The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Wednesday, March 23, 1977—New York—Los Angeles

  Met at the airport by Susan Pile with a limousine and a lot of promo material and she said she was giving a big screening and a party on Thursday for Bad and we told her she should have told us before, that we were already booked for Thursday.

  Checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel and they gave us the most horrible rooms. We all sat around Suzie Frankfurt’s room while Susan Pile was doing some business with Fred in his room on another floor. Suzie’s friend Joan Quinn came by, she invited us to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, picked us up in two cars. Really great food. Met Joan’s husband, Jack the lawyer.

  Went to bed around 1:00.

  Friday, March 25, 1977—Los Angeles

  Up at 7:00. Todd Brassner called and said he just saw Muhammad Ali in the Polo Lounge, and that he also saw Charles Bronson in the lobby. Fred and I had to go to a meeting at Roger Corman’s office, so cabbed there ($5). It was a brand-new building, met all the young kids who work for him. Fred said Roger was “very shy and never gives interviews” but he’s not shy, I noticed, and he’s been giving a lot of them lately.

  Diana Vreeland had a limo and we were going out to George Cukor’s with her. George wouldn’t let me take photos. I was disappointed. He said he loved Bad, raved about it. He’d seen it the day before with Paul Morrissey at Susan Pile’s big screening at the Picwood Theater—Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty and Julie Christie went, 750 people.

  Fred and I went back to the hotel to get ready for Sue Mengers’s dinner party in Bel Air. Picked up Diana. Ryan and Tatum were at Sue’s, and Barbra Streisand and Jon Peters. Diana went over and told Barbra off about something. Candy Bergen and Roman Polanski were there. It was a party for Sidney Lumet. He hates me and his wife Gail doesn’t know whether she does or not, but she follows what her husband does so she’s cold. Sidney runs around kissing everybody and then stops when he gets to me. Film directors used to be such macho guys, and now they’re these little fairy-type guys running around French-style double-kissing but still thinking they’re macho.

  Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman sat with Fred during dinner and they said they wanted to come down to the office. Lillian Hellman was there. Roman said Gene Hackman wanted to meet me, but Diana didn’t know who he was and didn’t want to go over. She told Roman that Gene should come over and he did, and he was darling, and Diana still couldn’t place him although she’d seen The French Connection.

  Marisa was there with her hubby, the gossip was that they’d had a big fight and broken up. But the big event of the evening was when the maid came in with extra food and fell completely across the room. Sue looked concerned but I think she was just worried about getting sued. It was just like watching a movie. The food was flying all over everybody. She must have really hurt herself but she got up and pretended nothing had happened. She was around fifty, glasses.

  Then went to Alana Hamilton’s party for Mick Flick, and she had everybody there. Diana was getting drunker and drunker, and Fred, too. Valerie Perrine, Tony Curtis, and Nelson Lyon, sober, were there. Ron Wood invited me to Top of the Rox but I wanted to go home. Diana was getting jealous because Fred was with Jacqueline Bisset, he didn’t know Jackie’s French boyfriend was there with her. Diana told Fred time to leave and he said no, and she got really upset and left and I took her home and she wanted me to go up and discuss Fred with her over drinks and I just said no and ran out. She thinks she has something going with him.

  Saturday, March 26, 1977—Los Angeles

  Read the rave review of Bad in The Los Angeles Times.

  Went to Susan Tyrrell’s party, it was really great. Tatum was there, and her little brother, and Ryan’s brother, Kevin O’Neal, and Chu Chu Malave, the boxer, and Tim Curry from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Garfunkel, Art “Murph” who wrote the Variety review, Barry Diller, Buck Henry who really loves Bad, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fred Williamson, Tere Tereba, Corinne Calvert and her son, Ronee Blakley and her brother, Sally Kirkland, Don Rugoff, Paul Morrissey, Thelma Houston, Ed Begley, Jr., Martin Mull the wife-beater on Mary Hartman—200 people like that. Michael Bloomfield who did the Bad soundtrack came as we were leaving. Ron Galella was taking pictures.

