The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Talked to Jon who’s in L.A.

  Wednesday, January 12, 1983

  Chris was at the office and showed me the photographs he took in Aspen and he wants to use them for his monthly page of photographs in Interview and I told him he had to fix some things. I mean, he had Barry Diller in photographs with people he wouldn’t want to be in photographs with, and Barry’s Jon’s boss.

  And Grace Jones came by with her Swedish boyfriend. And I gave her a speech about how she should look more normal or no one would hire her. It’s the same speech I gave Debbie Harry after I saw Videodrome, that she should just be normal-looking, keep her hair red so she could get the Faye Dunaway parts.

  Then Barbara Allen also came down, she’s now going with this really rich multi-multi-guy Henrik de Kwiatkowski, and everybody’s hoping she’ll this time get married. But Barbara’s really changed a lot. She’s like one of these older women now. Like the Roxanne Pulitzer one. She still looks good, but it’s the attitude. I’m not putting her down, she’s really sweet, but it’s just an attitude change. They go from being a girl to this kind of woman. So this is the guy C.Z. was dating for a little while after her husband died.

  We went to see Peter Pan (tickets $10). And that was great. Disney still holds up, the drawing and the color (food $5). And then on the way out I opened a door and knocked over a little girl. What’s wrong with her parents, taking her to the movies at 10:00 at night! I felt so horrible—it happened because of those doors that go two ways.

  Friday, January 14, 1983

  Got to the new building and I thought everything would be all done, but it was the same old workmen still working. I couldn’t stand it. And I saw where my painting area will be—it’s down there in the dark, in the basement. I thought that was just going to be for storage. It looks like something we shouldn’t be doing. I mean, when I go down to 860 Broadway it’s sunny and so bright in the front that you feel good. I may just find another place to paint in. The Great Jones Street building might be good. Or I may move up to the “Entertainment Area” on the third floor, which is the terrace covered with glass, because it’s light there. But I don’t know what we’re doing with all this space! Fred has this huge area and what’s he going to do in it? Nobody will ever see anybody anymore. Brigid has this huge entranceway, and Vincent has this big area for his TV things. It’s fine for Interview to have a lot of space because it makes sense, but I don’t know why we don’t just go into the real estate business and rent most of it out.

  And I thought we were going to have a huge great elevator, but the elevator is 1” X 1”. I didn’t want to think about it, so I just began screaming at everybody.

  So I got home and I watched Rebel Without a Cause, and gee, it was so strange to see Sal Mineo looking like a baby, just a real real baby, and James Dean and Dennis Hopper look like grown men. You can’t figure out what this young thing is doing with them, and yet they’re all supposed to be the same age. And James Dean looked so modern—the jeans and the Lacoste shirt and the red windbreaker, and leaning over with no underwear showing. And Natalie Wood looked her best in this, an American Teenager. And Dennis looked so good. And it was sad. The maid was left over from Imitation of Life and she had the St. Christopher medal and she said, “Why couldn’t he have somebody?” about poor little Sal Mineo. It was sad. Because James Dean had his head on Natalie’s lap and then Sal Mineo came and put his head on James Dean’s stomach and then he fell asleep and then James Dean and Natalie tiptoed away because they wanted to go kiss and be romantic, and it was sad, he didn’t have anybody.

  Tuesday, January 25, 1983

  I saw the tape I did for the first of the TV shows Vincent’s shooting. They’re for the Madison Square Garden Network and they’ll be on cable TV. It’s interviews with people talking into the camera. Susan Blond was a little corny and I was terrible. Reeeallly reeeallly peculiar. I’m just a freak. I can’t change it. I’m too unusual. It was really bad—I was on top of the Empire State Building introducing the guys who light the buildings.

  Thursday, January 27, 1983— New York—Atlantic City, New Jersey—New York

  I was going down later to Atlantic City, my first time, with Diana Ross to see the Frank Sinatra show and bring a print of the portrait I did of her down to the guy who owns the Golden Nugget. Diana had just signed a contract with the Golden Nugget to play in this room, they’re paying her a lot, and she’s never played a small room before, so she wanted to see it.

  And I had a fight with the assistant art director girl at Interview, I called her dumb, but then I cooled down. It was like Mr. Brodovich, the famous art director at Bazaar, when he used to scream at me. You know, it was just people doing what they want to do after you tell them what to do. But Fred told me that you can get more out of people if you tell them they’re dumb in a nice way, so the situation cooled down.

