1964
(scroll down or click on year above)
(codes
in parentheses refer to references)
Andy Warhol's first Factory is decorated by Billy Name. Gerard Malanga reads poetry. Lou Reed writes Heroin. Andy Warhol gets raided. Andy Warhol exhibits Brillo Boxes at the Stable Gallery. Andy Warhol exhibits Most Wanted Men at the World's Fair. Lou Reed graduates. Edie Sedgwick moves to New York. Joe Dallesandro is arrested. Freddy Herko commits suicide. Andy Warhol exhibits at the Leo Castelli Gallery. Dorothy Podber shoots Andy Warhol's Marilyns. Holly Woodlawn models. Cady Darling works for investment firm. Andy Warhol films Blow Job, Soap Opera, Batman Dracula, Couch, Empire, Taylor Mead's Ass and Harlot.
JANUARY 17, 1964: WARHOL SHOOTS FOOTAGE FOR THE THIRTEEN MOST BEAUTIFUL BOYS
Winthrop Kellogg Edey (Kelly Edey) noted in his diary entry for January 17, 1964, that "This afternoon Andy Warhol made a movie here, a series of portraits of a number of beautiful boys, including Harold Talbot and Denis Deegan and also me." (AD13) Edey came from a wealthy New York family and was known for his collection of clocks which he willed to the Frick museum. Part of his collection is still on public display there. (GBA)
The "13" in the title of The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys was most likely borrowed from a New York City Police brochure of "The Thirteen Most Wanted" which was also the inspiration for Warhol's mural Thirteen Most Wanted Men at the 1964 World's Fair in Queens. (AD13)
These film portraits were some of the earliest examples of Warhol's Screen Test series. It is interesting to note that they were filmed in Edey's apartment prior to Warhol's move to his silver Factory where most, but not all, of the other Screen Tests were made. Although Gerard Malanga has maintained that the Screen Test series started as a result of him asking Warhol to shoot a headshot of Gerard to use to publicize Malanga's poetry readings, a more likely inspiration for the Screen Tests was the photobooth photography that Warhol started doing in the late spring of 1963. (AD13)
Sometimes Warhol's photobooth photographs would be the basis of a silkscreened portrait. From approximately 1970, when Warhol bought a Polaroid Big Shot camera (AWP157), he would use Polaroid photographs to get an image for his commissioned portraits, but during the sixties he used a photobooth. When Holly Soloman posed for her photobooth pictures in 1966, which were used to create her silkscreen portrait, she recalled that the time spent in the booth was "pretty boring" so she "started to really act in them." (AWP94). The end result was that the photobooth pictures, taken with a still camera, were often more animated than the Screen Tests, taken with a movie camera, where subjects were told to remain as still as possible. In both instances, Warhol removed himself from the process - a type of "automatic" photography/filmmaking reminiscent of the Dada concept of "automatic" writing or painting.
JANUARY 28, 1964: ANDY WARHOL STARTS THE FACTORY. (GMW127)
The first Factory was located on the fifth floor of 231 East 47th Street - across the street from the YMCA and below an antiques place called Connoisseur’s Corner. According to one account given by Gerard Malanga, the first works of art created at the Factory were "a series of food boxes." (POP61/LD188/GMW34)
Gerard Malanga:
"Andy would arrive at the Factory, as it was now called, noon or thereabouts. We would work on and off until about 5:00 or 6:00 pm and then go out to party... The first works created at the Factory were a series of food boxes. Andy was fascinated by the shelves of foodstuffs in supermarkets and the repetitive, machine-like effect they created... He wanted to duplicate the effect but soon discovered that the cardboard surface was not feasible. I located a carpenter in the East Sixties, and Andy hired him out to build plywood boxes that we would then paint and screen, to create the illusion of the real thing... The brand names chosen consisted of two versions of Brillo, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Kellogg's Corn Flakes, and Mott's Apple Sauce. We obtained cardboard-box samples of each of these products wither from a grocery store or, in the case of the Brillo box, directly from the manufacturer. I'd deliver the cardboard box, at this point flattened out, to the silkscreen manufacurer Harry Golden, who made all of Andy's screens... We were able to get at least two sides done in a day. A hundred or more were produced in a period of a month. They were literally three-dimensional photographs of the actual products." (GMW34)
1964: ANDY WARHOL DESCRIBES HIS 1964 WORK SCHEDULE.
