by Andy Warhol
Dropped Suzie ($2.70).
Barbara Allen told Bob that Mick is very unhappy, he says it’s over with Bianca, that he has no feelings for her. He thinks she uses him and he doesn’t want to go to St. Tropez where she is. Barbara says she just thinks of Mick as a friend, the way she thinks of Fred and Bob, and that she has sex with him only because he’s lonely now.
Friday, July 8, 1977
By the way, Valerie has been seen hanging around the Village and last week when I was cruising there with Victor, I was scared I’d run into her and that would be a really weird thing. What would happen? Would she want to shoot me again? Would she try to be friendly? [see Introduction, Valerie Solanis is the woman who shot and nearly killed Andy in 1968.]
Went to Nippon with Marina Schiano, and Franco Rossellini was there. Franco was saying that he doesn’t know how the story about Imelda being “married” to Cristina Ford got all over the world—“because I only told one person and it wasn’t my story anyway.” But he did tell everybody in the world—it was his joke story-of-the-week once. So now I think Imelda and Cristina are mad at him.
They dropped me off, and it seemed like they wanted me to invite them in, but I didn’t.
Sunday, July 10, 1977
Was going to go down to work but the phone rang and it was Julia Scorsese. She was with a girlfriend, a writer who’s working on a series. Julia said they were going to meet Barbara Feldon at Serendipity, so went to the Sherry to pick them up.
Julia was driving me crazy, sometimes when I’d catch her eye she looked just like Valerie Solanis, and then she also acts like Viva. She got it in her head that I “saved” her the night of New York New York. She said that she wasn’t next to Martin at the table and I went over and sat her down there and that that squelched rumors that her husband was having an affair with Liza Minnelli so the papers didn’t get it. She went on about that a lot and she was walking sort of drunkenly on blue high heels and her pupils were dilated.
When we got to Serendipity, Barbara Feldon was there. Julia started doing what I hate more than anything, patting my head all the time. She drove me crazy. And she kept trying to fix me up with her girlfriend who was tall and kind of pretty, and it was them saying, “You’re so wonderful wonderful wonderful” to me for hours, and I didn’t know what to do. Since I told her they didn’t have liquor, she brought champagne. I don’t understand these girls, they talk and say things and I don’t know what they’re doing.
Barbara left and we cabbed to Elaine’s. We ordered, and it was more “Aren’t you wonderful"s. Julia said she wanted to set up a date for me to meet the writer of Annie, she said it would be nice for me to meet some real men, and I didn’t know what that meant, if she was saying “real men” and the real men meant fairies, or what she was talking about. Julia told me how they do things on Marty’s movies—they rehearse the people, do videotapes, then Julia picks out the best things and they have the people redo them that way on camera later during the shooting. She said they change the plot and twist it during the shooting. Like in the original story of New York, New York, Bobby De Niro goes into the record business.
She said that Marty has coke problems and he got blood poisoning and now he takes medicine to clean himself out. He’s cutting three movies now. She said she wrote a lot of Taxi Driver. I started saying people act like it’s the directors and the producers and the writers who make a movie when it’s actually the stars, and she took offense saying her husband had created Bobby De Niro and Harvey Keitel and some other people. But I said they were new faces and people always want to see new faces. Marty is now in Chicago doing a musical called Shine It On with Liza.
She said that she gave Robert Altman the idea to film A Wedding in Chicago, to take it out of L.A. and give it a different atmosphere. The producers gave her three days off, she said, so I took that to mean she must have been driving them crazy. Julia was getting a little too drunk. She dumped her pocketbook on the table and all the credit cards spilled out. She went to the bathroom and I put them back in (dinner $70).
Monday, July 11, 1977
Forgot to say that on Friday Paulette Goddard called. She sounded a little drunk, cranky. She’s very mad at Valerian Rybar who’s decorating her apartment in the Ritz Towers—he made it all pink and blue and even though she approved those colors she said she doesn’t know how she could have.