  I had to leave to go to the Bad screening. What was so great about seeing the movie at Filmex was that everything had such big significance, suddenly, because the screen was so big, so much more Pop—like that Santa Claus knick-knack on Carroll Baker’s refrigerator. I want to rent a big theater for a screening in New York. Got back to the hotel about 3:00.

  Sunday, March 27, 1977—Los Angeles

  Met Esther, Doug Christmas’s PR person, at the Polo Lounge and she invited us to the French consulate for the Film Festival, and I invited Doug Christmas and at 7:30 we went. Met King Vidor who said he knew all about me. Bobby Neuwirth was there and I talked with him about his old girlfriend, Andrea Portago, and Edie Sedgwick. Viva was there with her daughter Alexandra who was sucking her thumb. Seeing Alexandra was sad—a big “rug-rat” hanging off Viva—she’ll probably turn out a mess. Viva will do everything the opposite that her parents did and it’ll be just as bad.

  Monday, March 28, 1977—Los Angeles

  Up at 7:00. Watched the Today Show, air crash with over 550 people getting killed, two 747s crashing. Fred went to see Paul Getty’s ear transplant at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Peter Lester called and made a date for us to interview William Katt, the star of Carrie, and his press agent at the Polo Lounge at 1:00.

  Talked to William Katt. His father was movie star Bill Williams and his mother Barbara Hale was Della Street on Perry Mason. A good interview.

  Then sat in the lobby for a second and met Liv Ullmann.

  The place was really jumping with stars all getting ready to go to the Academy Awards. At 4:00 I went to Fred’s room to photograph Willie Shoemaker the jockey. Richard Weisman’s commissioned me to do a series of athletes’ portraits. Richard will keep some of the portraits and some will be for sale and the athletes will get to keep some. So Willie was the first athlete. Had to get some film (cab to Schwab’s $3, film $15.30—lost slip). Willie’s wife called from the lobby and she came up with a girlfriend—but without Willie. He didn’t show up till ten after 5:00 and when he saw her, he couldn’t believe she was there. He’d been in court getting a divorce from her, that’s why he was late.

  Willie’s ex-wife of one hour was one of the tallest women I’ve ever seen. She was dressing Willie for the picture and he looked like an eight-year-old kid. And guess what he was wearing—little Jockey shorts! Ordered martinis, and the wife was drinking. She kept asking him for a date to celebrate the divorce and he kept turning her down, he said, “If I’d known you were going to be here I wouldn’t have come.”

  Alana Hamilton called to invite us to an Academy Awards party at Dani Janssen’s. I missed Ronee Blakley’s invitation to go to the Oscars ceremony with her because I was in Fred’s room.

  Got picked up at 7:45 by Alana Hamilton. Drove to Century City. They were having a $10 bet pool on the Academy Awards and it cost me $20. Brand-new apartment building, very rich, overlooking all of Hollywood. Dani’s getting a divorce from David, Alana’s getting a divorce from George.

  Jack Haley said Liza was in Detroit with her show and coming back the next day. Dick Sylbert was there. Valerie Perrine told me her life story, she was once a chip hustler in Las Vegas and on the verge of marrying some rich guy after eight years but he shot himself accidentally. Her eyes teared up, she was unhappy. When Martin Scorsese came in she ran over to rustle up a job.

  Burgess Meredith came with his date. Rocky got Best Picture. Peter Finch got Best Actor, but he’s dead. Nelson Lyon was in the audience as the date of Mrs. Finch, Eletha. She’s very black. The Academy asked Paddy Chayevsky go up to accept Peter Finch’s award. Burgess and I talked about his ex-wife, Paulette.

  Brenda Vaccaro was upset because her ex-fiancé Michael Douglas was there with his brand-new wife that he met at the inauguration. James Caan w
as there with his boyish wife, a beauty. They’re all marrying younger girls who look like they’re thirteen, the Hollywood thing. Roman was there, he’s out on bail now for the thirteen-year-old-girl. He jumped on Alana’s ass and said he was going to rape her.

  Martin Scorsese with his wife, Julia. Jackie Bisset. Lee Grant. Burt Young from Rocky. A girl from Big Valley, Linda Evans, really beautiful. Tony Curtis was giving people puffs on his marijuana.

