(scroll down or click on year above)
(codes
in parentheses refer to references)
Andy Warhol and St. Vitus' Dance. Andy Warhol gets a camera. Andy Warhol goes to New York. Andy Warhol avoids the draft. First performances of The Living Theatre. Holly Woodlawn runs away. Andy Warhol's first exhibition. Valerie Solanas graduates. Andy Warhol tours the far east. The Judson Gallery opens. The Caffe Cino opens. Billy Name meets Andy Warhol. The Connection opens at The Living Theater. Lou Reed goes to college. Andy Warhol does his first silkscreens. Mickey Ruskin opens the Ninth Circle. Andy Warhol meets Henry Geldzahler. Jonas Mekas founds the New American Cinema Group. Ondine hangs out at the San Remo. Andy Warhol meets Ondine at an orgy. First productions of the New York Poets Theatre. La Mama opens. First performances of the Judson Poets' Theatre. Lou Reed writes I'll Be Your Mirror. Freddy Herko dances in the first "Concert of Dance" at the Judson Dance Theater. Andy Warhol's first N.Y. pop exhibition at the Stable Gallery.
Births: Andy Warhol, Louis Waldon, Valerie Solanas, Ondine, Viva, Nico, Brigid Berlin, Baby Jane Holzer, Billy Name, John Cale, Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, Gerard Malanga, Edie Sedgwick, Mary Woronov, Candy Darling, Maureen Mo Tucker, Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis, Bob Colacello and Joe Dallesandro.
AUGUST 6, 1928: ANDY WARHOL IS BORN.
Julia Warhola with
John Warhola (left) and
Andrew Warhola (right)
1931Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His birth name was Andrew Warhola. His parents were immigrants from Miková in northeastern Slovakia. (BC11)
Warhol gave various dates for his birth, but the correct one is August 6, 1928, based on a birth certificate that was filed late in order to qualify him for college and his certificate of baptism.
Wayne Koestenbaum claimed that Warhol was dyslexic in his biography on the artist. However, there is no medical evidence to support this. When Warhol graduated from high school in 1945 (at the age of sixteen), he ranked 51 in a class of 278 (DB18), which would be quite a high ranking for somebody with dyslexia in the 1940s.
DECEMBER 16, 1934: LOUIS WALDON IS BORN IN MODESTO, CALIFORNIA. (IMDB)
APRIL 9, 1936: VALERIE JEAN SOLANAS IS BORN.
Valerie was born in Ventnor, New Jersey. She later became famous as the person who shot Andy Warhol. During her childhood, Solanas was sexually molested by her father and whipped by her grandfather when she refused to stay in a Catholic High School. (UV184)
AUTUMN 1936: ANDY WARHOL GETS ILL.
At the age of eight ANDY WARHOL came down with a rare disease called chorea, or St. Vitius' dance, "an illness of the nervous system that under certain circumstances can prove fatal." (DD22)
Warhol had originally come down with rheumatic fever. At the time, before antibiotics, approximately 10 percent of cases of rheumatic fever worsened and became chorea (also called St. Vitus' Dance). The illness caused his skin to become spotty and brought on spells where his arms and legs would shake uncontrollably. In some cases the illness was life threatening.
Warhol stayed in bed for about ten weeks. When he finally returned to school he had a relapse of the illness on the first day and returned to bed. Some writers have attributed the skin problems that plagued Warhol throughout his life with the his childhood illness. (DD22-3)
JUNE 16, 1937: ONDINE IS BORN BOB OLIVO. (FM)
ca. 1937: ANDY WARHOL GETS A CAMERA.
He develops the film in his own makeshift darkroom in the basement of his house. (AWM5)
AUGUST 23, 1938: VIVA IS BORN.
Viva was born in Thousand Islands, New York and raised in Syracuse. Her birth name was Janet Susan Mary Hoffman. She was the eldest of nine children born to conservative parents. Her father was a prominent criminal lawyer. After attending parochial grade schools, she went to Marymount, a Catholic College in Tarrytown, New York. She studied in Paris at the Sorbonne in her junior year, living in a convent on the Right Bank while studying art. (FM/DB260)
OCTOBER 16, 1938: NICO IS BORN.
Nico was born in Cologne and raised by her mother and grandfather in Spreewald - a small town on the outskirts of Berlin. Her birth name was Christa Paffgen.
Nico was educated first in France, then in Italy and spoke seven languages. She also went to a private school in Germany, worked as a child model, and later studied acting and singing at the Lee Strasberg Method Studios. During the air raids in the second world war, she took shelter in the family's bath tub and always remembered the sound of the bombs. (UT32-33)
At the age of 15 she was on vacation at the villa of a friend in Rome when she was introduced to some actors from Cinecitta (the Hollywood of Italy) who invited her to the set of La Dolce Vita. She said she was somebody's cousin and retreated to the sidelines. She was noticed by Fellini when she was asked to bring over a baroque silver candelabra that she was standing near to and ended up with a role in the film. Her parents are outraged that she was in the film and prevented her from signing a contract with Fellini. (UT33)
[According to David Bourdon, Nico was born in Cologne, grew up in Berlin, worked as a model in Paris and Rome and was seventeen years old when she appeared in La Dolce Vita. (DB221)]
SEPTEMBER 6, 1939: BRIGID BERLIN IS BORN.
