late 2015.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Composer
David Bowie was one of the most influential and prolific writers and performers of popular music, but he was much more than that; he was also an accomplished actor, a mime and an intellectual, as well as an art lover whose appreciation and knowledge of it had led to him amassing one of the biggest collections of 20th century art.
Born David Jones, he changed his name to Bowie in the 1960s, to avoid confusion with the then well-known Davy Jones (lead singer of The Monkees). The 1960s were not a happy period for Bowie, who remained a struggling artist, awaiting his breakthrough. He dabbled in many different styles of music (without commercial success), and other art forms such as acting, mime, painting, and play-writing. He finally achieved his commercial breakthrough in 1969 with the song "Space Oddity", which was released at the time of the moon landing. Despite the fact that the literal meaning of the lyrics relates to an astronaut who is lost in space, this song was used by the BBC in their coverage of the moon landing, and this helped it become such a success. The album, which followed "Space Oddity", and the two, which followed (one of which included the song "The Man Who Sold The World", covered by Lulu and Nirvana) failed to produce another hit single, and Bowie's career appeared to be in decline.
However, he made the first of many successful "comebacks" in 1972 with "Ziggy Stardust", a concept album about a space-age rock star. This album was followed by others in a similar vein, rock albums built around a central character and concerned with futuristic themes of Armageddon, gender dysfunction/confusion, as well as more contemporary themes such as the destructiveness of success and fame, and the dangers inherent in star worship. In the mid-1970s, Bowie was a heavy cocaine abuser and sometime heroin user.
In 1975, he changed tack. Musically, he released "Young Americans", a soul (or plastic soul as he later referred to it) album. This produced his first number one hit in the US, "Fame". He also appeared in his first major film, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). With a permanently-dilated pupil and skeletal frame, he certainly looked the part of an alien. The following year, he released "Station to Station," containing some of the material he had written for the soundtrack to this film (which was not used). As his drug problem heightened, his behavior became more erratic. Reports of his insanity started to appear, and he continued to waste away physically. He fled back to Europe, finally settling in Berlin, where he changed musical direction again and recorded three of the most influential albums of all time, an electronic trilogy with Brian Eno "Low, Heroes and Lodger". Towards the end of the 1970s, he finally kicked his drug habit, and recorded the album many of his fans consider his best, the Japanese-influenced "Scary Monsters". Around this time, he appeared in the title role of the Broadway drama The Elephant Man, and to considerable acclaim.
The next few years saw something of a drop-off in his musical output as his acting career flourished, culminating in his acclaimed performance in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983). In 1983, he released "Let's Dance," an album which proved an unexpected massive commercial success, and produced his second #1 hit single in the United States. According to producer Nile Rodgers, the album was made in just 17 days and was "the easiest album" he'd ever made in his life. The tour which followed, "Serious Moonlight", was his most successful ever. Faced with this success on a massive scale, Bowie apparently attempted to "repeat the formula" in the next two albums, with less success (and to critical scorn). Finally, in the late 1980s, he turned his back on commercial success and his solo career, forming the hard rock band, Tin Machine, who had a deliberate limited appeal. By now, his acting career was in decline. After the comparative failure of Labyrinth (1986), the movie industry appears to have decided that Bowie was not a sufficient name to be a lead actor in a major movie, and since that date, most of his roles have been cameos or glorified cameos. Tin Machine toured extensively and released two albums, with little critical or commercial success.
In 1992, Bowie again changed direction and re-launched his solo career with "Black Tie White Noise", a wedding album inspired by his recent marriage to Iman. He released three albums to considerable critical acclaim and reasonable commercial success. In 1995, he renewed his working relationship with Brian Eno to record "Outside." After an initial hostile reaction from the critics, this album has now taken its place with his classic albums. In 2003, Bowie released an album entitled 'Reality.' The Reality Tour began in November 2003 and, after great commercial success, was extended into July 2004. In June 2004, Bowie suffered a heart attack and the tour did not finish its scheduled run.
After recovering, Bowie gave what turned out to be his final live performance in a three-song set with Alicia Keys at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York in November 2006. He also returned to acting. He played Tesla in The Prestige (2006) and had a small cameo in the comedy David Bowie (2006) for fan Ricky Gervais. In 2007, he did a cartoon voice in SpongeBob SquarePants (1999) playing Lord Royal Highness. He had a brief cameo in the movie ''Bandslam'' released in 2009; after a ten year hiatus from recording, he released a new album called 'The Next Day', featuring a homage cover to his earlier work ''Heroes''. The music video of ''Stars are Out Tonight'' premiered on 25 February 2013. It consists of other songs like ''Where Are We Now?", "Valentine's Day", "Love is Lost", "The Next Day", etc.