Wednesday, July 13, 1977
Cabbed up to Rockefeller Plaza to the Warner Communications offices to see Pelé, the soccer player who was being photographed for Interview. He was adorable, he remembered meeting me at Regine’s once. We were on the thirtieth floor. He’s sort of funny-looking, but then when he smiles he looks beautiful. He has his own office up there, and they’re making Pelé T-shirts and hats and cartoons.
Mark Ginsburg had called and said the interview with Irene Worth was on for that night, and I said I’d meet him at the Vivian Beaumont where her play The Cherry Orchard was. We were going to see it first.
Irene’s voice was good, and that’s all that really matters—everything she says sounds like real acting. The lights went down and I thought it was the end of the act, but it wasn’t. It was the Blackout of ‘77. They kept acting on stage in the dark, and the girl who played the daughter announced, “Isn’t this fun? Let’s keep going!” A guy came on stage and said that anybody who wanted to leave would be shown the way out, and that they’d just keep going with the play, they had guys on stage holding candles.
So everybody was a real trouper, and this was the moment these actors had been waiting all their lives for—to make the show go on.
Then after the play, as Mark and I were walking backstage to see Irene, a man said, “This is the most thrilling thing that’s happened to me, passing Andy Warhol in the dark.” Irene changed and put on bluejeans and turned out to look young. She served champagne. I had enough tape for three or four hours’ taping. A Lincoln Center guy was saying, “Stay in the crowds, they’re mugging people all over” (cab $4, big tip).
For some reason it was so simple to get a cab, we just walked out and got in one and went with a friend of Irene’s who I also know, Rudy, to his apartment on 67th and Lexington, right on the second floor. He had candles all over because he always eats with candles. He made omelettes on his gas range, it was all so easy. They were delicious. Did the interview with Irene.
The phones were sort of working—you had to wait for a dial tone, but then it was okay.
Thursday, July 14, 1977
My power on 66th Street went on about an hour ago [Friday, 8:00A.M.] On TV the reporters showed the looting, they had TV crews right there, filming the looters, and the lights from the TV enabled them to see better to steal more. It was like the TV people asked them where they were going to steal next so they could set up. On TV they’re all chained together and they’re all black and Puerto Rican. It looks like Roots.
Maxime de la Falaise called the Factory to see if there was electricity there. She’s been moving down to her loft on 19th Street from the Upper West Side all week. She tried to save money by getting hippie movers, and it’s taken a week instead of a day. The hippies carry things out leisurely and look at chairs and ask each other, “How old do you think this is? Eighteenth century?” Professional movers just crate up dead bodies, if that’s what you have in your apartment, they don’t miss a beat.
Had dinner with Sharon Hammond and Robin Lehman and afterwards we walked down Eighth Avenue through the drag queens and transvestites and whores over to Studio 54. Steve Rubell was thrilled to see us and let all ten of us in free. He reminded me that I’d asked him to marry me a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t believe he would remember something casual and offhand like that. I said it once and didn’t even think he heard me. I mean, he’s a young kid doing well, being successful—I’m so tired of working I propose all the time to people who’re doing well. Why would he remember that as if it was serious?
Saturday, July 16, 1977
Son of Sam is still out on t
he loose, and that’s an old-style crime—notes to the police, an M.O., killer on the loose, all that. People seem sort of happy to see a pattern. Son of Sam is nostalgia, almost. Goes after long brown-haired girls.
Up very early. Had lunch at the office for Victor and a kid he knows from NBC, Andy Wright, and Victor’s new beautiful girlfriend who gives him coke, from Greenwich, Connecticut, Nancy something, who models. He’s been fucking her to get the coke.
Monday, July 18, 1977
I’m reading the Evelyn Keyes book Scarlett O’Hara’s Younger Sister, and she describes everything in detail in her sex life, it’s great, sex with King Vidor and with John Huston—how he put it in and everything. And she says that Paulette Goddard was her idol, that she copied everything about her, her hair, her voice.
Called Paulette and told her about the book, how much Evelyn loved her. She said, “Oh yeah, she loved me so much she stole all my boyfriends, and when she stole my last boyfriend, I dropped her.”
