The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Tuesday, January 1, 1980

  Got up late, at 11:00, but I hadn’t drunk so it wasn’t so bad. I glued myself and got Rupert on the phone. He said he’d come in to work at 12:00.

  I brought Interviews with me but I had a hard time passing them out because nobody was around. Got to the office and worked for three or four hours, and then went down to Heiner Friedrich’s gallery where they were doing a repeat of Walter de Maria’s Dirt show (cab $3). Robert Rosenblum was there with his new baby and he had it with a cloth around it. It was the same show, but with new black dirt filling the gallery up.

  Later, sat around at home and worked. Marina called and said to come over and have the food that was piled on her stove the night before, gallons and gallons. So I did, and it was just the kind of food I wanted—parsnips and leeks and things like that. Walked over there. John Bowes-Lyons was there, I brought a present for him because the other night he’d said that he was bringing one for me, but he must have just done that so I’d bring him something, because he just had an old tie for me, he’s so terrible.

  Wednesday, January 2, 1980

  Gigi came by 860 and she did a really good job with the makeup on me, but the wig she got wasn’t good. This is for the Whitney poster. Ronnie was out sick. Gigi told me that she’s pregnant and that if Ronnie wants the baby she’ll stay in New York and they’ll have it, but if he doesn’t she’ll get a divorce and leave.

  Whitney Tower called and said that Kenneth Anger threw paint at Fred’s door up on 89th and Lex again. He must think I still live there—he’s been saying I’m the Devil or something, I don’t know what his problem is.

  Thursday, January 3, 1980

  I wandered around, passing out Interviews (cab $3.50, art supplies $54.88). Cabbed to Union Square and then walked to office. Lunch was for Lewis Allen the producer and somebody who works with him, and I’d invited Princess Pignatelli and her husband when we’d run into them at Mr. Chow’s. And Bianca called and said she was coming down with John Samuels to meet Lewis Allen.

  Lewis Allen was seeing me because he wants to produce a Broadway “evening” with me, like an “evening” with the Beatles, you know? One where I sit and read from the Philosophy book. In the sixties Lewis Allen tried to buy the rights to Clockwork Orange for us to make into a movie. He produced Annie and things, and his wife is Jay Presson Allen, she writes screenplays like Funny Lady.

  Friday, January 4, 1980

  Stayed uptown because I was taking Bianca to meet my agent Joan Hyler, who’s also John Samuels’s agent—the four of us for lunch at the Russian Tea Room. I picked up Bianca and we cabbed over ($3). The Weissberger guy was there with Anita Loos, Maureen Stapleton, and Imogene Coca, and that was thrilling, seeing queens of comedy. Frank Perry was there, a little fatter. Oh, and John doesn’t use the name Samuels. He’s “John Stockwell” now—Stockwell’s his middle name and that’s what he’s decided to use for his acting career. It was funny to hear him being introduced to people that way. And I didn’t recognize that it was John in the new Armani ad. They saw him in Interview and asked him to be in their ad.

  And Joan told me she had a part for me in The Fan—a walk-on in the party scene. She’s a camp. She said she’s a good agent because she knows what she wants and makes quick decisions. I guess people really act like what they are—agents act like agents and actors act like actors … Oh but I guess artists act like artists.

  I went to Union Square (cab $3). I worked all afternoon with Rupert. Worked till 8:00. It was snowing and it was startling to see snow, and it was pretty, it was nice, sticking.

  Saturday, January 5, 1980

  Worked all afternoon until 6:00 on the German ladies and some backgrounds and the Jewish Geniuses. John Samuels invited us to the ballet with his father who’s chairman of the board at City Center. Got to the theater and we had good seats in the grand tier or the dress circle. Peter Martins danced and he was good. Bought drinks at intermission ($20). Mr. Samuels took us backstage and the girl who didn’t marry Balanchine was there. What’s her name? Shelly? Shirley? Suzy? It was fun.

  Went to the Russian Tea Room for dinner ($210).