Brigid's father, Richard E. Berlin, was chairman of the Hearst Corporation. Her mother, Honey Berlin married him when she was 21 years. Nine months after their marriage, Brigid was born.
Brigid had two sisters - Richie and Christina and a brother, Richard. Brigid's mother put her on speed when she was a child to make her lose weight. (PS)
OCTOBER 23, 1940: BABY JANE HOLZER IS BORN. (imdb)
Jane was born in Palm Beach, Florida. Her birth name was Jane Brookenfeld. Her father, Carl Brookenfeld, made his fortune in real estate. She later married Leonard Holzer who had also made a fortune through real estate.
FEBRUARY 22, 1940: BILLY NAME IS BORN.
Billy Name was born Billy Linich at Vassar Hospital in Poughkeepsie, New York. According to Billy, he grew up as an "average repressed young American" until 1958 when he transplanted himself to the Village in New York and "magically" became an occult artist. (B)
DECEMBER 5, 1940: JOHN CALE IS BORN.
Cale was born in Crynant, South Wales. He attended school in Crynant until he was seventeen years old and then studied classical music at Goldsmith College in London from 1960-63. In 1963 Cale was awarded a scholarship to study at Tanglewood in the States and then moved to New York to start a band called The Dream Syndicate with LaMonte Young. (UT12-13)
MARCH 2, 1942: LOU REED IS BORN.
Lou Reed was born Lewis Alan Reed at Beth El Hospital in Brooklyn, New York to an accountant and an ex-beauty queen housewife. Reed's family moved to 35 Oakfield Avenue, Freeport, Long Island in 1953, where he spent his childhood. (LR16-7) He realized he had homosexual urges at the age of thirteen. At the age of fifteen he formed a band called The Shades and put out a single on the Time label called So Blue. (LR22-3/UT15)
1942: ANDY WARHOL GRADUATES FROM HOLMES SCHOOL.
After graduating from Holmes, he went to Schenley High School, studying art under Joseph Fitzpatrick who also taught classes at the Carnegie Institute. (AWM6)
AUGUST 29, 1942: STERLING MORRISON IS BORN.
Sterling was born in East Meadow, Long Island. His birth name was Holmes Sterling Morrison, Jr. He was raised by middle-class parents and had two younger brothers, Robert and William and three younger sisters, Dorothy, Kathleen and Marjorie. He studied the trumpet from age 7 to 12 and then, inspired by Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, switched to guitar when his trumpet teacher was drafted. He later met Lou Reed while attending Syracuse University. His roommate at Syracuse was Maureen Tucker's brother, Jim. Their room was beneath Lou Reed's room. (UT19)
1942: ANDY WARHOL'S FATHER DIES.
Warhol's father, ANDREJ (aka Ondrej) WARHOLA, died from a jaundiced liver. According to Paul Alexander in Death and Disaster, The Rise of the Warhol Empire and the Race for Andy's Millions, "some friends questioned why the liver was diseased in the first place. Many suggested that it was a direct result of his gallbladder being removed some years before. Others would imply that perhaps Ondrej [Warhol's father] drank excessively, the prolonged effect of which damaged his liver. Either way, it was obvious that Ondrej's gallbladder was susceptible to disease, a hereditary trait he passed on to Andy." (DD23)
Andy Warhol's mother, JULIA WARHOLA, said her husband's liver infection was caused by drinking "poison water" at a construction site in Virginia where he did some work. (DD18)
Warhol was fourteen years old at the time and did not attend his father's funeral. According to his brother, PAUL WARHOLA, their mother was afraid that the funeral might lead to a recurrence of Andy's "nervous condition". Young Warhol hid under a bed upstairs during the wake and refused to come down to see his father laid out in in the open casket in the living room. (BC18)
MARCH 20, 1943: GERARD MALANGA IS BORN.
APRIL 20, 1943: EDIE SEDGWICK IS BORN.
Edie was born at the Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, California. In the sixties, she told ULTRA VIOLET that as a child both her father and brother tried to sleep with her, but she rejected their advances. When she discovered her father making love to another woman, she tried to tell her mother. Her father told her she was insane and called the doctor. Edie told Ultra, “They gave me so many tranquillizers I lost all my feelings.”
Edie suffered from anorexia in school, which continued into her adult life. Later when she moved to New York, she demonstrated vomiting to Ultra Violet by tickling her uvula with a scarlet ibis feather while listening to a Hoagy Carmichael record. She also liked Ornette Coleman. (UV206-7)
JUNE 23, 1943: ERIC EMERSON IS BORN.
DECEMBER 8, 1943: MARY WORONOV IS BORN. (MW11/IMDb)
Mary Woronov was born in Brooklyn, New York and studied art at Cornell University. Her step-father was a cancer surgeon. About her father, Mary would later say "women loved him... most of the emergencies at the hospital were blondes or brunettes." (MW14)
Mary wasn't allowed to smoke pot at home, but she was permitted to take as many of her mother’s speed pills as she wanted. (MW12)
Mary Woronov:
"When Mom didn't clean the house fast enough, Daddy put her on speed after diagnosing an underactive thyroid... at three in the morning I'd find her curled under the yellow glow of a lamp in a darkened living room... reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich...