Cabbed up to Suzie’s ($2.35). Sandra Payson who’s married to George Weidenfeld was there and as I sat talking to her, a cockroach was running on her. I didn’t know if I should say something or not. But then maybe she knew because she stood up and said, “Shall we get moving?” And that knocked it off. What would Emily Post do?
I decided to really really hustle so I took Lady Weidenfeld home. We walked a little, and then she was overheated and we cabbed to 25 Sutton Place ($2.50). We talked about Diana Vreeland’s nose. She popped the question about how much a portrait is and I said, “Oh, I can’t talk money, talk to Fred.” That effect.
On my way home, a cab stopped and I really wanted one, but since it had stopped for me I was suspicious to get in and didn’t. Went to a magazine store ($4).
Tuesday, July 19, 1977
Stanley Siegel had looters as guests on his TV show and also Adela Holzer to defend herself against the fraud charges. She said that the investors had started to worship her and so they expected to make a fortune and when they didn’t right away they got mad. She kept correcting Stanley that she’d been “booked, not arrested.”
All day was preparing for the Interview advertising party at 5:00. People started coming around then and by 6:00 it was jammed. Everybody likes Gael Malkenson, who just started working full-time for us now that she graduated from college—she’s aggressive and everybody thinks she should really be the one selling ads.
Ruth Kligman came by and kissed me smack on the lips and told me she was off Jack Nicholson for her Jackson Pollock story, and the new he-man screen-man of her dreams is Bobby De Niro, he’s all she could think about.
Wednesday, July 20, 1977
Tom Seaver came down to pose for an Athletes portrait. Richard Weisman came, too, in a limo that parked downstairs. Tom Seaver was adorable. Athletes really do have the fat in the right places and they’re young in the right places. The person taking the photographs was Mr. Johnson, a nice man who did the story on Jamie Wyeth and me once. He wanted Tom to wear a Mets hat, so they went out and bought one, and then he wanted Tom to do a Cincinnati-uniform with-a-Mets-hat picture, half and half, but he refused. Tom’s wife Nancy was calling on the phone. He hates the Mets now. He’d just bought a new house in Connecticut and everything when they traded him.
I haven’t been feeling well for the past two weeks, I think it’s the pimple medicine. I’m going to the pimple doctor again early in the morning.
Thursday, July 21, 1977
After the pimple doctor I went to the office. Lunch for Christopher Wilding and his stepsister, the adopted Liz Taylor-Richard Burton girl, she was pretty but not a raving beauty, about sixteen, shy. Firooz Zahedi was there, and the Blondie girl was being interviewed and photographed by Chris Makos. Her real name is Debbie Harry, she’s been around for a long time, sort of on the fringes. She knows everybody. If she had a body like Cyrinda’s she’d be really great, although her body’s okay, like a Sandra Dee-Tuesday Weld-type body. She’s small.
Allen Midgette came up earlier to show his wares, he’s making leather clothes, and he really works hard on them. He stayed for lunch. He keeps in shape dancing. We reminisced about the sixties when I sent him on that college lecture tour with Paul and Viva to impersonate me and then the places found out and made me redo the whole tour.
Monday, August 22, 1977
Cabbed to Chembank ($3.40). Walked over to University Place to look for things to paint.
Then cabbed to Richard Weisman’s with Susan Johnson and Jed ($4.50). Susan needs a new man—the Billy Copley affair didn’t work out. When we got there, everyone was already watching the Wimbledon match between Bjorn Borg and Vitas Gerulaitis. Those last two weren’t there yet, they were having dinner together. The match went on three hours, and somewhere in there Vitas came in with a girlfriend but Bjorn had gone home from dinner. The joke is always that Bjorn sleeps for four hours then plays tennis for two, and that Vitas plays tennis for two hours then discotheques for four. Now Vitas has just discovered New York/New York. Susan Johnson was hurt, all the butch athletes had girls that were tall, slender, blonde, long-haired. She’s just cute and little and brown-haired.