  Julia Scorsese said that Martin would take me and Fred in his limo. She was drunk, screaming something about death threats, but I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  As we got into the car Martin said he had a bomb threat, the note said that he would die one minute after midnight if Jodie Foster won the Academy Award. It was 2:00 now and he was going to MGM to work on New York, New York in the dark and deserted MGM lot, alone. I was paranoid. Esther Phillips was calling me at the hotel but I didn’t answer the calls because she’s started to scare me—one of her calls was at 2 A.M.

  Tuesday, March 29, 1977—Los Angeles—New York

  Got the American 1:00 plane to New York. Noticed Paddy Chayevsky being driven on a little cart to the plane while we walked. Lots of people from the Academy Awards getting on the plane. The first class took up practically half the plane—first time I saw it so full, really interesting. John Travolta from Welcome Back, Kotter walked by, sort of said hi to me, sat in front of me. Paddy Chayevsky told the stewardess he wanted to sleep all during the trip, not to wake him up, but he woke up five minutes after the plane was in the air.

  John Travolta kept going to the bathroom, coming out with his eyes bright red, drinking orange juice and liquor in a paper cup, and he put his head in a pillow and started crying. I saw him reading a script, too, so I thought he was acting. Really cute and sensitive-looking, very tall, comes off looking too fairy-ish, like too many people around now, but very good-looking. You can see the magic in him. I asked the stewardess why he was crying and she said “death in the family” so I thought it was a mother or father, until I picked up the paper at home and found out that it was Diana Hyland who’d died of cancer at forty-one, soap-opera queen, his steady date.

  Dropped Fred and Todd Brassner (cab $27). Cab fares had gone up.

  Thursday, March 31, 1977

  Lunch with Victor ($16), then we walked over to the loft building on 19th and Fifth that Maxime’s moving into and that Victor is thinking of buying a floor in, too. I tried to discourage him, saying that it was really too small. It was. I can’t figure out why Maxime wants to go there, it’s no bigger than her apartment. She says, “I just want one big room,” but when she moves all her furniture in, it won’t even look or feel big at all. And it costs $32,000.

  Victor and his boyfriend walked me back to the office. A fortune teller told Victor’s boyfriend that he would be hit by a cab. Then she said maybe that wasn’t right, that she’d better read the tarot cards, too, so she did, and then she said, “It’s going to happen even quicker than I thought.” So now the kid is really worried. She charged him $5 and first he said, “I’m not going to pay you for telling me that,” and she said he had to so he did. How could a person do that! I mean, that’s the kind of thing that really really really stays in your mind. The reason the kid went there in the first place was because his friends had told him she was so good. To make him feel better all I could think to say was that maybe she could see he was a careless person and had told him that to make him more careful.

  I was invited to Diane Von Furstenberg’s dinner for Sue Mengers. Went home, glued myself together, cab to DVF’s ($2.25). It was a very heavy newspaper-reporter dinner. Mr. Grunwald from Time magazine, Nora Ephron—didn’t see her husband, Carl Bernstein, though—Helen Gurley Brown and her husband David, Irene Selznick, and DVF’s boyfriend, Barry Diller. I was feeling very talkative so I talked and I talked, but nobody listened to anything I said, they just ignored me. I know that Diller doesn’t like me, so I worked hard to change his mind but he was still awful to me.

  Bianca was there. I thought she’d already left for Paris. She was saying out loud everything I was thinking—what two bitches Diane Von Furstenberg and Sue Mengers were—and she said, “At least Sue can be funny sometimes.” Sue was on her way to Europe to meet her husband, who only lets her see him once every couple of months, I think.

  I told Irene Selznick that I’d seen a great picture of her at George Cukor’s. I was raving about California so much that everybody thinks I’m moving there.

  Helen Gurley Brown sat at my feet and I talked to her about California. Bianca was talking about how boring all these people were to Mr. Grunwald, she didn’t know who he was, and then after he went away I told her. They were all two-faced people there, and Diane only invited me to pay me back for the Interview cover, and I mean, who cared. Diane is very skinny. Dino De Laurentiis came late with his wife, Silvana Mangano, she was wearing a white Oscar de la Renta and said she was cold.