'Mom, why don't you go to bed? It's late.'
'Uh huh, I will... in a minute.'
'Mom, you read that book last year year, don't you remember?' " (MW13)
NOVEMBER 24, 1944: CANDY DARLING IS BORN. (FM/CD10)
Candy was born in New York. Her birth name was James Lawrence Slattery. Various birth dates appear in Warhol literature for Candy, but November 24 is the generally accepted date - although Bob Colacello thought s/he was born in 1946. (BC79)
1945: ANDY WARHOL GRADUATES FROM HIGH SCHOOL.
After graduating from Schenley High School, he studied painting and design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. (DD24) Warhol originally intended to study art education at the University of Pittsburgh in order to become an art teacher, but he changed his mind and applied to the Carnegie Institute to study pictorial design with the intention of becoming a commercial illustrator. (AWM6)
Andy Warhol at the Carnegie
Institute of Technology (ca. 1947)
(photo: Philip Pearlstein)
1945: MAUREEN ('Mo') TUCKER IS BORN.
Mo was born in New Jersey. She later became the drummer for The Velvet Underground despite the fact that "John [Cale] was adamant about not wanting any girls in the band." (Mo/UT29)
OCTOBER 26, 1946: HOLLY WOODLAWN IS BORN. (HW29/IMDb/BC81)
Holly Woodlawn was born Harold Santiago Rodriguez Franceschi Danhackl in Juana Diaz, Puerto Rico. Holly's mother was Puerto Rican, her father an American soldier of German descent who met Holly’s mother on leave, got her pregnant, married her, then quickly departed.
Holly was raised in a household that included “8 aunts, 1 uncle, 5 cousins, 2 grandparents, 6 chickens and 3 pigs.” (HW28-9) She later changed her first name to Holly after Holly Golightly in Truman Capote’s story Breakfast at Tiffany's. (HW3)
FEBRUARY 19, 1947: JACKIE CURTIS IS BORN. (J)
Jackie Curtis was born John Holder, Jr. in New York.
1947: BOB COLACELLO IS BORN.
c. SUMMER 1948 (or 1947?): ANDY WARHOL MEETS JOHN CAGE.
See: Andy Warhol meets John Cage.
1948: HOLLY WOODLAWN’s MOTHER MOVES TO NEW YORK.
Holly was left in Puerto Rico to be raised by her grandmother. (HW30)
DECEMBER 31, 1948: JOE DALLESANDRO IS BORN.
Joe Dallesandro was born Joseph Angelo D’Allessandro III in Pensacola Florida, to an 18 year old Italian American sailor, stationed at the local Naval base, and his wife, 16 year old Thelma Testman.
Joe Sr. had married Thelma when she was 14 years old. One year later in New York City they gave birth to Joe’s brother, Robert (Bob) who would later play a small part in Trash and work for Warhol as a chauffeur. Later, Thelma (or Sandy as she was called from an abbreviation of the last two syllables of her married last name), was arrested in Florida for interstate auto theft and sentenced to five years in a Federal penitentiary.
Joe and his brother ended up at Angel Guardian Home in Harlem, awaiting foster care. Both were eventually fostered to the same couple in Brooklyn, with Joe Sr. visiting his sons approximately once a month. When Joe was 14 years old, he went to live with his father in Queens at his grandparent’s house. (JOE13)
Joe Dallesandro
SUMMER 1949: ANDY WARHOL MOVES TO MANHATTAN.
Warhol graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in pictorial design.
While at college Warhol had worked in the display department at the Joseph Horne department store. He had also frequented a local gallery called Outlines where he had been exposed to the work of Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and Buckminster Fuller. He had also taught art classes at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement while still in college. (AWM7)
PHILIP PEARLSTEIN, a friend from college accompanied Warhol to Manhattan. Pearlstein would later go on to become an important realist painter.
Warhol and Pearlstein subleased an eighth-floor walkup tenement apartment on St. Mark's Place (and Avenue A) for the summer. According to Pearlstein, "The bathtub was in the kitchen and it was usually full of roaches, incredible roaches."
When they moved a few months later to the large front room of dancer FRANCESCA BOAS's loft on West 23rd Street, Andy sent out address change cards in small envelopes filled with glitter announcing, "I've moved from one roach-ridden apartment to another." (BC21)
One of Andy Warhol's first free-lance jobs was at Glamour magazine. He went on to become an extremely successful commercial artist, working for most of the major fashion magazines throughout the fifties, doing album covers for Columbia records, designing Christmas cards, book jackets and retail ad campaigns, including the famous shoe ads for I. Miller in the mid-fifties.
"At the height of his career as a commercial artist, Warhol was earning one hundred thousand dollars a year, a staggering sum for the fifties... on the I. Miller account alone he made fifty thousand dollars one year...Eventually he had to hire assistants to help him keep up with his assignments. He even enlisted the services of his mother, who followed him from Pittsburgh to New York soon after he started making enough money to support them both." (DD25)
Warhol was represented by artists' agents Fritzie Miller and Anna Mae Wallowitch. His assistants included Vito Giallo and Nathan Gluck. (AWM59) (See Andy Warhol Pre-Pop: 1949 - 1962.)
