Famous for 15 Minutes

by Ultra Violet

  Then there was the legendary time when Dorothy shot Marilyn. Billy Name had a subentourage straight out of the absinthe depths of Le Moulin Rouge. Among Billy’s picturesques were Stanley the Turtle, Silver George, Rotten Rita, someone called the Mayor, Binghamton Birdie, and Dorothy Podber, a veteran of the avant-garde of the mid-1950s.

  One day, Dorothy arrived, dressed in leather, with several friends in leather, and a Great Dane in his natural leather pelt. She peeled off her long leather gloves, pulled out her pistol, aimed at Warhol. Then at the last split second she shifted her aim to the stack of Marilyn Monroe portraits against the wall and fired. She put her pistol back, pulled on her gloves, gathered her followers, and left. This stylish event was regarded as an art happening.

  “Was Andy afraid for his life?” I asked Billy when he recited this outlandish tale.

  “No. He was angry that she did it on her own instead of as part of a movie. But he secretly thought she’d done something great.”

  The bullet penetrated six paintings, which are now called “shot-through Marilyns.” They are more valuable than ordinary Marilyns because they are indisputably authentic.

  When it is time for Valerie’s trial, Girodias retains two distinguished lawyers to defend her. Telling them they can take their talents to hell, she says, “I need nobody’s help. I can beat this thing myself.” She brushes aside Judge David Getzoff’s suggestion to arrange Legal Aid counsel. At her arraignment in Criminal Court, she declares, “I was right in what I did. I have nothing to regret. He was going to do something to me which would have ruined me.” Then she shouts, contrary to everyone’s understanding of the facts, such as they are, “He wanted to produce my play and I did not want it staged. Warhol had me tied up, lock, stock and barrel.”

  The judge reminds her, “You must realize this is a serious charge.”

  Valerie replies, “That’s why it’s going to remain in my competent hands.” She is sent to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric examination, then to Elmhurst General in Queens. She is being held without bail.

  Nearly a dozen detectives inspect the Factory to reconstruct the crime and retrieve the slugs from the walls. They search through files, photographs, stills, receipts, transparencies, nude shots of Joe Dallesandro, looking for motives, clues, and, no doubt, thrills.

  Valerie is released on $10,000 bail. While out on bail at Christmas 1968, she calls the Factory. Andy picks up the phone. I see his face go whiter than white. He slumps but does not fall. Valerie wishes him a Merry Christmas and threatens to repeat the shooting if he does not meet her demands: her appearance on the Johnny Carson show, publication of the SCUM Manifesto in the Daily News, $25,000 to repay her for what he’s stolen. She also wants him to make her a star, and on and on. After that, security at the Factory is reinforced with a double door and a buzzer, and Andy is never again alone or unprotected. Valerie’s bail is raised to $50,000 and then to $100,000.

  A revolutionary all the way, Valerie defends herself, shouting defiantly, “Warhol deserves what he got. He is a goddamned liar and cheat, a thief. All that comes out of his mouth is lies.”

  She is declared incompetent to stand trial but later pleads guilty to first-degree assault and is sentenced to three years, one year of which she has already served while awaiting trial. She is sent to New York State Prison for Women at Bedford Hills and later to Mattewan Prison. She is released in September 1971, arrested again that November because of threatening letters and telephone calls to Girodias, publisher Barney Rosset, Howard Hughes, and Robert Sarnoff of NBC. In the letters she claims: “I have a license to kill.” In and out of mental institutions in 1973, she continues to write obscene and incendiary letters. In 1975 she spends eight months in South Florida State Hospital. In 1977 she mails a rambling letter to a Playboy editor, on the theory that he is a contact man for an entity she calls The Mob.

  After that, she disappears from sight. But when Andy dies in 1987, her name is revived and her short-lived fame rekindled. I begin to wonder: Is she by any chance the woman who danced on the steps of St. Patrick’s on the day of his memorial service? Is hers the voice that called me right after the assassination attempt, the voice I took for Viva’s? By what perverse error is my picture in the Star captioned with her name shortly before the memorial service?