  Monday, January 7, 1980

  Walked over to Doc Cox’s for my yearly checkup. Took some Interviews with me for the reception room. Talked to Rosemary. She and Doc Cox were fighting while she took my blood, she was complaining that she wanted a career change but that she was too old to train to be a brain specialist. I told her she should go into fashion, do makeup. I was there till 2:00, and then I wandered around with some Interviews for a while. Cabbed to Union Square ($5) and walked to office.

  Got the newspapers. The Russians are invading Afghanistan.

  Tuesday, January 8, 1980

  Suzie Frankfurt came down with Gianni Versace, and Jane Forth was there to do the makeup on him. I photographed him for an hour. A German from Stern called and I gave him a phone interview. Bianca just dropped John Samuels and he’s crushed.

  Wednesday, January 9, 1980

  I was dropping Catherine off after dinner and we saw two limousines out in front of Halston’s, so we decided to crash. Inside it was just Steve Rubell with a cold, Halston with a cold, and Bianca with a cold. They were going to Studio 54 and they made us come with them.

  Studio 54 was empty, but fun. Sly Stallone was there, looking around the place for how to shoot a movie there. Susan Anton wasn’t with him, he was after Bianca and it seemed like they were going to go fuck in the basement. Anyway, they disappeared, we couldn’t find them. Stallone looks good, he’s lost weight and he looks really handsome.

  Friday, January 11, 1980

  Thomas Ammann had invited us to La Grenouille for a 10:00 dinner. Bianca was supposed to meet us there, but she never came, and Mary Richardson had called and I guess was hinting that she wanted me to invite John Samuels, but I didn’t get the hint, she should have just said something. It was confusing, everyone was playing different games.

  Then Catherine arrived with our art dealer Heiner Bastion. She’d taken him to the tennis matches for me, and when they came in I just accidentally said something like she hadn’t had the good seats for him, and she was upset and actually cried a little, saying, “I took your friend to the matches and now you’re ruining his whole evening saying I didn’t have good seats.” But I think she was just upset because McEnroe lost.

  Saturday, January 12, 1980

  Ran into Peter Beard and Cheryl Tiegs on the way to Le Club and they gave me a ride. Cheryl was in a cast, she’d fallen down in Montauk, and I bet Peter pushed her. I had a fight with Peter in the car—it was his car—we were talking and he said that “everything is coming down.” And I said that Cheryl should look more glamorous and beautiful when she goes out if she’s going to be the number-one top beauty in the world. She looked good, but plain. She wears the worst, funny clothes.

  Sunday, January 13, 1980

  Got up early, dead tired. Catherine called and wanted to go to the matches but I was tired and they make me too nervous. Went to church.

  I took a gallbladder pill with wine, you’re supposed to take it with water, and I wasn’t supposed to eat anything for twenty hours before going to the doctor, which I was doing at 9:00 on Monday morning.

  Monday, January 14, 1980

  Up at 8:00 to glue myself for my appointment with Doc Cox. Went over there. He and Rosemary were fighting again. The waiting room was rich ladies like Dorothy Hammerstein. The fat girl gave me my X-ray but she couldn’t find the gallstones. So I took the white stuff and sat around and waited. I took a new breathing test where you blow in a container that goes around in a circle. I was finished by 11:00 (cab $4). Went to the office to meet with David and Sam Aaron who own Sherry-Lehmann, the liquor store. They want a portrait of a bottle of wine.

  Then two guys from the IRS came in, and they were really horrible, screaming and carrying on and saying they wanted to see me, and I hid in Fred’s office area. There was a tall one who was really horrible and a short one who said
he liked my paintings, telling me how good they were. But the tall one was terrible and rude. We called Bob Montgomery our lawyer, who was coming down for a 5:00 meeting. He said not to talk to them.

  By this time they said that what they were after was Rupert Smith. Fred said I still shouldn’t talk to them. The little one was trying to get me to say something. Finally they gave me a summons and left. They just want records, cancelled checks or something. They were rude and awful, though. And Bob Montgomery cancelled and rescheduled.

  Tuesday, January 15, 1980

  Lewis Allen came by to talk about the musical—he wants to have puppets on stage with a recording of my voice saying things from one of the books—the Philosophy book or Popism.

