ANDY WARHOL: “Everyone could sort of sense that the move downtown was more than just a change of place - for one thing, the Silver Period was definitely over, we were into white now. Also, the new Factory was definitely not a place where the old insanity could go on. Even though the ‘screening room’ had couches and a stereo and a TV and was clearly for lounging around, the big desks up front as you came in off the elevator gave people the hint that there was something going on in the way of business, that it wasn’t all just hanging around anymore. We spent more time than ever at Max’s, since it was so close and since Mickey still gave us credit for art. It was like an answering service for us - say we wanted to get in touch with a certain superstar, we’d just leave a message at Max’s for them to call the Factory or else just put out the word in the back room.”
THOMAS KIEDROWSKI: “The new sixth-floor space was bright, painted white in the front with a screening room painted dark brown in the back, with hardwood floors and other wood molding throughout. It was certainly nothing like the old space, which had tired concrete floors, crumbling silver walls, and dilapidated furniture. Nonetheless, the new space was still called the Factory (and sometimes, the White Factory). A stuffed Great Dane (which Warhol hinted had belonged to Cecil B. DeMille – though the staff could never match it to any photos of DeMille’s dogs) stood next to the entrance as their lone security measure.”
JEREMIAH NEWTON: "At night, Candy Darling danced at an after-hours club, The Tenth of Always, where she first espied Andy Warhol with Lou Reed. For Candy, her direct route to 'stardom' would be mapped out for her by Jackie Curtis, 'the world's youngest playwright,' who wrote the part of Nola Noonan for Candy. The comedy 'Glamour, Glory and Gold' was written in one hour while 15-year-old Curtis rode the LIRR."
MARY HARRON: "With her humor and vulnerability, Candy could be described as the Marilyn Monroe of drag queens but her persona was a synthesis of all movie blondes. Andy Warhol once described drag queens as 'ambulatory archives of movie star womanhood.' Candy studied the movies like a doctoral candidate, and crystallized all her favorite elements of traditional femme culture into a dream life of what it is to be a woman."
HOLLY WOODLAWN: “The new Factory was like the Hollywood star system with Viva… Warhol had a stable of people. I was the Hedy Lamarr – sultry. Candy was the Kim Novak. Jackie was the Joan Crawford – vicious and strong, and Joe D’Allesandro was the Clark Gable.”
BILLY NAME: “It’s not like a Hollywood studio where we select you. You came in, get paid to do your stuff. It’s like no, here is the Roman arena. You come in as the gladiator or the siren and conquer the whole thing if you can.”
ULTRA VIOLET: “Confused about who is what sex, I ask Holly, ‘Would you call yourself a transvestite?’ ‘Honey,’ she says, in her whispery, affected voice. ‘Call me anything, but call me.’”
LEEE BLACK CHILDERS: “Women didn’t look enough like women, in Andy’s mind. He wanted men who were completely over the top. Holly Woodlawn said, ‘We didn’t think we looked like women, we just wanted to get high and get laid.’ They would put on five pairs, at least, of false eyelashes at the same time so when they blinked their eyes, it was like awnings going up and down.”
JACKIE CURTIS: “I was the black sheep of the Warhol crowd. I was definitely not the darling. Candy was the darling. I was the rebel. I could tell from the way I was treated that I was certainly not a welcome addition. But I was one of their hottest properties at the time, and I knew it. And I knew what I could demand, just as Greta Garbo did when she was at M-G-M. Greta Garbo demanded the highest salary, and Louis B. Mayer said no, and she would just say, ‘I think I go home,’ turn on her heel, and leave. That’s what I did, and we got along very well after that.”
ANDY WARHOL: “Among other things, drag queens are living testimony to the way women used to want to be, the way some people still want them to be, and the way some women still actually want to be. Drags are ambulatory archives of ideal movie-star womanhood. They perform a documentary service, usually consecrating their lives to keeping the glittering alternative alive and available for (not-too-close) inspection.”