  I decide to track down Valerie, to see if she is still alive and what she’s doing. I call all the crazies of the sixties. Few remain, most have blown away. Even the crazies tell me to keep away, she’s too dangerous. I write letters to missing persons bureaus all over the country. I check all the shelters and soup kitchens in New York. I don’t find her, but I learn that she has used variations of her name—Solanis, Solaris—and along the way I obtain her Social Security number. It finally occurs to me that she may be collecting SSI. By pretending to be her sister, needing to send her an urgent message, in November 1987 I get a number to call in northern California. A woman answers. I ask for Valerie Solanas. There is a long silence. Then the voice says, “Oh, oh, I see who you mean. Let me see if she’s in her room.”

  Then a voice, which I recognize from our movie I a Man, says, “Yeah?”

  “Is this Valerie Solanas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You mean the famous Valerie Solanas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you written any other things besides the manifesto?”

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “Oh, nothing to say.”

  “What are you doing now.”

  “Nothing.” Then she adds, “I’m not in this place under that name.”

  “What name do you use?”

  “Onz Loh.”

  I make her repeat it. Then she asks, “Do you have the newspaper edition of the manifesto? I don’t have a copy anymore.”

  I figure she means the photo-offset edition she put out herself in October 1967. I have one copy, but I don’t intend to give it to her.

  “What about the book edition?” I ask. Sensing a commercial opportunity in the wake of all the publicity about Andy’s near demise, Girodias finally published the manifesto in book form in August 1968, two months after the shooting.

  “No, it’s full of mistakes. It’s not the same.” She tells me that the book was not a big seller.

  “Do you know that Andy Warhol died?” I ask.

  Her voice perks up. “No, I don’t.”

  “He died last February.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “He went to the hospital for an operation and died two days later.”

  “Oh.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t feel anything. Say, can you write to the copyright office for a copy of the manifesto?”

  “I’ll see. What happened to all the people in the sixties movement?”

  “They died.”

  “Do you remember Ultra Violet?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She died too.”

  So much for death and resurrection. But I’m glad I tracked down Valerie. After I speak to her, I find it hard to get her out of my mind. I keep thinking what a shame it is that she’s mad, utterly mad. For in the beginning, beyond her overheated rhetoric, she had a truly revolutionary vision of a better world run by and for the benefit of women. I have sympathy and a sneaking admiration for anyone bold enough to propose solutions, even off-the-wall ones. But assassination, no. Never.

  PARTIES OF THE NIGHT

  In the late spring of 1968 I meet Norman Mailer at a birthday party for Senator Jacob Javits in the large Javits apartment on Park Avenue. The Javitses know everybody in New York and Washington. Senators, bankers, businessmen, actors, artists, novelists, journalists, society matrons, debutantes, and second cousins are kissing, crying out with pleasure at seeing each other (some haven’t met since the last party, twenty minutes ago), balancing drinks, hors d’oeuvres, purses, handshakes, and backslaps. It’s the kind of party Andy wouldn’t miss for the wo
rld, but once he’s here, he sidles off to the periphery to look at the paintings—Marion Javits is an enthusiastic aficionado of the arts—and observe the social habits of the natives.

  The minute I see Mailer, I recognize him as a force of nature. He radiates energy and belligerence. His crinkled black-and-white hair stands up; his blue eyes crackle. He is his own man, macho, cunning, provocative. I want to tell him how much I admire him for marching on the Pentagon in the huge protest against the Vietnam War and then celebrating that crusade in his book Armies of the Night, but I am a little afraid that if I choose the wrong words he may punch me. I’ve heard that he’ll punch anyone who antagonizes him, if he’s sufficiently booze-soaked, and I can see that tonight the booze is going down him fast.

  At that moment, Leo Garen, a producer of art films and a friend and defender of poets, tells me he is involved in making a movie with Mailer; would I like to be in it? Would I? I want to start this very minute! Leo brings Norman over and introduces us. Mailer says, “You’re very beautiful. What do you do?”

  “I’m an actress.”

  Mailer the terrible says, “Your hair is hideous.” I am wearing it wild and snaky. He goes on, “Show me your behind.”