Andy Warhol on 1964: “We usually worked till around midnight, and then we’d go down to the Village, to places like the Cafe Figaro, the Hip Bagel, the Kettle of Fish, the Gaslight, the Cafe Bizarre, or the Cino. I’d get home around four in the morning, make a few phone calls, usually talk to HENRY GELDZAHLER for an hour or so, and then when it started to get light I’d take a Seconal, sleep for a couple of hours and be back at the Factory by early afternoon.” (POP73)
Henry Geldzahler and Billy Name (ca. 1965/6)
(photo: Stephen Shore)1964: BILLY NAME MOVES TO THE FACTORY.
Billy Name and Andy Warhol's relationship changed from "awkward attempts to be lovers to being conspirators in the fine arts" (B). Billy moved into the Factory and created the "silver look" as an "installation for Andy to have a fabulous place to work in." (B)
Billy was inspired to paint the Factory silver by the seven year repainting of the Mid-Hudson-Bridge which was near his family home in Poughkeepsie, New York. The paint used for the bridge was aluminum industrial paint - the same that Billy later used for the Factory. (BN28)
EARLY 1964: ANDY WARHOL FILMS BLOW JOB.
Warhol originally asked CHARLES RYDELL to star in BLOW JOB. In the account given in Popism Charles had been at Andy’s screening of TARZAN earlier in the year in a suite at the Algonquin Hotel. Andy had seen him in the play, Lady in the Dark, with KITTY CARLISLE at the Bucks County Playhouse, and had asked Charles if he would be in a movie. (POP46)
According to Gerard Malanga, the off-screen person giving the blow job was poet WILLARD MAAS who was married to MARIE MENKEN (The Chelsea Girls). (GML) Willard Maas was a professor of English at Wagner College in Staten Island and had secured a fellowship for Gerard Malanga so that he could attend the College beginning in October 1961. (GMW23)
Although some Warhol scholars have written that EDWARD ALBEE, who was a friend of Maas and Menken, based his play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf on the alcoholic fueled relationship of Menken and Maas, Albee's biographer thought the play was based more on Albee's own alcoholic relationship with his boyfriend, Bill Flanagan.
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 taked 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)
The first public screening of BLOW JOB took place at Ruth Kligman's Washington Square Gallery in March 1964.
to filmography
Gerard Malanga and
Willard Maas at
Jacob Riis Park beach,
Queens, N.Y. Summer 1960JAN/FEB 1964: ANDY HAS HIS FIRST EUROPEAN SHOW.
The exhibition was at the Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris. (ILEANA SONNABEND was the ex-wife of art dealer LEO CASTELLI.) (BC28)
FEB. 5, 1964: GERARD MALANGA READS POETRY AT LE METRO. (ATF)
Flyer for Gerard Malanga at Le Metro
The back of the flyer had comments by W.H. Auden,
Richard Eberhart, Howard Hemerow, James Laughlin,
Howard Moss, Barbara Guest, Willard Maas, William Meredith,
Gerrit Lansing and Hugh Corbet1964: LOU REED WRITES WAITING FOR MY MAN AND HEROIN. (LR71)
Reed wrote both songs while still a senior at college.
1964: NICO SINGS.
Nico auditioned as a singer at the Blue Angel in New York. She got the job even though she fainted after the audition. (UT33)
MARCH 1964: WARHOL GETS RAIDED.
Warhol's three minute film, ANDY WARHOL FILMS JACK SMITH FILMING NORMAL LOVE was screened in New York with Genet's Un Chant d'Amour. The screening was raided by New York police and both films were confiscated. The Warhol film was never returned and apparently "disappeared for good". (DB175)
APR. 21 - MAY 9, 1964: ANDY HAS HIS FIRST SCULPTURE SHOW.