In 2014, Bowie won British Male Solo Artist at the 2014 Brit Awards, 30 years since last winning it, and became the oldest ever Brit winner. Bowie wrote and recorded the opening title song to the television miniseries The Last Panthers (2015), which aired in November 2015. The theme used for The Last Panthers (2015) was also the title track for his January 2016 release, ''Blackstar" (released on 8 January 2016, Bowie's 69th birthday) was met with critical acclaim. Following Bowie's death two days later, on 10 January 2016, producer Tony Visconti revealed Bowie had planned the album to be his swan song, and a "parting gift" for his fans before his death. An EP, No Plan, was released on 8 January 2017, which would have been Bowie's 70th birthday. The day following his death, online viewing of Bowie's music skyrocketed, breaking the record for Vevo's most viewed artist in a single day.
On 15 January, "Blackstar" debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart; nineteen of his albums were in the UK Top 100 Albums Chart, and thirteen singles were in the UK Top 100 Singles Chart. The song also debuted at #1 on album charts around the world, including Australia, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the US Billboard 200. At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, Bowie won all five nominated awards: Best Rock Performance; Best Alternative Music Album; Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Recording Package; and Best Rock Song. The wins marked Bowie's first ever in musical categories. David Bowie influenced the course of popular music several times and had an effect on several generations of musicians.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Moved to Manhattan, NY in 1960 to do lighting design for the New York Poets Theater, the Living Theater, and the Judson Memorial Church. He met Andy Warhol in 1963, and served as Warhol's in-house photographer, lighting & set designer, and book designer & editor from 1964 to 1970. Billy Name covered Andy Warhol's Factory interior with aluminum foil and silver paint. In 1970, he moved to San Francisco to work on poetry and sculpture. He returned to New York in 1977, where he continues to work with photography, poetry, and sculpture.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Candy Darling was born on 24 November 1944 in Long Island, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Women in Revolt (1971), The Death of Maria Malibran (1972) and Flesh (1968). She died on 21 March 1974 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
- Editor
- Director
Taylor Mead was born on 31 December 1924 in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, USA. He was an actor and editor, known for Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of (1964). He died on 8 May 2013 in Denver, Colorado, USA.- Eric Emerson was born on 23 June 1944 in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for San Diego Surf (1968), Heat (1972) and **** (1967). He died on 28 May 1975.
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Mary Woronov was born on December 8, 1943, at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. A surgeon's stepdaughter, she was raised in Brooklyn Heights and attended Cornell University as a sculpting major. After a class trip to Andy Warhol 's Silver Factory, she joined Warhol's entourage and starred in a number of his underground films and appeared as a go-go dancer in the Velvet Underground's Exploding Plastic Inevitable shows. She left the Factory in the late 1960s and, after recovering from a heavy methamphetamine addiction, spent two years in Europe with a friend; during this time, Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas, and with the altered Factory dynamic, "there was nothing to go back to." She supported herself with work in off-Broadway and off-off- Broadway theater, then "got scared and got married" to director/producer Theodore Gershuny. She appeared in three of his films, Kemek (1970), Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972), and Sugar Cookies (1973). After the marriage broke up, Woronov moved to Los Angeles at the invitation of friend Paul Bartel, where she appeared on the daytime soap Somerset (1970) and had a memorable role in Bartel's Death Race 2000 (1975). Her best and most famous role came in 1982, with the part of Mary Bland in Bartel's black comedy Eating Raoul (1982). A major cult figure as an actress, she is also an accomplished painter and writer, having published three books--Wake for the Angels: Paintings and Stories, the autobiography Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory, and the novel Snake.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Louis Waldon was born on 16 December 1934 in Modesto, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Mask (1985), Mission Kill (1985) and Cleopatra (1970). He died on 6 December 2013 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Naomi Levine is known for Jack & Ella (2002).
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Bibbe Hansen was born on 31 January 1952 in New York City, New York, USA. She is an actress, known for Olivia (1983), Prison (1965) and Adam Green's Aladdin (2016). She is married to Sean Carrillo. She was previously married to David Campbell.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Wein attended Taylor Allderdice High School in Pittsburgh, PA, graduating in 1957. At Harvard in the early 1960s, he met a young Radcliffe heiress named Edie Sedgwick, reportedly in their psychiatrist's office. When Chuck decided to move to New York, Edie went with him. With fair skin, natural blond hair, and blue eyes, Chuck was convinced that he and Edie could become society darlings. Recognizing that Edie had great social potential but was too disorganized to promote herself, he took over her life. Acting as her promoter, he introduced Edie to Andy Warhol in January 1965, and began taking her regularly to Warhol's Factory. According to friends, Chuck plotted their every move - whom he was going to introduce to Edie that night, what they could do for her. Chuck called himself and Edie "mock elitists in fellowship... I was her roommate, shrink, astrologer, and Tarot instructor." He was a product of the Timothy Leary acid-experiment days. He was largely responsible for several Factory films, including 'Poor Little Rich Girl' and 'Beauty #2,' as well as conceiving 'My Hustler' and 'Ciao Manhattan.' After becoming disillusioned with Factory life, he spent the rest of the 60s adventuring in the Far East, managing bizarre nightclub acts, and focusing on the occult.- Andrea Feldman was a performer in several of Andy Warhol's films, most prominently in the film "Heat" as Sylvia Miles's daughter. She was notable for her screechy voice and hysterical performance style, and she often played out-of-control characters unable to cope with their circumstances.