Arthur Elias (front left), Philip Pearlstein (back left),
Andy Warhol and Leonard Kessler (right) - all
classmates at Carnegie Tech (ca. 1948/9)
1951: FIRST PERFORMANCES OF THE LIVING THEATRE IN NEW YORK
Founded by Julian Beck and Judith Malina, the theatre - based at various locations during the 1950s and 60s - can be seen as a precursor to venues like the Caffe Cino, the Judson Church and La Mama. JAMES WARING, who would later appear in Warhol's film, Haircut #1, taught a dance course there and Warhol star Taylor Mead performed at their weekly Living Poetry series. Warhol star RUFUS COLLINS was an active member of the Living Theater from 1960 and other Warhol stars, such as TALLY BROWN, had also participated in The Living Theater events. It was after Warhol saw Jonas Mekas' film of the The Living Theatre's production of The Brig that Warhol began using an auricon movie camera which enabled him to shoot longer scenes with a single-system soundtrack.
(http://www.rufuscollins.org/timeline.html/PS232)See: Andy Warhol, The Connection and The Brig.
The top floor of The Living Theatre's 14th Street building, which they performed in from 1959 - 1963, was leased as a studio space to Merce Cunningham and John Cage. (SB21-31)
1951: HOLLY WOODLAWN MOVES FROM PUERTO RICO TO THE BRONX.
Holly joined her mother who had moved there earlier and married a Polish Jewish man named Joseph Ajzenberg. Holly's mother and Joseph had met each other during seasonal work at an upstate resort as waitress and waiter. (HW31)
ca. EARLY 1950s: ANDY WARHOL AVOIDS THE DRAFT.
There are two selective service cards for Andy Warhol in the collection of the Warhol Museum. The first one, from Warhol's Pittsburgh youth, rated him 1-a which meant he could be drafted without any problem. On the second one, dating from his early days in New York City, his rating had changed to 4-f which meant he was no long eligible to serve. The reason for the change is unknown. (M/B)
1952: ANDY WARHOL WINS HIS FIRST AWARD.
He won the award from the Art Directors Club for graphics done for a CBS radio program called The Nation's Nightmare about narcotics and crime. (AWM60)
1952: ANDY WARHOL HAS HIS FIRST EXHIBITION IN NEW YORK.
The exhibit was at the Hugo Gallery on Fifty-fifth Street. It was called Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote. Having been attracted by the jacket photograph of Truman Capote on his book Other Voices, Other Rooms, Andy tried to contact TRUMAN CAPOTE, sending him various letters and then telephoning him at his apartment.
Capote's mother, an alcoholic who lived with Truman, was at first friendly toward Andy though she eventually told him to leave her son alone, calling Warhol a faggot. Although invited to the opening, Truman Capote did not attend. (DD25/26) (BC402)
1954: ANDY WARHOL EXHIBITS AT THE LOFT GALLERY.
Later, in 1958, Warhol hired the gallery manager, VITO GIALLO, as a freelance assistant, paying him the minimum wage. (L&D502/UW19)
1954: VALERIE SOLANAS GRADUATES FROM HIGH SCHOOL.
She gets an “A” in all subjects except physics, for which she receives a “B”. She enters the University of Maryland at College Park and does well, later spending less than a year at the Graduate School of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. (UV184)
1955: HOLLY WOODLAWN MOVES TO SOUTH BEACH.
Holly, her mother and her stepfather moved from the Bronx to in South Beach in Miami, Florida. (HW36) Holly lived there until running away to New York in 1962.
JUNE 16 - AUGUST 12, 1956: ANDY WARHOL TOURS THE WORLD.
Warhol's traveling companion was Charles Lisanby on his round-the-world tour.
Also in 1956: One of Warhol's drawings was included in the Recent Drawings U.S.A. exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. He also received the 35th Annual Art Directors Club Award for Distinctive Merit for his I. Miller shoe advertisements.
1958: ANDY WARHOL'S MOTHER WINS A GRAPHIC DESIGN AWARD.
Warhol's mother often did the lettering for his designs. Her lettering on the cover of a Louis Hardin album, The Story of Moondog, won an award from the American Institute of Graphic Arts as "Andy Warhol's mother". The writing had been rearranged graphically by Warhol for the cover. (AWM58)
1958: THE JUDSON GALLERY OPENS.
From Playing Underground: A Critical History of the 1960s Off-Off-Broadway Movement
by Stephen J. Bottoms:
"Founded in 1892 by Baptist minister Edward Judson, its [the Judson Memorial Church's] initial mission was to be a church that would 'cross the tracks,' by serving both the wealthier families to the north of the Square and the Italian immigrant ghetto to the south... This was a heritage taken very seriously by Dr. Howard Moody, who in 1956 began a pastorate that was to last almost four decades... The Judson Gallery was established in 1958, in the church's basement Ping-Pong room, and in 1959-60, its program was curated by Allan Kaprow - fresh from his success with 18 Happenings in 6 Parts at the Reuben Gallery. Consequently, Judson became an early center for happenings such as Kaprow's The Shrine and Claes Oldenburg's Ray Gun Specs events - which incorporated work by Jim Dine, Al Hansen [father of Warhol star BIBBE HANSEN], Dick Higgins, and Robert Whitman. Over the next few years, the church was also to initiate dance and poetry programs." (SB66)
In 1961, The Judson Poets Theatre was established at the church. The Judson Dance Theater would also be located there the following year - their first concert was on 6 July 1962. (JDxi)
(See the Visual Arts, Dance, Theater and Music sections of the "Arts" section of of http://www.judson.org.)