The exhibition, at Eleanor Ward's Stable Gallery, was titled The Personality of The Artist (GMW148) and included the Brillo boxes, Heinz Tomato Ketchup cases, Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Mott's Apple Sauce. There was a long line of people waiting to get into the gallery which was his last show at the Stable. A few weeks later, Warhol left ELEANOR WARD for LEO CASTELLI. (BC28) The night after the opening, Robert and ETHEL SCULL hosted a part in Warhol's honor at the Factory. (GMW148)
Gerard Malanga:
"On a cold, blistery day in early December, 1963, I found my way to a stepdown storefront at 409 East 70th Street between First & York Avenues. The Havlicek Woodworking Company, Inc... Mr. Havlicek... a burley guy in his midforties... took my order and gave me a smile: 'Several hundred boxes please!' Boxes cut from pine and cut to size, fitted together with tiny wood nails. 17 x 17 x 14 inches, to be exact was one such size, I recall...
A few days after the move to our [Gerard Malanga and Andy Warhol] workspace, January 28th, a truckload of wood boxes arrive, individually wrapped and taped in clear plastic sheeting. And so would begin the arduous task of taping the floor with rolls of brown paper and setting out each box in a gridlike pattern of eight rows lengthwise... Billy Name and I would take turns painting with Liquitex all six sides of each box - which numbered nearly 80 - the Campbell's tomato juice for starters, by turning each box around on its side. We waited until the paint dried. Andy and I repeated this process silkscreening all five sides again down the line. The sixth side - the bottom side - remained blank... Completing the work took nearly six weeks, from early February well into mid-April." (GMW147-8)
SPRING 1964: MOST WANTED MEN AT THE WORLD'S FAIR.
Andy Warhol's Thirteen Most Wanted Men is displayed on the side of the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 Worlds Fair in Flushing Meadow.
The architect who designed the Pavilion was Philip Johnson. He invited various artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, John Chamberlain and Andy Warhol to create art for the exterior of the building. (DB181/4)
However, there were objections to Warhol's work from government officials. On April 16, Philip Johnson told Warhol that he had 24 hours to replace or remove the "most wanted men" mural as the governor thought it might be insulting to his Italian constituents because most of the "wanted men" were Italians. (LD198)
Warhol blamed Robert Moses, the city's planner and president of the 1964-65 World's Fair. Warhol proceeded to silkscreen twenty-five identical portraits "of a ferociously smiling Moses" to use as a substitute for the "most wanted men". Philip Johnson rejected the idea, not wishing to offend the festival's president.
Eventually, the "most wanted men" panels remained in place but were covered with a coat of silver paint. (DB181-4)
Although Warhol's mural is often referred to as the Thirteen Most Wanted Men, he referred to it as the Ten Most Wanted Men in his book, Popism.
Andy Warhol with Philip Johnson at Johnson's
Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut (1964)
(photo: David McCabe)Andy Warhol (via Pat Hackett in Popism):
"The World's Fair was out in Flushing Meadow that summer with my mural of the Ten Most Wanted Men on the outside of the building that Philip Johnson designed. Philip gave me the assignment, but because of some political thing I never understood, the officials had it whitewashed out. A bunch of us went out to Flushing Meadow to have a look at it, but by the time we got there you could only see the images faintly coming through the paint they'd just put over them.
In one way I was glad the mural was gone: now I wouldn't have to feel responsible if one of the criminals ever got turned in to t he FBI because someone had recognized him from my pictures... But since I had the Ten Most Wanted screens already made up, I decided to go ahead and do paintings of them anyway. (The ten certainly weren't going to get caught from the kind of exposure they'd get at the Factory)." (POP71-2)
JUNE 1964: LOU REED GRADUATES FROM COLLEGE.
Reed graduated from the Syracuse College of Arts and Sciences with a bachelor of arts degree and moved back to his parent's home in Freeport. From September 1964 - February 1965 he worked for a bargain basement recording company, Pickwick International, in Long Island City, writing "made-to-order pop songs" for $25.00 a week and no rights to any of the material. (LR73/77)
At Pickwick Lou Reed met John Cale. Terry Phillips, one of the owners of Pickwick met John at a party and asked him to the studios with the possibility of being in a band with Lou to perform what Pickwick hoped would be a hit dance craze single, The Ostrich, which Reed had written for Pickwick. The single bombed, but Lou Reed and John continued their friendship.