  And the Twiggy cover came out so bad—it was so ugly, Twiggy in a snood—that we’re going to use a Robert Risko caricature for the cover. Because Vanity Fair is coming out and they’re stealing all our artists, so we wanted to get this look out first since it’s going to be their look.

  Then suddenly it was 5:00 and I had to be home by 5:15 when Diana Ross was picking me up to go to the helicopter (cab $5.50). Just had time to put my contacts in. The doorbell rang and it was just Diana alone, so I was nervous. Then we went to the 60th Street place and got a Pan Am helicopter that the Golden Nugget was paying for.

  We had to wait a few minutes for her lawyer, and also going down with us was Frank Sinatra’s tailor who had an Italian name but looked Jewish. And I liked the lawyer, there was something adorable about him. I’ve noticed that all these people on top have a twinkle in their eye, their eyes twinkle. And he kept calling Los Angeles all night because of the big floods there, to find out if his house had gone down the drain with his wife and kids. As a matter of fact, everybody from California was calling to find out if their houses were still there. Diana called, too. And you’d hear things from the phone like, “Oh no! The neighbor’s house just went!”

  I told Diana she should really marry Barry Diller and she said how could she take a girlfriend’s man—meaning Diane Von Furstenberg. I told her she really had to do more movies.

  And we talked about David Geffen. I told her she should really be friends with him again because he was in with that crowd, and she said that they had been really good friends, that he was so great to her when her mother had cancer, he took her to Sloan-Kettering when she had no idea at all what to do, and I asked her when this was and she said, “Last year.” So I said, “Well, what happened?” And she sort of said Dreamgirls, the musical that’s about the Suprêmes but they don’t call them the Suprêmes. Geffen produced it. She said that at first she was going to sue but then she didn’t.

  And Diana tips people herself and does everything herself. It’s really great.

  And as we left New York the skyline was so beautiful.

  When we got to Atlantic City the guy who met us was somebody who Edmund Gaultney had brought to the office once. He took us to the Golden Nugget and it turns out his brother, Steve Wynn, owns it. He was there with his wife and kids, and they’re a good-looking American family—I couldn’t tell if they were Italian or Jewish.

  And Diana couldn’t decide which of two outfits to wear. I said I’d be her hairdresser and decide, but then I couldn’t decide, either. She finally put on a skimpy white dress, but then later changed her mind and wore tight black pants and a top. So I got a tour of the Golden Nugget and that was exciting. There were literally eighteen restaurants, and Victorian was the style for everything. I asked the guy why everything was Victorian and he said nobody gambled if it looks modern.

  We went up an escalator five stories high. They said they’d send a plane for me whenever I wanted, but when I said I wasn’t a gambler they dropped me. Diana is a big gambler, though, but she hasn’t gambled there yet.

  Then they said that Frank Sinatra always goes on on time and so we got
to the room and it’s about 500 seats. They sell 200 and then give 300 to the high rollers. Frank came on and he did all his songs and it was great.

  And he introduced Diana Ross and me in the audience, he said, “We have two fabulous, famous people in the audience, each in their own fields, one an artist, one a singer,” and the introduction went on for a long time. And Barbara Sinatra was between us. She was wearing a little black dress, she looks great. I couldn’t think of what to say so I asked her if her son was still dating Barbara Allen, although I knew he wasn’t.

  Afterward we went to their suite and for the first time Frank shook hands with me. And gee, he looks great. How old is he? About sixty-seven? And he doesn’t wear a toupee. I’m sure. I’m an expert, and I really would say absolutely not—I think he’s maybe had transplants and that they look really good. And the tailor was there measuring for suits, and he was straight but he was kissing and hugging all these guys like a gay seamstress. It was so camp. And I didn’t have my camera so I didn’t take pictures, but anybody who tried to, the security people put their hands over the camera in sort of a great way.

  Frank said he was doing a song on his next album with Michael Jackson, and Diana said, “Why don’t you do one with we?”

  When Diana and I were alone for a moment, I told her that there were so many people with “funny names” here, and she pushed her nose sideways and said, “You mean like this?” And it was funny, it looked so Mafia. Home at 12:00.

  Friday, January 28, 1983

  Benjamin picked me up and we went on the usual rounds. We went over to Madison and I spotted Bob Colacello walking along the street. My first reaction was to change my direction and go the other way, but then I decided to catch up to him and talk to him, get it over with. I followed him into the chic little brick colonial Bank of New York on Madison. At first the guard tried to kick me out, but I made it over to Bob. This is Benjamin’s bank, too, which is funny, because he has to come up from the dumpy Lower East Side to go to it.