DECEMBER 1958: THE CAFFE CINO OPENS IN NEW YORK
According to Cino playwright, Robert Patrick, Warhol stars who did work at the Cino included Ondine, Taylor Mead, Ronald Tavel, Louis Waldon and Mary Woronov. Andy Warhol filmed the Cino productions of Robert Heide's play The Bed and Soren Agenoux's play Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol.
(See Caffe Cino.)
1959: BILLY NAME MEETS ANDY WARHOL.
Billy met Andy while working as a waiter at Serendipity 3, an espresso boutique in the chic upper east side of Manhattan. After a brief sexual relationship, Billy and Andy became friends. Billy would later create the silver look of the Factory. (B)
1959: THE CONNECTION OPENS AT THE LIVING THEATRE.
Jack Gelber's play about heroin addicts, The Connection was the inaugural production of the Living Theatre's venue on14th Street and 6th Avenue. (SB28) The boundaries between "theatre" and real life became blurred as actors as the "playwright" and "producer" addressed the audience directly, telling them that they had assembled a cast of real heroin addicts who would be improvising around a loose scenario.
See Andy Warhol, The Connection and The Brig.
SPRING 1959: LOU REED HAS SHOCK TREATMENT.
Lou's parents sent him (at the age of seventeen) to a psychiatrist to be cured of "homosexual feelings and alarming mood swings." Reed was referred to Creedmore State Psychiatric Hospital for electroshock treatment three times a week for eight weeks. After finishing the course of treatment he was put on strong tranquillizers. (LR15-6)
AUTUMN 1959: LOU REED GOES TO COLLEGE.
Reed attended the Bronx campus of New York University while also going to the Payne Whitney psychiatric clinic for an intensive course of post-shock treatments. (LR28)
In the Spring of 1960, after completing his Payne Whitney sessions (although still on tranquillizers), he transferred to Syracuse University where he first formed a folk band, and then in his sophomore year, a rock and roll band called LA and the Eldorados. (LR50)
At Syracuse, he also met guitarist Sterling Morrison. Although Sterling was not a student he hung out on campus, visiting his student friend Jim Tucker and sitting in on some classes. (LR28/33-4)
Sterling Morrison: "He [Lou] tried the gay scene at Syracuse, which was really repellent. He had a little fling with some really flabby, effete fairy. I said 'Oh, man, Lou, if you want to do it, I hate to say it but let's find somebody attractive at least.'" (LR48)
LATE 1959: ANDY WARHOL BUYS A TOWNHOUSE.
Andy Warhol moved into his new home with his mother on the northwest corner of Lexington Avenue and Eighty-ninth Street on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. (DD26)
Andy's mother was, in effect, one of his early assistants. In addition to using her handwriting (and retaining her quirky misspellings) in his self-published portfolios/books, he also used her writing on album covers.
Nathan Gluck:
"She [Andy Warhol's mother] also did a record album, and she would misspell words and start over again, and the writing would start small and get bigger and slant upwards. And finally, Andy told her just to do it; then he cut the whole thing apart and pasted it up so that it made some bit of sense. She got an Art Directors Club award for it. The award didn't have 'Julia Warhola' engraved on it. It read 'Andy Warhol's mother'!" (UW32)
ca. 1960: MICKEY RUSKIN OPENS HIS FIRST BAR. (IAP32)
Ruskin's first bar/cafe was the 10th Street Coffehouse. Later he would open the Ninth Circle and, then, Max's Kansas City.
JULY/AUGUST 1960:ANDY WARHOL MEETS HENRY GELDZAHLER. (PS305)
Henry Geldzahler:
"[Florine Stettheimer] was a wealthy society lady, ah, in New York in the 1910s, '20's and '30s, who was a very good primitive painter... And the Metropolitan has her four major pictures of cathedrals... And the day I met Andy, I mentioned these were pictures that would interest him, and he said that he would like to come and to see them, and the next day he came to the Met, and I showed them to him... He was still doing commercial work for the first couple of years that I knew him... There is a story that in the early '50s that he he was the weatherman in the early morning news, and he had to get there at five o'clock because his hand was so colorless that they had to make-up his hand, and they would say, 'It's going to rain today' and he would paint the clouds and the rain... That was one of his earliest commercial jobs... And I had the delicious pleasure... around 1962... Andy brought a pile of drawings over to my house, and, then, we looked through them, and I tore up about 80 percent of them as just not being worthy of going out into the world... Leo Castelli turned his work down. Robert Alcott turned his work down, and Janis turned his work down, and finally, Eleanor Ward gave him a show..." (PS305-7)
SEPT. 1960: JONAS MEKAS CALLS THE FIRST MEETING OF THE NEW AMERICAN CINEMA GROUP.