Lou Reed:
"There were four of us literally locked in a room writing songs. They would say, 'Write ten California songs, ten Detroit songs,' they we'd go down into the studio for an hour or two and cut three or four albums really quickly which came in handy later because I knew my way around a studio, not well enough but I could work really fast. One day I was stoned and (after reading in Eugia Sheppard's column that ostrich feathers were big that season) just for laughs - I decided to make up a dance. So I said, 'You put your head on the floor and have somebody step on it!' It was years ahead of its time. And another thing called Sneaky Pete. And when they heard it they thought it could be a single, so we needed people who could be a group to out and promote it."
Lou was still living with his parents in Freeport when he first started working at Pickwick - but would spend a lot of time at John Cale's apartment at 56 Ludlow Street in Manhattan. Their mutual interests were music and heroin. When John Cale's flatmate moved out, Lou moved in. (LR81-5) Their neighbor was Angus MacLise, a Scotsman who often played drums in La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music - who Cale also worked with. It was Angus who introduced Lou to methamphetamine hydrochloride ("speed").
Lou Reed (from a tape made by Nat Finkelstein at the Factory in Autumn 1966):
"We were playing together a long time ago, in a $30-a-month apartment and we really didn't have any money, and we used to eat oatmeal all day and all night and give blood... or pose for these nickel or 15 cent tabloids they have every week. And when I posed for them, my picture came out and it said I was a sex maniac killer that had killed 14 children and tape recorded it and played it in a barn in Kansas at midnight. And when John's picture came out in the paper, it said he had killed his lover because his lover was going to marry his sister, and he didn't want his sister to marry a fag.
And then we decided that since we were playing all the time anyway, why not try to get paid for it, so we ended up at a terrible coffee house working six sets a night, seven nights a week, $5 a man a night, and that lasted a week-and-a-half and we were fired, because they hated our music so much. And then we met Andy. And we're now able to play the kind of stuff we really like to play...." (UT91-2)
SUMMER 1964: EDIE SEDGWICK MOVES TO NEW YORK.
Eddie arrived in New York in her gray Mercedes Benz in the company of GORDON BALDWIN and moved into her bedridden grandmother’s fourteen room apartment on Park Avenue and 71st Street. She modeled for a teen magazine and dined at L’Aventura, spending her nights partying at the “in spots - Harlow, Shepheard’s, Ondine, Arthur or Steve Paul’s The Scene.” (UV205)
1964: BABY JANE HOLZER APPEARS IN HER FIRST WARHOL MOVIE.
Baby Jane's first Warhol film was SOAP OPERA - filmed over P.J. Clarke’s, the Third Avenue pub. It was subtitled THE LESTER PERSKY STORY in tribute to Andy's friend who would eventually became a movie producer. Andy spliced parts of the commercials that Lester made into segments of SOAP OPERA. (POP60) Jane Holzer was “the beautiful young Park Avenue socialite wife of a wealthy businessman.” (L&D194)
JULY 1964: ANDY WARHOL FILMS BATMAN DRACULA.
Andy Warhol's film, Batman Dracula, was a collaboration with Jack Smith which was never finished. (CB) It featured GREGORY BATTCOCK, DAVID BOURDON, RUFUS COLLINS, BABY JANE HOLZER, MARK LANCASTER, GERARD MALANGA, IVY NICHOLSON, MARIO MONTEZ, ONDINE, JACK SMITH and NAOMI LEVINE who Andy called his "first female superstar." (POP32) Wynne Chamberlain and Gerard Malanga had introduced Naomi Levine to Andy Warhol at a performance at the Living Theater on Sixth Avenue and 14th Street, and they they all went to a black-tie opening at the Museum of Modern Art. Naomi was very “film studentish” - working at F.A.O. Schwarz, the toy store on Fifth Avenue, but also making films. One of her films was confiscated and destroyed by a New York lab because of the nudity in it. (POP43/44)
to filmography
SUMMER 1964: MARK LANCASTER AND GERARD MALANGA STAR IN A KISS MOVIE. (POP71)
Although Stephen Koch's filmography which was based on Jonas Mekas' filmography dates the Kiss films Nov/Dec 1963, Warhol noted in Popism that they were still shooting KISS films in the summer of 1964.