  “Right here, now?” I gesture at the roomful of uptown people.

  His eyes shoot annoyance at me, as if I’m being childish. “Just turn around.” I turn and pull my slip tight around me. I am wearing nothing underneath. He says, “Gorgeous but too big.” Andy says nothing, but Leo gallantly protests that my buttocks are just fine.

  Norman says, “Your accent is hopeless.”

  “I can camouflage it.” I have only the trace of a French accent, and I know how to speak unaccented English when I want.

  “Have you acted before?” Norman asks.

  “She acts all the time,” Andy says. “We do a film a day.”

  Norman does not seem to be highly impressed with that credential, but he says, “All right, you can play a belle de jour who goes to a male house of prostitution.” He walks away.

  “Do you think he really means it?” I ask Andy.

  “Gee, yes, no.”

  “Do you mind if I do a movie with him?”

  “Why not? It’s good publicity.”

  A week or so after that, Valerie Solanas’s bullets nearly end Andy’s life. He is still in the hospital when I get a call from Leo Garen. Shooting of Maidstone, the Mailer film, starts in a week in East Hampton. Yes, I’m expected to be there. I’m terribly excited, but I feel awful that I can’t even tell Andy the good news. He is recovering but not yet allowed to receive phone calls.

  A cast and crew of hundreds invade the sylvan property of Barney Rosset, publisher of Grove Press, who bravely and rashly has provided a locale for the shooting. The press is out in full chase—reporters, gossip columnists, photographers from the newspapers, TV, Life, New York magazine, and various foreign periodicals. There’s also a sprinkling of prizefighters and novelists. It’s just as well Andy isn’t here—he’d die of envy.

  A voice at the level of my knee says to me in French, “I am the madame of a male house of prostitution.” I look down and Hervé, a dwarf, introduces himself. He tells me I’m to be one of his patrons.

  Norman, barefoot, in cutoff jeans, lived-in black shirt, and brown leather cap, addresses his army of the day: “Right now the film does not have a plot, only a presence. It will be about the subtle nature of reality. It will be about a famous movie director, Norman T. Kingsley, played by me, who has come to East Hampton ostensibly to look at sites for his new film, but he is also deciding whether or not to run for president of the United States.

  “He knows that if he joins the race, he faces the chance of being knocked off. As we all know, this is the time of assassinations. That’s why a group named Protection Against Assassination Experiments, Control, known as PAX, C—a mixture of the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, M-l, and M-6—will cover the candidate.”

  A prowling photographer snaps my picture with Marion Javits and Mailer’s wife number two, or is it three?

  Norman goes on: “The film Kingsley is making, the film within the film, will be a spoof of Belle de Jour, but with a male house that women visit. The male studs will be called the Cash Box.”

  “They’ll be managed by me,” Hervé confides to my hip.

  (Belle de Jour is a popular French film, directed by Luis Buñuel and starring Catherine Deneuve, which takes place in a high-class Parisian house of prostitution.)

  After a vast amount of shouting and milling around and much trampling of the lawn and shrubbery, the spectators, the press, and the actors are separated, the five different camera crews haul out tons of equipment, and I say to Hervé, “This is a military operation. Andy’s films are child’s play next to what’s going on here.”

  I am sitting on the terrace with the three other actresses who are to play belles. We are applying blusher and tightening our stockings under our miniskirts. Mailer comes charging at us. “All right, who’s the first victim?” He points to the three others and says, “You’re Joy-Belle, Penny-Belle, Sally-Belle,” and to me, “You’re Belle-Belle.” I wonder who is Telephone-Belle. No, that’s a name for a Warhol Superstar.

  But first there’s a scene in which a delegation of blacks challenges presidential candidate Norman T. Kingsley, or NTK, an intentional echo of JFK, about his position on welfare, housing, drugs, social problems in the ghetto. The camera rolls as the actors playing the militant blacks hurl their ad-libbed questions at candidate Kingsley/Mailer, who zaps back his answers in a parody of confrontational politics.