She committed suicide in 1972 by jumping from the fourteenth floor of her apartment building in New York City. In her hands were a rosary and a can of Coca-Cola. - Actress
Benedetta Barzini was born on 22 September 1943 in Monte Argentario, Tuscany, Italy. She is an actress, known for On Life, Every Blessed Day (2012) and The Disappearance of My Mother (2019).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Sylvia Miles was an American actress, born and raised in Greenwich Village, New York City. She was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, without ever winning the Award.
Miles was born under the name "Sylvia Scheinwald". Her parents were furniture maker Reuben Scheinwald and his wife Belle Feldman. Miles attended Washington Irving High School, located in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan. She received her acting education at the Actors Studio, located the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan.
Miles made her theatrical debut in 1947, at the age of 23. She started appearing on television in 1954. Her film debut was the gangster film "Murder, Inc." (1960), dramatizing the career of an organized crime group active from c. 1930 to 1940. The real-life group were enforcers for the National Crime Syndicate, a loose confederation of American crime organizations.
Subsequent film appearances for Miles included the generation-gap themed drama "Parrish" (1961), the serial-killed themed horror film "Violent Midnight" (1963), and the child-labor themed drama "Pie in the Sky" (1964), Meanwhile, Miles lost a chance at television fame, when playing the character of comedy writer Sally Rogers in the 1960 pilot episode "Head of the Family". The pilot was the basis of the popular television show "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (1961-1966), and Sally Rogers was part of the main cast. But in the regular series, Miles was replaced by fellow actress Rose Marie (1923-2017).
Miles had a scene-stealing performance in her next film project, "Midnight Cowboy" (1969). She played Cass, an aging kept woman, who invites Joe Buck (played by Jon Voight) to her apartment for sex. The role allowed Miles to Show off her "voluptuous figure" and overall sex-appeal. For this role, she received her first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The award was instead won by Goldie Hawn (1945-).
Miles subsequent films included the meta-fictional drama "The Last Movie" (1971), the mystery film "Who Killed Mary What's 'Er Name?" (1971), and the seduction-themed comedy-drama "Heat" (1972). Her most notable role at the time was that of Jessie Halstead Florian in the crime thriller "Farewell, My Lovely". The film was the second film adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1940 novel, and depicted private detective Philip Marlowe working in a missing-person case. For her role in the film Miles received her second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The award was instead won by Lee Grant (c. 1925-).
Miles subsequent films films included the rivalry-themed drama "92 in the Shade" (1975), the period comedy "The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday" (1976), the supernatural horror film "The Sentinel" (1977), the repossession-themed comedy "Zero to Sixty" (1978), and the heist film "Shalimar".
The 1980s opened with Miles playing murdered prostitute Madame Zena in the horror film "The Funhouse" (1981), with the murder setting off the film's main plot. She next played theatrical producer Myra Gardener in the mystery film "Evil Under the Sun" (1982). The film was an adaptation of the 1941 novel by Agatha Christie, and featured Myra as one on the film's murder suspects.
Miles' next few films included hospital-themed comedy "Critical Condition" (1987), the fairy-tale themed fantasy film "Sleeping Beauty" (1987), the romantic comedy "Crossing Delancey" (1988), the mafia-themed comedy-drama "Spike of Bensonhurst" (1988), and the revenge-themed black comedy "She-Devil" (1989). Her most notable role in this period was that of Dolores the Realtor in the corporate-raider themed drama "Wall Street" (1987), a box office hit of the time.
Miles' career slowed down in the 1990s, in part due to her increasingly poor health. She was suffering from anemia and respiratory issues. Her next few films included the friendship-themed comedy "Denise Calls Up" (1995), the marijuana-themed comedy "High Times' Potluck" (2002), and the strip-club themed comedy "Go Go Tales" (2007).
Miles returned to the role Dolores the Realtor in the sequel film "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" (2010). It was her last notable film role. She spend the last months of her life in a nursing home, and died during her transportation to a hospital in 2019. She was 94 years old, one of the oldest living actresses at the time.