JULY 1964: ANDY WARHOL FILMS COUCH.
Andy Warhol shooting a scene for Couch
with Gerard Malanga behind the cameraJULY 25 - 26, 1964: ANDY WARHOL FILMS EMPIRE.
Warhol used an Auricon camera after seeing JONAS MEKAS’ The Brig which was filmed with an Auricon movie camera.
The Auricon was often used by journalists to shoot live events because the camera recorded sound directly on the film - a "single system" camera. The sound quality was primitive but it had sync sound.
Jonas Mekas: "He [Warhol] decided to shoot Empire, which was mostly John Palmer's idea. And since it needed long takes - it's a long film - he asked me what he should use, and I said, 'Why don't you use - you know - we can use Auricon. That's the cheapest. I already had rented [one]. We can, you know, just take it.' And he [Warhol] was interested because he wanted to get used to it because he wanted, he said, he wanted to go and shoot sound films with it. You know - in the way of The Brig. And since I knew how to operate it, I became the camera man for it." (PS416)
JOHN PALMER who Mekas credited with the idea for Empire would later co-direct/write the non-Warhol film Ciao Manhattan, starring Edie Sedgwick.
Warhol and entourage shot the Empire State building from an office in the Time-Life Building that belonged to HENRY ROMNEY who was also trying to buy the rights to the book A Clockwork Orange so that Andy could film it using NUREYEV, MICK JAGGER and BABY JANE HOLZER. (POP80) Warhol would later make his own version of A Clockwork Orange - VINYL starring Gerard Malanga and Edie Sedgwick.
Gerard Malanga walks past the projector
during the Factory preview of Empire (1964)
(photo: David McCabe)1964: JOE DALLESANDRO IS ARRESTED.
At the age of sixteen, Joe Dallesandro, living with his father in Queens, stole a car (one of many) and crashed through the toll gate at Holland Tunnel, pursued by six squad cars. The cops stopped the speeding vehicle with a road block. The officers came out of their cars with their weapons drawn.
When Joe opened the door and started to step out of the stolen car, one of the officers opened fire, the others followed, and Joe retreated back into the car which he then proceeded to drive straight at them. One of their bullets wounded him above the kneecap in his right leg. He managed to escape the cops, sinking the car in the Hudson River, and stole another car which he drove back to his father’s house.
His father took him to the hospital and he was arrested and charged as a juvenile. He was sentenced to four months in the Camp Cass Rehabilitation Center for Boys in the Catskills, where (according to him) he tattooed himself with the Little Joe tattoo.
He escaped from the center, returned to his father and received a “dishonorable parole” from the authorities stating that if he commited another crime before turning 21, he would have to finish the time he still had to do at Camp Cass, plus time for the new crime.
1964: JOE DALLESANDRO GOES TO MEXICO.
Joe and a friend named Stanley ended up going to Mexico (Ciudad Juarez) with money Joe stole from the safe of an RKO theatre in Brooklyn managed by a gay friend. In Mexico, Joe Dallesandro worked as a busboy and dishwasher in exchange for breakfast, lunch and cigarettes. (JOE16-7)
FALL 1964: EDIE SEDGWICK MOVES TO HER OWN APARTMENT.
Edie's apartment was on E. 63rd Street between Fifth and Madison. She hired a friend from Cambridge, TOM GOODWIN, as a chauffeur for $100 a week. After he crashed Edie's car in front of the Seagram Building, she leased a limo from Bermuda Service, tipping the driver handsomely, but rarely paying her bills. (UV205)
1964: ANDY WARHOL THROWS A SURPRISE PARTY
Warhol hosted a surprise party at the Factory to celebrate the 1963 marriage of Billy Klüver and Olga Adorno. Klüver collaborated with Warhol on the Silver Clouds. Warhol filmed two Screen Tests of Olga - one of which was included in The Thirteen Most Beautiful Women. Olga was an artist and performer who appeared in early Happenings. She also appeared in Allan Kaprow's presentation of Stockhausen's Originale at the Judson in NY and had her leg cast in plaster by Jasper Johns for Watchman (1964) (AD110)
SEPTEMBER 1964: ANDY FILMS TAYLOR'S ASS.