The distribution project that arose from this meeting eventually evolved into the Film-makers' Cooperative, which showed many of Warhol's early films. The premiere of Warhol's first film, SLEEP, took place on January 17, 1964. It was a benefit screening for the Film-makers' Cooperative at the cinema that the Cooperative was using at the time for their screenings - the Gramercy Arts Theater. The premiere was attended by only nine people - two of whom left during the first hour. (FAW 10-1)
Tessa Hughes-Freeland (from Naked Lens: Beat Cinema by Jack Sargeant):
"As champion of the New American Cinema, in September 1960, Jonas Mekas called the first meeting of the New American Cinema Group. The most significant development to come out of that meeting was the sixth point of the manifesto, which stated the need for their own co-operative distribution centre. Initially Emile de Antonio tried to distribute a number of of 35mm features and shorts. In 1962 Mekas took over the distribution project... This distribution project transformed into the Film-makers' Cooperative... For the previous two years he [Mekas] had been running one-man shows of avant-garde filmmakers as well as open screenings at the Charles Theatre on Avenue B... These Film-makers' Showcases, which later became The Film-makers' Cinematheque, continued at the Charles Theatre until 1963. Mekas then organized midnight screenings on Saturdays at The Bleecker Street Cinema, then moved to the Gramercy Arts Theatre. They were thrown out of there eventually in 1964 for showing unlicensed and obscene films... From 1965 to 1968 Film-makers' Cinematheque continued to move around, a few months here and a few months there. In 1968 Mekas became the film curator at the Jewish Museum. In 1969 he bean to work with P. Adams Sitney and Jerome Hill on the foundation of the Anthology Film Archives at 425 Lafayette Street, of which he became the official director when it opened in December 1970." (NL114-5)
1961: ONDINE HANGS OUT AT THE SAN REMO.
The San Remo was a coffee shop (cafe) on the corner of MacDougal and Bleecker streets. It was frequented by many of the people who would later become Factory regulars including Ondine, Rotten Rita, Silver George and Freddy Herko. (POP55)
1961: ANDY WARHOL GOES TO UNDERGROUND SCREENINGS.
Andy went to see underground films at the Charles Theater on Avenue B and 12th Street run by Jonas Mekas. When it closed in 1962 he continued to go to screenings at Jonas Mekas' Film-Makers' Co-op on Park Avenue South. (POP49) Later, Andy would bring films in for him to screen, such as the Andy Warhol Serial - the original Kiss films starring Naomi Levine.
ca. 1961/62: ONDINE MEETS ANDY WARHOL AT AN ORGY. (PS423)
Ondine:
"I was at an orgy, and he [Warhol] was, ah, this great presence in the back of the room. And this orgy was run by a friend of mine, and, so, I said to this person, 'Would you please mind throwing that thing [Warhol] out of here?' And that thing was thrown out of there, and when he came up to me the next time, he said to me, 'Nobody has ever thrown me out of a party.' He said, 'You know? don't you know who I am?' And I said, 'Well, I don't give a good flying fuck who you are. You just weren't there. You weren't involved...'" (PS423)
OCTOBER 29, 1961: FREDDY HERKO PERFORMS IN FIRST PROGRAM OF THE NEW YORK POETS THEATRE.
Diane di Prima:"That October, around the same time that LeRoi and I were busted for The Floating Bear [an underground newsletter published by di Prima and LeRoi Jones]; Alan Marlowe had located the first home for the New York Poets Theatre. It was a large, dark, back room with a stage and little else, located on East Tenth Street, in what was then becoming the downtown art gallery scene. The place had been dubbed the Off-Bowery Theatre by its optimistic owners, who ran an 'avant-garde' gallery in front... It had nothing going for it, in fact, except the location (people were coming to East Tenth Street to go to art shows, and therefore might come to a theatre, we reasoned) and the price - it was very cheap.
... We went right ahead with the program as we had planned it: The Discontent of the Russian Prince, a play I had written about two years earlier, about getting up in the morning, in which FREDDIE HERKO and I were the sole performers; The Pillow, a beautiful early verse play by Michael McClure (another of his plays from this same series, The Feast, written in 'beast language,' was published in Floating Bear #14, that same eventful October); and LeRoi's play from The System of Dante's Hell." (DP276-7)
See: Andy Warhol, Diane di Prima, Freddy Herko, The New York Poets Theatre and the Judson Dance Theater .
NOVEMBER 1961: FIRST PERFORMANCES OF THE JUDSON POETS' THEATER.
The Judson Poets Theater was organized by Al Carmines, a graduate of the Union Theological Seminary, who had been hired in 1960 by the church pastor, Howard Moody (who had started the Judson Gallery in 1958), to oversee the church's arts program. (JD36) Later, in September 1963, ANDY WARHOL would design the stage layout for one of the Judson Poets Theater's productions - Asphodel, In Hell's Despite directed by SOAP OPERA co-director, JERRY BENJAMIN. (SB79) Warhol had previously designed sets for for a theater group called Theater 12 or the "12th Street Players" in the early 1950s.
A portrait of Andy Warhol described as
"probably at the Judson Church" in 1963.
(Photo credit: Billy Name/Steven Kasher Gallery)DECEMBER 1961: FREDDY HERKO APPEARS IN JAMES WARING'S PLAY AT NEW YORK POETS THEATRE.