.jpg)
LEEE BLACK CHILDERS: “To me, Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn and the rest of them were the most glamorous people. They weren’t drag queens. They weren’t crazy. These were just people who lived twenty-four hours in dresses and old ladies’ shoes. Jackie didn’t wash, so she stunk to high heaven half the time. Holly was a complete speed freak. She didn’t really care whether other people knew she was a man or a woman or a Martian.”
CANDY DARLING: [Letter to Andy Warhol] "The idea of Holly being nominated for an Academy Award! That she should be given an award just for being the slob that she really is. Andy, I saw her the other day at the Cookery. She had a beard with eye makeup on and a ripped sweater and ripped stockings and she was shaking like a leaf. She takes heroin and amphetamine and picks her nose in public. She has the vocabulary of a 10 year old... Do you know she rushed over to Viva one day and said, 'Oh Viva everyone tells me I look just like you and that I talk and act just like you.' Viva told me and Geraldine that she was never so insulted in her life."
SUSAN BLOND: “The drag queens, especially Candy Darling, worked harder than any girl to look good. Any money that came to her was put to get electrolysis or whatever she would do to get more and more beautiful. She really studied what it was to be a woman.”
CYRINDA FOXE: “The person I was most taken with at the Factory was this tall woman in a black slip dress and high heels. She was the most beautiful and glamorous woman I had ever seen. Her name was Candy Darling, nee James Slattery, and she seemed perfect, wearing the most exquisite makeup, with platinum hair and milky-white skin. At first she didn’t like me being around. Here’s this young blond girl with platinum hair and black lipstick, and I was sort of copying her look. Later, Candy and I became really good friends, almost sisters.”
JACKIE CURTIS: “Working with Andy Warhol and being part of his inner circle was like walking into a desert of destroyed egos. It was like being in the cold room where they work with dangerous flammable chemicals, where everything is twenty degrees below zero. You’ve got to have incredible stamina and drive to hang out with them.”
BILLY NAME: “If you were capable of dealing with these people who were destroyers, taking away your façade and insisting on seeing your true self, if you were capable of projecting yourself as a star and taking care of yourself you could come and have your place. It was a reality but it was so crucial and critical everyone was constantly in a crisis, constantly being destroyed.”
ULTRA VIOLET: “The promise of stardom keeps the hungry actors and actresses alive and hoping. We’re not actors and actresses in the formal sense – none of us attends the Actors Studio or any other serious coaching class. We don’t bother with vocal lessons or dance instructions. Andy wouldn’t have us around if we were more professional – he’d have to pay us. All we’re acting out is our own destiny. The thing that unites us all at the Factory is our urgent, overwhelming need to be noticed. Fame is the goal, rebellion the style, narcissism the aura for the superstars, demi-stars, half-stars, bad-stars, no-stars,, men, women, cross-overs, over-sexed, de-sexed, switch-sexed, decadent, satanic denizens of Warhol’s new utopia.”
ANDY WARHOL: “The other day a call came collect from Ingrid Superstar. I didn’t take it. I mean, if she’s still calling collect… I couldn’t face hearing about her life – kids/no kids, married/not married.”
INTERNATIONAL VELVET: "I wanted as much attention as I could possibly get... But I had no idea how to handle the attention. I was very clumsy. I would drink too much, often. I had no idea what I was doing... I remember having a few twangs about the fact that Viva was becoming more important than I was. On the other hand I knew it was time for me to move on..."
TAYLOR MEAD: “Ingrid was murdered by a serial killer in Poughkeepsie fucking New York. She disappeared in Poughkeepsie, we didn’t know what happened for ten years. The Poughkeepsie police arrested a serial killer and found Ingrid Superstar’s purse and possessions in his apartment. They called Andy at the Factory and Brigid or somebody said, ‘Oh, I don’t think Andy would care to talk about that.’ This is one of his first superstars! Ingrid… a sweet, sweet lady.”