There was a lot to drink, no cocaine. Everyone teased Gerulaitis that he was wearing his gold coke-cutter razorblade around his neck in the match. He’s in training now, he left early and only ate a plum.
Tuesday, August 23, 1977
Dinner to interview Diahnne Abbott was at Quo Vadis. Picked up Catherine. Bob began asking Diahnne (laughs) in many different ways how it felt to be colored. “Are you really colored? How do you feel about your skin? Do you like to dance?” And then he got it down to what did it feel like to be colored and in bed with Bobby De Niro. Then I think she must have slipped Bob some coke—he went into the bathroom and came back a zombie.
Diana Vreeland was there for dinner with Alessandro Albrizzi from Venice, at a table behind us. Then later as we were leaving, I introduced Diahnne to Diana and Diana said, “I’m madly in love with your husband.” We went over in Diahnne’s car to Studio 54. Fred and Ahmet Ertegun and Earl McGrath were there. Earl said he was thrilled that Fred had agreed to so little money for the billboard I’ll be doing for the Stones.
Diahnne didn’t like the music that was playing, it wasn’t right, she wanted to leave. Went up to Elaine’s. She played some songs on the jukebox that she wasn’t able to hear at Studio 54. Bob continued the questioning on how it felt to be colored.
She told about her waitressing jobs in the Village at the Left or Right Bank, places like that. Then Bob asked her about politics, and she said she didn’t think about it, and then Bob brought up Idi Aminl I mean, everything he said was colored (Elaine’s $50).
Then Diahnne invited us down to her apartment. It was peculiar, it was like this meant she was really accepting us or something. Barrow Street. She had clothes all over, she was buying lots and lots of clothes. They’re looking for a new apartment and I suggested Park Avenue, but she said they have an image to protect. She served Dom Perignon, showed us baby pictures. She let the limo go, which was tacky, and we had to cab home. As we passed the Studio 54 neighborhood, Bob screamed, “Let me out, let me out” (cab $5).
Tuesday, August 30, 1977
Up early to go to see Dr. Lyons for a teeth-cleaning. Went to Park Avenue to get a cab downtown and one pulled up and the door opened and it was lovely Barbara Rose saying, “Let’s share a cab downtown.” The fare on the meter was already past $3, I noticed. She’s now going with Jerry Leiber, the Leiber-Stoller guy who wrote “Hound Dog” and so she talked about Elvis, although I don’t think Leiber went to the funeral in Memphis. She said she and Leiber are writing or have written a play and they want Al Pacino to play Elvis. God, I just hate her. She’s so awful (cab total $7).
They’re saying that the article Caroline Kennedy did on the Elvis funeral for Rolling Stone made fun of the local people, but I can understand that—Caroline’s really intelligent and the people down there really were dumb. Elvis never knew there were mo
re interesting people.
When I got to 12th Street I walked around University Place for ideas. Then over to the office. Sandy Brant was there with Jed going over decorating schemes for Peter Brant and Joe Allen’s office building in Greenwich that Philip Johnson designed. Jed’s in the decorating business now.
Cab to Alkit Camera ($3) on 53rd and Third. The cab driver didn’t even turn around to look at me but he knew who I was. I asked him how he could tell. He said that he’d been buying art since he was twenty and just “stacking it around the house like the Collyer Brothers.” He went to auctions and places for art bargains, and he was thrilled to have me in the cab. I got a new camera because I had to take pictures of Chrissie Evert later in the afternoon. For the Athletes series.
Had Bettina, the famous Chanel model from the fifties, to lunch. She’s the beautiful one who was in the car with Aly Khan when he died. She’s here to open an Ungaro store on Madison around the corner from my house. She was wearing a purple dress.
Chrissie said she and Burt Reynolds were talking about me recently, and that’s why she wanted to do this. Victor came in and he started dragging out the Shadow paintings of cocks and assholes that I’ve been doing—the paintings all the “landscapes” have been posing for—and somebody had to tell him not to. I gave her a copy of the Burt Reynolds issue of Interview.