Warhol filmed Taylor Mead's ass and appropriately called the 70 minute film, TAYLOR MEAD’S ASS (70mins/16 fps/black & white/silent). (UV157/SG145)
to filmography
Andy Warhol shooting Taylor Mead
at the Factory on September 5, 1964
(photo: Fred W. McDarrah)OCTOBER 1, 1964: BABY JANE HOLZER APPEARS IN VOGUE
Jane's mane of big hair created a new fashion trend. (AD97)
OCTOBER 1964: THE ROLLING STONES HAVE A PARTY. (SO DOES BABY JANE.)
The party was arranged by NICKY HASLAM and friends at JERRY SCHATZBERG’s photography studio on Park Avenue South to generate publicity for THE ROLLING STONES who are in New York to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show and play at the Academy of Music on 14th Street. It was also JANE HOLZER’s 24th birthday and the event became a birthday party for her, with the Stones as the star guests. Jane had been modeling for Vogue magazine so TOM WOLF was sent to cover the event for the New York Herald Tribune Sunday magazine supplement. He wrote his Girl of the Year article about Jane which was included in his book Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby. (POP80/81) The article was originally published in the December 1964 issue of New York magazine.
OCTOBER 26, 1964: HOLLY WOODLAWN IS ALMOST DRAFTED.
Holly was called up for the draft on her eighteenth birthday during the Vietnam War. (S)he showed up at the draft board wearing “hot pants and sandals, with a dab of blush for color," and was excused from service when the doctor noticed that (s)he had breasts (as a result of hormone treatments). (HW83)
OCTOBER 27, 1964: FREDDY HERKO COMMITS SUICIDE.
Freddy Herko starred in THE 13 MOST BEAUTIFUL BOYS, ROLLERSKATE, and HAIRCUT NO. 1. He was a gifted dancer who studied at the American Ballet Theatre on a scholarship. He choreographed his own death by “dancing” out of a window on Cornelia Street. He had become heavily dependent on amphetamines ("speed"). (POP56-7/L&D208)
Back row left to right: John Daley (standing), Gerard Malanga, Michael Smith,
Ron Gronhord, Jack Champlin, Gregory Darnopuk, Ken Wollitz (obscured)
Middle row: Dale Joe, Ondine, Norman Billiard Balls, Billy Name,
Charles Stanley, Dorothy Podber
Front row: Binghamton Birdie, Freddy Herko (looking upward) and Dino
(photo: Michael Katz)NOV. 21 - DEC. 17, 1964: ANDY WARHOL'S FIRST SHOW AT CASTELLI'S.
Warhol's first exhibition at the gallery of his new dealer, Leo Castelli, included his first series of flower paintings - ranging in size from 10 ft. by 10 ft. to 6 inch squares. (UW39)
LATE 1964: DOROTHY PODBER SHOOTS MARILYN(S).
Dorothy Podber, “a woman in her thirties” (POP75) and “a veteran of the avant-garde of the mid-1950s... dressed in leather” (UV185/6) arrived at the Factory, walked over to four Marilyn paintings that Andy had stacked against a wall, took out a gun and shot a hole through the stack. The bullet passed through four of the paintings. Dorothy smiled at Andy and left in the freight elevator. (POP75) One of the paintings, the Shot Red Marilyn set a record at Christie's when it was auctioned in 1989 for $ 4.1 million - the highest price ever paid for a Warhol at the time. (DD206)
According to Victor Bockris, Dorothy Podber was a witch that hung out with the mole people, also known as the "amphetamine rapture group." Its members included Ondine, Freddy Herko, Rotten Rita, the Mayor, the Duchess, Mr. Clean, the Sugar Plum Fairy and other friends of Billy Name. According to the Bockris account of the shot Marilyns, Dorothy had arrived at the Factory with her dog, Carmen Miranda, and asked Andy Warhol if she could shoot the paintings. When he said he didn't mind, she put on a pair of white gloves and took a small German pistol out of her pocket which she used to shoot the paintings. After she left, Andy said to Ondine who was there at the time, "Your friend just blew a hole through...," to which Ondine replied "But you just said she could." In the Bockris account, four Marilyns were shot and then renamed, Shot Red Marilyn, Shot Light Blue Marilyn, Shot Orange Marilyn, and Shot Sage Blue Marilyn. (L&D200/1)
1964: HOLLY WOODLAWN GETS A JOB.