ANDY WARHOL: “The Post had a picture of Ingrid Superstar with a big story: ‘Warhol Star Vanishes.’ I thought she was going to be at the reunion Billy Name is setting up. Brigid never even told me they called about her. I would’ve cared that Ingrid was missing. People magazine had been calling because they’re doing a story on Ivy Nicholson and they wanted me to give a quote and for her I did tell Brigid to tell People we’d ‘never heard of her,’ but that was only because it was Ivy – Ingrid I would’ve cared about. It said she went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back.”
VIVA: “I always came in on the tail end of things. The dying gasp. I guess I give it the coup de grace.”
SAM GREEN: “I think all these people kept each other in check. Viva went too far. She was interested only in Viva and her career, and even if Andy was around, she was just as willing to go off to Hollywood if she got a chance. The other people didn’t like her. Most of the people around the Factory couldn’t stand Viva! She had this kind of burning ambition to get away from Andy and on her own.”
VIVA: “I had a violent disagreement with Andy over the fact that they would not give me a key to the Factory. I was practically living there! I was writing scripts and everything else. I was with Diane Arbus before she took those horrible pictures for New York magazine, and we had all her equipment and it was raining. We went to the Factory, the door was locked, none of the telephones worked in Union Square, so I turned and smashed in a telephone booth. I was so frustrated. I was calling up Andy’s answering service and leaving obscene messages, and they were hanging up on me. I hung up on Fred Hughes. I was still banging on the door and trying to get in, and I threw something at Paul Morrissey – an ashtray – and went back downstairs to fix the door. I was trying to unscrew the lock with a dime, and Andy showed up. I started yelling at him, and he said, ‘You’re crazy.’ I threw my pocketbook at him, and he threw it back at me, and I threw it at him. That’s the only reason I stopped going up there: no key.”
SAM GREEN: “I think Andy’s always had an all-encompassing desire to be well known, to be conspicuous. A lot of people have that. Ultra Violet has that; that’s her basic driving force. In fact, all of the people Andy has around him who are conspicuous, that is what they’re doing it for. They don’t want peace, they don’t want security, they don’t want money, they don’t want possessions. All they want is when they walk down the street for people to turn around and say, ‘Oh gosh, I saw her picture in Life last week.’ I mean, who cares? But they’re driven by that sort of thing. Some people can be married only to see what kind of write-up they’re going to get in the New York Times Magazine section.”
ULTRA VIOLET: “The Warhol world was a microcosm of the chaotic American macrocosm. Warhol was the black hole in space, the vortex that engulfed all, the still epicenter of the psychological storm. He wound the key to the motor of the merry go-round, as the kids on the outside spun faster and faster and, no longer able to hang on, flew off into space. When the storm was spent, when the merry go-round stopped, the dazed survivors had to grope their way back into an often hostile society. I am one of the lucky sixties people who escaped death, but I have been confronted with my day of reckoning, when my wicked ways had to be abandoned if I was to live at all, let alone in health and sanity.”
ULTRA VIOLET: “I try to figure out what makes Andy so attractive to me, to all of us, for we are drawn to him in an almost supernatural way. Part of his appeal is his uncanny ability to concentrate on you and convey the feeling that at that particular moment you are the only person in the entire universe. When he speaks to me, he makes me feel I am the one and only person he takes advice from, the only one who has the answers to his questions, the only one he wants to be with. Even after I become aware that he treats dozens, maybe hundreds of people with that same compelling immediacy, I still feel its power.”
HOLLY WOODLAWN: “There were a lot of beauties there, the new kids in town. And the next week they’re big stars. If they were cute little boys in a band, Danny Fields got them. And if they were cute little boys who belonged in movies, Andy got them, or Jackie Curtis. She was always asking the young boys, ‘Do you want to be in an Andy Warhol movie?’ There were also plenty of female beauties: Viva, with her dark eye makeup and frizzy hair; International Velvet was more of an Elizabeth Taylor type; classical beauty Nico, who was a heavy woman; Candy Darling, before I got my foot in the door. Then when ‘Trash’ came out I didn’t bother looking at anybody else.”
NICO: “Going to the new Factory was like going to a bank, but a bank without money – at least, I never saw any. What I found amusing was that they shared this building with the Communist Party.”