  At the bar under the trees, a crowd gathers around the ammunition cases of vodka, gin, and Scotch. John de Menil, the oilfield magnate and art collector, elegantly dressed as always, says, “Hi, Ultra. Are you plotting to assassinate NTK?” I just shake my head. I’m rather sensitive to assassination jokes.

  A little later, Mailer approaches with a young black man he introduces as Lee Cook. He is a writer and will play one of the studs, named Lazarus. It begins to dawn on me what I am expected to do. Then Mailer claps his hands for attention: “Time for the belles’ love scene.” And to me, flashing his blue eyes: “Get undressed for your love scene in the stud farm. Lazarus will make you happy.”

  My God, I think, it’s like the film Andy made in my apartment, when I had to take off my clothes, only this is worse. These people are serious about their vérité—they want me to do the whole thing. Excitement vies with apprehension within me. If new experience is what my life is all about, this is a high point.

  I’ve never made love to a man on camera before an audience. Do I dare? Mailer is glaring at me. I feel he wants me to chicken out, so he can either punch me or start a fight and signal the camera to roll. He won’t get the scene he intended, but he’ll get another, just as good or better—Ultra Violet refuses to go to bed with a black man onscreen. Headlines, scandal, publicity!

  I can feel the adrenaline pour into my bloodstream. All right, here we go. I begin with a flip comment to Norman: “This is black in white, I presume.”

  “No, baby, pink in pink.”

  While I’m getting ready, Norman films a segment in which he is interviewed by a women reporter, who asks, “How do you feel about sexual freedom in America?”

  NTK/Mailer: “It’s good until it injures your sense of smell. By the time sex ceases to smell good, you’ve had enough of it.”

  Then Jeanne Cardigan, a British TV commentator, who is playing herself, says to a TV camera in front of the movie camera, “A late bulletin from NTK’s sexual front: Ultra Violet, star of many Andy Warhol movies, will film a scene of all-out lovemaking with a young black man, another cinematic first for Norman T. Kingsley. Ultra now embraces Lazarus.”

  On cue, I do just that, on one of several beds that have been set up in a kind of playhouse that has been turned into a bordello. The other belles and their studs are getting ready for their scenes. I blot out everything from my mind. I push away all thought of the leerin
g onlookers. I stop worrying about getting pregnant—whose baby would it be? Lazarus’s? Mine? NTK’s? I’m an actress. I’m playing a part. I’m going to play it to the hilt. What’s more, I’ve caught the machismo virus. Damn them all; if they think they can humiliate me, they’re wrong. I’ll show them I’m as bold as they are, maybe bolder.

  Lazarus lowers himself over me. I hear a mass intake of breath. Then a man’s voice cries out, “Shit!” There’s a commotion in the direction of the camera. Someone shouts, “What the fuck’s happening?”

  “The fucking film ran out,” someone answers.

  The camera stops. Lazarus keeps on doing what he is doing, but I stop. In a rage, he grabs at me. “No film, no scene,” I say with finality. I am playing by authentic cinema vérité rules. I reach for my robe, wrap it around me, get up and leave. They never do get back to that scene.

  Some days later, we arrive by motorboat on Gardiners Island, America’s only fiefdom, the virtually uninhabited seven-by-three-mile island deeded to the ancestors of Robert David Lion Gardiner three centuries ago by the British crown. In this beautiful, unspoiled setting, with ducks, gulls, and ospreys circling above and the sky meeting the water all around us, we are to enact a scene of brutal violence.

  Norman T. Kingsley and his brother Rey—“king” in Spanish—are engaged in fratricidal strife. Rey is played by actor Rip Torn, who looks like a killer with his Doberman pinscher face—pinched lips, villainous eyes, chiseled cheeks, pointed ears. The camera rolls. Torn strikes NTK on the head with a hammer. He raises the hammer, strikes again, then again. Norman ducks, raises his hand to shield his head: “You crazy fool cocksucker.”

  Rey raises the hammer and says, “You’re supposed to die, Mr. Kingsley.”

  Mailer is bleeding. “Stop it—let go of the hammer.”

  Rey/Torn: “I’m killing Kingsley, not you, Mailer.”