Waring, who had been involved with The Living Theatre in the late 1950s (JT150), would later appear, with FREDDY HERKO (and BILLY NAME), in Warhol's film Haircut #1.
Diane di Prima:
"We did a second set of plays at the Off-Bowery in December: James Waring's NIghts at the Tango Palace; John Wieners' Still Life; and the fourth act of Robert Duncan's full-length work Faust Foutu... Jimmy's play about a dance palace derived most of its moments of grace from Freddie Herko playing a mute janitor, who knows but can't tell anything of what's going on..." (DP279)
1962: MICKEY RUSKIN OPENS THE NINTH CIRCLE IN NEW YORK. (IAP32)
EARLY 1962: ANDY WARHOL CREATES HIS FIRST SILKSCREENS.
According to The Warhol museum, Warhol first used silkscreening in early 1962 for his one-dollar and two-dollar bill paintings. (AWM28) According to Bob Colacello, the first silkscreen was of Troy Donahue -"followed in rapid succession by by Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando and the Mona Lisa". (BC28)
Gerard Malanga:
"He [Warhol] familiarizes me with how he's been working with silkscreens. A simple method, less complicated then when I was screening 30 yards of fabric for a textile firm four summers. The image - a portrait of Elizabeth Taylor, pink face, red lips, green eye shadow, painted in by hand with liquitex over a hand-painted silver background. The silkscreen is applied, laid down over the abstract color shapes that Andy remarks look like Alex Katz paintings. Black silkscreen paint squeegeed across the entire screen in one motion and then pulled back again. The paint seeps through the tiny openings in the screen. The complete image is registered at last. A painting, simply titled Liz, 1963 (40 x 40 inches), the first of hundreds of paintings we were to silkscreen together." (GMW105)
1962: LOU REED WRITES I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR.
While still a student a Syracuse University, Reed wrote I'll Be Your Mirror, a song about his girlfriend Shelly Albin. (LR42) He also befriended alcoholic writer Delmore Schwartz who was teaching at the University. (LR58)
Lou Reed: "Delmore was my teacher, my friend, and the man who changed my life. He was the smartest, funniest, saddest person I had ever met. I studied with him in the [Orange] bar... We drank together starting at eight in the morning. He was an awesome person. he'd order five drinks at once." (LR60-1)
1962: HOLLY WOODLAWN GETS ADOPTED.
Holly’s stepfather, now the maitre’d at the Fountainbleu officially adopted her. When Holly and her gay friends were caught “borrowing” her father's new blue ‘62 convertible Chevy while he was working nights, Holly admitted to her stepfather that s/he was gay. S/he was sent to Youth Hall, a correctional facility. (HW44)
MAY 1962: BILLY NAME DOES LIGHTS FOR THE LIVING THEATER.
BILLY NAME did the lights for an evening of performance organized by Philip Corner and Dick Higgins which included Higgins' Two Generous Women, three renditions of La Monte Young's Poem for Chairs, Tables, Benches, Philip Krumm's Lecture on Where to Go From Here, with sound by Corner, and Carolee Schneemann's An Environment for Sounds and Motions.
JUNE 25, 1962: HOLLY WOODLAWN RUNS AWAY.
Holly ran away to New York with a friend named Russell. She financed the trip by selling an aquamarine bracelet for $27.00 that she stole from her mother. Russell stole some money from his grandmother for the trip. The cash enabled them to buy two one way bus tickets to New Brunswick, Georgia and they hitchhiked the rest of the way, a trip which was immortalized later by Lou Reed in his song, Walk on the Wild Side:
"Holly came from Miami, F-L-A,
hitchhiked her way across the U.S.A.,
Plucked her eyebrows on the way,
shaved her legs and then he was a she,
she says, Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side..."Holly arrived in New York at the age of fifteen. A trucker with whom they have hitched a ride dropped her and Russell off in the middle of Times Square. They stayed at a cheap hotel while looking for jobs. Unable to find anything after three weeks Russell returned home. Holly met some hustlers in Bryant Park, moved in with them and tried prostitution but wasn't very good at it. She moved out, slept in doorways, subways, all-night movie theatres - wherever she could. (HW54-56)
JULY 6, 1962: FREDDY HERKO DANCES IN THE FIRST "CONCERT OF DANCE" AT THE JUDSON DANCE THEATER.
The dances in the first Concert of Dance emphasized Cagean notions of chance and randomness - a John Cage composition, Cartridge Music, was used for two different dances performed either simultaneously or over lapping each other. The dances that Herko performed in included Instant Chance and a solo performance to music by Eric Satie - Once or Twice a Week I Put on Sneakers to Go Uptown. The evening also included a film, Overture, with the makers of the film listed as W.C. Fields, Eugene Freeman [sic], John Herbert McDowell, Mark Sagers, and Elaine Summers. Summers had learned filmmaking from Gene Friedman who was also a friend of McDowell. Friedman encouraged in camera editing - a technique that Warhol would also employ.
See The First Concert of Dance at the Judson Dance Theater.
JULY 9 - AUGUST 4, 1962: ANDY WARHOL HAS HIS FIRST SOLO POP EXHIBITION.