ONDINE: “When they moved to the new place, the only part of the Factory that was the old Factory was Billy’s back room. The old world was really up there. He had tapes, it was painted black and silver, he had his whole number going on. Outside was this… this… Juilliard.”
STEPHEN KOCH: “Billy Name was and is a mystic, a variety common among very druggy people in the 1960’s, except that his mysticism was of the longer standing and more seriously pursued. Inevitably Oriental (he is still part owner of a bookstore specializing in things called Orientalia), his mysticism by the time he left the Factory was primarily concerned with the works of Alice Bailey, who claims to be the spiritual amanuensis of a Tibetan sage who dictated to her books on Theosophy and Helena Blavatsky.”
MARY WORONOV: “A month ago Billy had buried himself alive inside the wall of the Factory, just plastered up a bathroom doorway, leaving only an opening at the bottom for drugs and books: the I Ching, the Kabbala, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and now Madame Blavatsky. Some thought Billy was in trouble; we had seen it before with other speed freaks whose time was up. They begin to live in smaller and smaller worlds till finally they are living in the closet, then part of the closet, then on just one hanger, till they let go and fall into nothingness like out the nearest window. But others believed he had buried himself alive like a mystic, renouncing everything till he became invisible. He couldn’t be crazy; crazy people didn’t read the Kabbala.”
GLENN O’BRIEN: “When I first went to work for Warhol at the 33 Union Street Factory Billy Name was still living in the back, locked up in his dark room. We knew he came out at night for food, because we found the trash. Andy left him alone. Then one day the door was open and he was gone, leaving behind scattered prints and astrology books. His reclusion and the way Andy reacted were a great mystery to me. He was the cloistered monk of modernism. Now I realize that Billy represented something to Andy. Some kind of love. Billy was the truly devoted one, the virtuous one, the selfless one.”
ANDY WARHOL: “One day Lou Reed came by and spent three whole hours in the darkroom with Billy. When he came out, he looked really spooked. ‘I should never have given him that book last year,’ Lou said, shaking his head. I didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘The Alice Bailey book,’ he said. ‘Actually I gave him three of them.’ I’d heard that name before. Ondine used to mention her a lot, she wrote occult books. ‘I was reading one of her books,’ Lou said, ‘but it was so difficult, I thought, why not have Billy read them and tell me, you know, the interesting parts? The next thing I knew he was in the closet and not coming out. He’s shaved his head completely – he said the hairs were growing in, not out. Now he’s following the white magic book that shows you how to rebuild your cell structure – you play with the cell centers and eat this yogurt. I asked him to tell me how to do it, and he said it could be really dangerous, that he’d only tell me part of it because if I made a mistake and did something wrong, I could end up like him.’ Things kept getting weirder and weirder with Billy. In the john we’d hear talking on the other side of the wall, and for a while we thought another person had moved in there with him. It turned out that both voices were Billy’s.”
ONDINE: “There was some kind of fire going on in Billy’s brain. And Warhol’s lack of interest in Billy triggered it off to such an extent that Billy couldn’t come out of the back room… I wouldn’t say he was exactly crazy, but he was in touch with something so spiritual that most people would be frightened by it. He was so loyal to that man. Three years he waited in the back room for somebody. And nobody was there. Andy Warhol was no longer there. He had gone somewhere else.”
JIM CARROLL: “The old Factory up in the West Forties was actually a wild scene, but since Andy took a bulldyke bullet in the rib this place had about seventeen doors on the elevator, a receptionist who was no doubt an abused child and took every opportunity to even it up, and security cameras running up the ass.”
ANDY WARHOL: “Obviously, I should avoid unstable types. But choosing between which kids I would see and which ones I wouldn’t went completely against my style. And more than that, what I never came right out and confided to anyone in so many words was this: I was afraid that without the crazy, druggy people around jabbering away and doing their insane things, I would lose my creativity. After all, they’d been my total inspiration since ’64, and I didn’t know if I could make it without them.”