  Interviewed Ron Duguay for three hours and then we brought him to Halston’s for a dinner for Martha Graham. Victor is back living at the house now, I think he sold his loft. Steve Rubell was there, and they were supposed to sentence him, but they postponed it, he said, because they want him to testify in court that Hamilton Jordan was at Studio 54 taking coke and he said he wouldn’t, and Halston said, “But you already said it on TV,” and Steve said, “Yeah, but that’s not the same as saying it on a Bible,” and I mean, I agree—it’s not.

  Thursday, January 17, 1980

  Interview gave a screening of American Gigolo at the Gulf + Western building (cab $4.50). Richard Gere was really good and Lauren Hutton was great. She’s a senator’s wife who gives the hustler his murder alibi. Richard Gere has a sex scene where you see him completely nude. Nando did the art direction and at the end of the movie there’s a scene where a pimp is being thrown off a balcony by Richard Gere and you see my three posters in the background, the Torsos. The scene is played against them.

  After the movie I dropped Catherine, but right when I did, Halston’s limo pulled up and he and Bianca said they were going to Studio 54 for Steve Rubell’s farewell party before his sentencing, so my cab followed their limo ($3.50). When we got there we stood around, and they were taking pictures. Halston was smart, he disappeared, but I didn’t realize what was going on. It was really crowded and it was early. I dropped Catherine off at 2:00. Somebody said that they’d put locks on Steve’s safety-deposit boxes.

  Friday, January 18, 1980

  Steve and Ian got three and a half years each.

  Monday, January 21, 1980

  I tried to find new spaces in the back of 860 for Interview so they can expand their office space. Bob says they need more because it’s hard to lie to advertisers when other people are listening. But I don’t think that’s what’s hard to do with other people listening. I think what it’s hard to do with other people listening is make personal phone calls.

  Rupert came by and he’d made the Shadows two inches smaller than I’d said to—he just decided he would—and he had no right to do that and I screamed at him and now the stretchers have to be smaller.

  Tuesday, January 22, 1980

  Worked in the back on the Beuys portrait. Ronnie was going around saying that he hated himself and that he was going to go with Brigid to the A.A. meeting on Park Avenue that she was going to. And Gigi called and said she wants a divorce. She told him that she’d had an abortion. That’s what she told him, but you can’t tell with these girls. Who knows if she was ever really pregnant.

  Thursday, January 24, 1980

  Victor Bockris came over with William Burroughs. I introduced Bianca to William Burroughs. Bianca’s hair is really short now, like a crewcut, it looks terrible. Jade was painting in the back with me and she sat on her first painting. I gave her some diamond dust to throw on the canvas.

  Friday, January 25, 1980

  Marina Schiano called about the dinner Mica Ertegun was giving that night. It got complicated because Bianca wanted to come but at first she didn’t want to come if Mick was going to be there and then she did want to come if Mick was going to be there—it was complicated.

  Glued myself together. Catherine said we could go to Halston’s and go from there. He had a limo. Bianca got a call in the middle of getting ready from some friend of hers who said that on cable channel C they were doing my astrology chart, so we turned it on and it was a like a maharajah doing my chart and saying funny things from newspaper clippings, and it was so weird. He looked like Jerry Colonna. Or like Gene Shalit, but Indian. I didn’t want to watch it, it was too weird. There he was doing my chart with two girls discussing it, it was really nutty.

  Then we went to the Erteguns’ and it was great. Mick was there. Jerry’s out of town. And it was like he and Bianca were courting. They were together flirting. Bianca was touching him, it was exciting. Bianca had called Bob and made him get John Samuels invited for after dinner, to get Mick jealous, I guess, but Mick was being so nice to her that when John Samuels called there, she told him he couldn’t come because Mick was there and it would get “complicated.”