Holly worked at JC Penney’s on Seventh Avenue and Sixty-first Street as a (female) file clerk to pay off debts from using her boyfriend's credit card, after quitting a school where she was training to become a key punch operator. (HW87) She later got a job as a salesgirl in the Seventh Heaven Boutique at Saks Fifth Avenue and eventually did floor modeling for Saks, participating in private fashion shows for the more exclusive clients. Fed up with the negative comments from the clientele at Saks, she found jobs modeling at different fashion houses, including Morris Metzger’s where she modeled sportswear for buyers. Eventually, she left modeling completely to become a file clerk in the Hounds Department at the American Kennel Club. (HW90-91)
1964: CANDY DARLING GETS A JOB.
Candy worked as a (female) file clerk at an investment firm on Wall Street. She did so well that she got an advancement to front-office receptionist. She went through an intellectual phase carrying a copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace wherever she went. (HW88)
DEC. 7, 1964: ANDY WARHOL RECEIVES THE INDEPENDENT FILMMAKERS' AWARD.
The award, from Film Culture magazine, was for SLEEP, HAIRCUT, EAT, KISS and EMPIRE. (PS419/DB193)
The event took place at the New Yorker Theater on 89th Street and Broadway. The original idea was to show some of Warhol's films, and then present him with the award onstage. However, Warhol did not want a public presentation so Jonas Mekas filmed him at the Factory and then showed the film at the New Yorker Theater ceremony.
Mekas' 12 minute film was appropriately called Award Presentation to Andy Warhol and featured Warhol handing out fruit to a group that included Baby Jane Holzer, Gerard Malanga, Ivy Nicholson (and her young son), Naomi Levine, Gregory Battcock, Gregory Markopoulos and Kenneth King. Holzer got a banana which she peeled and ate in the film. (VWB3/4)
The independent filmmaker, Stan Brakhage, resigned from the Film-Makers' Co-op when Warhol won the award. In a letter to Jonas Mekas, he wrote, "I cannot in good conscience continue to accept the help of institutions which have come to propagate advertisements for forces which I recognize as among the most destructive in the world today: "dope", self-centred Love, unqualified Hatred, Nihilism, violence to self and society." (LD212)
DECEMBER 1964: ANDY WARHOL SHOOTS HARLOT.
Using the Auricon, Andy Warhol made HARLOT, his “first sound movie with sound.” The world premiere of the film took place on January 10, 1965 at the Cafe au Go Go on Bleecker Street. (AF247)
Warhol realized that if they were going to have sync sound, they would need a lot of dialogue. When he saw RONNIE TAVEL at a Wednesday night poetry reading at the Cafe Le Metro, Warhol was impressed by the reams of paper that Ronnie was surrounded by and invited him to the Factory to sit in a lounge chair off-camera and talk while they shot MARIO MONTEZ in Harlot.
Mario was in a lot of off-off-Broadway plays and “doing a lot of underground acting for JACK SMITH and RON RICE and JOSE RODRIGUEZ-SOLTERO and BILL VEHR,” in addition to his regular job working for the post office. (POP90-91)
After Harlot, RONNIE TAVEL continued to write scenarios for Andy, including THE LIFE OF JUANITA CASTRO, HORSE, VINYL, HEDY, and KITCHEN. (POP91) He also wrote a musical for Warhol called Piano but the project failed to materialize. (AWM56).