  Egon Von Furstenberg came in with his girlfriend, the one that used to come to the Factory who I can’t stand, and I guess she finally realizes that I hate her, because she didn’t say anything to me. Her name starts with M, something like Marita. He’ll never marry her.

  Bianca said she wanted to go dancing and called her answering service but there was nothing on it so she stayed. She was wearing a thrift-store dress that she got in California that was really beautiful. When the De Laurentiises walked by us to leave she said, “They’re full of shit.” I left alone. Had a horrible time.

  Friday, April 1, 1977

  Went to Halston’s birthday dinner for Victor at Pearl’s, he didn’t want to do a big thing at the house. Joe Eula was there. And Aly Kaiser. She has two bodyguards now because of her Greek husband that she’s divorcing—she has one bodyguard driving her and one at home.

  She had as a present for Victor a bag of Hawaiian marijuana that a couple of fag friends who have a ranch there mailed to her in a box of perfumed shirts so you wouldn’t smell the marijuana. She said she gave some to one of her bodyguards and he was passed out at home. She says she’ll let me take pictures of her as soon as she gets her divorce. Before it was “as soon as I get the plastic in my face from Dr. Orentreich.” I talked to Dr. Giller, he seems so sensible. He said that only fish and chicken and fresh vegetables were good for you, even though he himself liked Chinese food. He told Mrs. Kaiser where she could get fresh chickens kosher on the Lower East Side, and she said she’d send one of her bodyguards down for some, she’s been sending him out to do her shopping. She was wearing twenty carats on each ear and a diamond bracelet, too. She’s really nice. She had a car out front, too, with her dog who wears the chauffeur’s cap.

  Monday, April 4, 1977

  Rod Gilbert the Canadian hockey player came down to be photographed for the Athletes series. He had 100 scars on his face, but I couldn’t see them, really. He autographed a hockey stick for me and I autographed Philosophy books for him, but made a mistake and put “Ron” instead of “Rod.” Bought light bulbs ($4.02).

  Tuesday, April 5, 1977

  Worked until 7:45. At 9:00 cabbed to Fred’s ($2.25). Rebecca Fraser was there. She’s the daughter of Antonia Fraser who’s now going with Harold Pinter. Rebecca is checking hats at One Fifth. She’s going to be a “View Girl” in Interview. She’s really cute, she nodded out while Fred was talking to her a few times. Diana Vreeland was there, Mick Jagger arrived. Camilla and Earl McGrath, Jean Van den Heuvel, Tom Hess who did the good review of my Hammers & Sickles in New York. Caroline Kennedy was there. Her face is so beautiful, but she got really fat, her behind is so big—as fat as Brigid’s was. She’s on Easter vacation from Radcliffe. She was the first person to leave, I think she has to be home before midnight, on a schedule, because once when she was at Fred’s she stayed until 4:00 and Jackie got mad.

  The dinner was to say goodbye to Erskine Guinness and his cousin Miranda, they’re leaving for Ireland.

  Wednesday, April 6, 1977

  Took “
landscape” pictures of an ex-porno star Victor brought down who it turns out has a shop on Madison Avenue that sells Lalique. Dropped them off (cab $3).

  There was something in the Post today about Adela Holzer, she’s getting sued for keeping investors’ money in a bank in Jakarta and not paying them back.

  On TV I got a big mention when Barbara Walters interviewed the empress of Iran. In with the other art they did a big closeup on my Mick print and Barbara said, “And surprisingly, they have a painting of rock star Mick Jagger by Andy Warhol,” and the empress said, “I like to keep modern.”

  Thursday, April 7, 1977

  Some people from Joseph Papp’s company came to lunch, we were trying to get them to advertise in Interview. Cabbed up to the Sherry Netherland with Bob to interview Sissy Spacek for Interview ($4). We brought copies of the Carroll Baker Interview with us. Carroll’s name is spelled wrong on the cover. Sissy’s mother was there and she said hello and went into the other room to read Interview, and then Bob got nervous because he thought Sissy was fifteen and her mother would see the nude photograph we ran of Yul Brynner when he was young—that famous old photo. But Sissy’s really twenty-seven and she’s married, her mother was just with her, not chaperoning her. We’re going to have to research better.