  Then we went back to Halston’s house and Bob threw up in Halston’s sink, he’d had too much to drink. Then Bianca said she’d take him home, and after an hour she still wasn’t back. So we went out to see where the car was, and we couldn’t believe our eyes—the driver was getting out of the back of the limousine, and about half a minute later, Bianca got out. And she looked dazed. I mean, she could have been asleep. But was she giving him a blow job? Was he going down on her? Was he trying to rob her? We didn’t know. Barbara had said that Bianca probably went to see Mick who’d left before her. But it was too weird. We were stunned. And the driver wasn’t good-looking or anything, so we just couldn’t figure it out.

  Saturday, January 26, 1980

  John Samuels is going to California, he was upset because Bianca told him not to come and pick her up the night before. Bianca said she might go back to London.

  I dropped Rupert (cab $3.50). I glued myself together and called “Suzy,” the columnist—Aileen Mehle—and asked if she wanted to walk to the Metropolitan Club, and she said, “Walk? What do you mean, ‘walk’?” And I didn’t have a car, so I went out and hunted for a cab and it was hard to get one. Then when I got to her building I had my contacts in, so I couldn’t see which bell to ring (cab $5). We were going to what used to be called the Diamond Ball until one of the ladies coming home from it got robbed of her diamonds, so now it’s called the Winter Party. It’s for some kind of international education for kids, I think—a benefit. It was so many old fogies, “Suzy” said she hadn’t been to it in five years and that now she knew why.

  Frolic Weymouth from the Brandywine Museum was there with a lady who looked just like all those D.A.R. ladies. “Suzy” said she really needed a drink. The old fogies were coming over and saying who’d just died. That day. We were at a table with the Zilkhas and an ambassador from Turkey. Then “Suzy” wanted to leave. She agreed to walk home. She said that I had to come and have Chinese vodka with her. Someday.

  Monday, January 28, 1980

  Got up, it was a nice cold New York day. I did my work at home, made calls on the phone (cab $4). Walked over to the office. It looks like the construction on the “Underground” discotheque is almost finished. (laughs) The Underground, I’m not kidding, that’s what they’re calling it. They’re making it look like a fortress. They’re putting in the big air-conditioning machines. I hear it’s the same people who had Infinity which burned to the ground.

  I sent “Suzy” some flowers for being my date the other night.

  Wednesday, January 30, 1980

  Went to Joanne Winship’s for dinner (cab $2). Went to 417 Park Avenue, a building I didn’t even know was there. It’s the only building below 57th Street on Park where people still live now, it’s on the corner of 55 th.

  Patrice Munsel was singing at the piano with a vice-president from Benton & Bowles. She wore an outrageous hat and I’ve never seen anything like it—like two big Mickey Mouse ears. Mary McFadden was there with a boyfriend, a German boy who was just so good-looking. The big star of the evening was Polly Bergen, she lives in New York again, and we did the running rou
tine about Barry Landau of “How’s your friend?” “I thought he was your friend.” “He’s not my friend, I thought he was your friend.” Barry’s been calling the office but they tell him automatically that I’m out.

  And Joanne Winship has that tough society voice that just drives you up the wall! She talks nonstop and it makes you crazy. And Mr. Winship works for Associated Press. And he looks like Mr. Milquetoast, he has that shape and he’s so calm. I went to this dinner because I just really wanted to because Joanne’s so nutty that I knew I would love it.

  Thursday, January 31, 1980

  Picked up Ina Ginsburg to go with her and her son Mark to see A Lady from Dubuque, the new Edward Albee play opening with Irene Worth. The play is three couples, arguing a lot. Irene was really good, but somehow she just can’t get a big hit. One of the best lines in the play was when somebody says, “How can you have that Jasper Johns on the wall?” and the big black guy says, “It’s better than having a crappy Andy Warhol,” and everybody turned around to look at me.

  Friday, February 1, 1980

  I was going to Diane Von Furstenberg’s birthday party for Barry Diller. I’d invited Catherine, and we were picking up Truman, too. He’s like a different person now, he’s very distant, not friendly. He said he’d have something for Interview’s April issue. I tried to tape him, but he didn’t have anything to say. It’s strange, he’s like one of those people from outer space—the body snatchers—because it’s the same person, but it’s not the same person. And he’s looking older, he either gained weight or lost it or something, but he isn’t thinking about the way he looks. I can’t figure it out.