The exhibition at Irving Blum's Ferus Gallery on La Cienega Blvd. in West Hollywood featured Warhol's series of 32 different canvases of Campbell's soup cans. A nearby supermarket piled up real Campbell's soup cans in their window, advertising them as "the real thing for only 29 cents a can."
Six of the Warhol paintings were sold for $100 each. The buyers included Don Factor, Betty Astor, Ed Jans and Bob Brown. Blum ended up getting the buyers to relinquish their ownership so that he could get keep the set together, and bought the entire series for $1,000.00 from Warhol, paying him $100.00 a month. (PS219) A year after Warhol died, Irving Blum was offered $10 million for the paintings. They are currently on permanent loan to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (BC27)
On May 19, 1964, the Product Marketing Manager for the Campbell's Soup Company wrote to Warhol, telling him that they admired his work and sent him a couple of cases of their tomato soup. Warhol asked Billy Name [Billy Linich] to write back, asking them if they would like to purchase a box sculpture, but the company declined the offer.
JULY 27, 1962: THE INAUGURAL PRODUCTION OF THE LA MAMA EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE CLUB OPENS.
La Mama was founded by ELLEN STEWART in the basement of 321 East 9th Street in Manhattan. (MA) Stewart's blog can be found at: http://lamamaetc.blogspot.com (accessed February 2009).
The inaugural play at La Mama was Andy Milligan's production of Tennesse Williams' One Arm which had previously played the Caffe Cino.
Warhol's play Pork premiered at La Mama on May 5, 1971. JACKIE CURTIS' play Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit (directed by John Vaccaro) played there the previous year, opening on February 24, 1970, with another Curtis play, Femme Fatale, opening on May 6, 1970. (http://www.lamama.org/archives/year_lists/1970page.htm)
Other productions at La Mama which featured some of Warhol's stars included Cockstrong (with JACKIE CURTIS) in 1969 and 1970 and Vain Victory: The Vicissitudes of the Damned (directed by JACKIE CURTIS - with a changing cast that included CANDY DARLING, HOLLY WOODLAWN, ONDINE and MARIO MONTEZ, with music by Lou Reed) in 1971.
c. Fall 1962: CHARLES HENRI FORD TAKES ANDY WARHOL TO A PARTY.
The party was at the Brooklyn Heights apartment of MARIE MENKEN and WILLIARD MAAS at the foot of Montague Street.
Warhol had met the surrealist poet CHARLES HENRI FORD at a party given by Ford's sister, RUTH FORD (an actress who was married to ZACHERY SCOTT), at Ruth's apartment in the Dakota on Central Park West and 72nd Street. Warhol went to underground film screenings with Charles Henri. (POP25)
MARIE MENKEN and WILLARD MAAS were underground filmmakers and poets. According to Gerard Malanga, Willard Maas was the person giving the blow job off-screen in Warhol's film, BLOW JOB which Warhol would film in 1963. Marie Menken would later appear in numerous Warhol films, including THE CHELSEA GIRLS and THE LIFE OF JUANITA CASTRO. Menken would also make a film of a day in the life of Andy Warhol in 1965.
Menken's stormy, alcoholic-fueled relationship with Maas may have been the inspiration for Edward Albee's play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf, although it has also been rumoured that the play was based on Albee's own alcoholic-fueled homosexual relationship with Bill Flanagan. Although a friend of Bill Flanagan's thought that Martha sounded like Flanagan, Flanagan denied the "homosexual interpretation" of the play.
Bill Flanagan [Edward Albee's lover]:
"With Virginia Woolf all hell broke loose, especially after people began to think that the two characters of Martha and George were really myself and Edward. There was a friend of mine - this boy in Detroit - who had never even met Edward. And he came to New York and he saw the play, and was absolutely horrified with disbelief at the character of Martha because it sounded to him like the way I talked and behaved... The whole question of the central characters really being two men is really not germane. Certainly, nobody has ever demonstrated it from the text. Unless you can demonstrate that indeed this is true, there is no proof... I honestly believe that if the rumor mills had not started churning, everybody would have gone to that play and taken it at face value. The homosexual interpretation only came along later." (PO115-6)
According to Gerard Malanga, Gerard was introduced to Warhol at a party given by Menken and Maas in Fall 1962 - although he has also indicated in his writings that he was introduced to Warhol on June 9, 1963 by Charles Henri Ford at a poetry reading, which led to him working for Warhol beginning on June 11, 1963. (GMW102/139)
NOVEMBER 6 - 24, 1962: ANDY WARHOL HAS HIS FIRST SOLO POP EXHIBITION IN A NEW YORK GALLERY.
The exhibition took place at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery on 33 East 74th Street. Ward's gallery was named the Stable because it had previously been located at an old livery stable on West 58th Street. She had moved the gallery to East 74th Street after the original building was razed in 1960 to make way for a high rise apartment building. (http://www.aaa.si.edu/findaids/stabgall/stabgall.htm#a2).
Warhol's work on exhibit included the Marilyn diptych, 100 Soup Cans, 100 Coke Bottles and 100 Dollar Bills. (L&D155)
During the exhibit, JOHN GIORNO met Warhol at the Gallery for the first time and in 1963 became the star of Warhol's first film, SLEEP.