  So I said, “Oh hi, Bob. I was with Diana Ross last night and she took me to see Frank Sinatra and gee, I know you’ve been trying to interview him for so long and last night he said he’d probably do it, so do you still want to do it?” I was just trying to bring everything back to a friendly level, but Bob was so sour. I guess he does hate … well, so he said, “My agent, Mort Janklow, would never permit me to do that.” So I said, “Well, uh, gee, okay Bob, it’s great to see you, really great.” So I left the bank feeling so moody. And then to make it worse, it was one of those times I tried to give people Interviews and they refused them (cab $4.50, phone $.50).

  I was then in the neighborhood of Doc Cox and so I stopped in to chit-chat. Rosemary is out for a couple of months, he said, because she got hepatitis. And did I ever mention that she once told me that a man came in with a vacuum cleaner attached to his cock? That’s a good one. So I tried to get Doc Cox to confirm what I’d been hearing about Henry Post, that he has AIDS and now he’s sinking fast. He picked up a virus from his cat. He’s in New York Hospital.

  Monday, January 31, 1983

  I watched Chinatown on TV. Why isn’t Robert Towne writing great things like that now?

  Went to meet Lidija (cab $6) and worked out. Then had an appointment to see Keith Haring in Soho (cab $3.50). Went with Chris and Peter. He rents a huge studio without a bathroom for a thousand dollars, and it’s great. And there was this Puerto Rican kid sitting there, and I asked what he did and Keith said the kid does the writing in Keith’s graffiti paintings, so I got confused, I don’t know what Keith does. He paints around the words, I guess.

  Wednesday, February 2, 1983

  Was dropped by Benjamin (cab $10) at 277 Park, the Chemical Bank building with the big solarium on the ground floor. A meeting about financing our new building. You can really see how these banks are spending all the money. About thirty executives were eating with us—Fred and Vincent met me there—and for each one there was a black waiter.

  And the bank buys all this cheap art, like it’s from a drugstore or something, and then they put a plaque in. I don’t know, maybe this will be the art to collect, who knows, but God….

  And they put in stairways going from one floor to the next, as if you’re getting married. Those kind of stairways.

  Fred was going off to California with Gael Love and Barbara Colacello to promote Interview. Fred’s reading all his old Vogues and Vanity Fairs again for ideas, which is great, he’s working more with Interview.

  Thursday, February 3, 1983

  Went to Antonio’s show at Parsons with Jon (cab $4). It was really crowded and I got mobbed for autographs, and I was signing away, and Grace Jones was refusing to sign autographs, telling the girls and boys to get lost, but then when she saw me signing so much, I think she got embarrassed, so she came over and explained that her public liked it better when she treated them that way. I couldn’t believe her.

  Then to the Keith Haring opening (cab $4). It was on the Lower East Side, at the Fun Gallery, it’s called. So we walked into the place and there’s René Ricard, and he’s screaming, “Oh my God! From the sixties to the eighties and I’m still seeing you everywhere!” And I said how could he have said all those awful things about me in the Edie book and he said that I should have seen it before they cut it.

  And Keith’s show looked good, it was his pictures hanging on a background of his pictures. Like my Whitney retrospective show was—all hung on top of my Cow wallpaper. We left there and Chris and Peter wanted to go to the Coach House, naturally, because it was the most expensive place.

  Friday, February 4, 1983

  It was freezing out.

  Steve Rubell called and said he was sending tickets to the Joan Rivers thing at Carnegie Hall that night and invited me to Calvin’s for drinks before the show. He also told me that he’d sent Bob over to see about the Page Six job at the Post, but that they couldn’t believe the expense account he was asking for. I knew these places don’t pay much, just from the days when I used to work for Harper’s Bazaar. I guess you get perks, but ten years ago The New York Times sent a letter to all the writers saying that they could accept absolutely nothing for a gift. I guess Diana Vreeland, though, used to get so much, so many shoes and dresses.

  Went to Calvin’s on Central Park West (cab $4). I asked Steve if he’d invited Bob Colacello and he said no, that since Bob wasn’t working for anyplace why invite him. Calvin had fourteen boys and one girl—Sue Mengers. Barry Diller was there and Sandy Gallin, the big agent.

  It was fun talking to Sue, she’s such a pig. Then we went in limos to Carnegie Hall. Steve gave us two seats way off, separated from the center seats that he had.

  Joan Rivers came on with her boa, and she’s funny, but I don’t know how she can say the things she does and get away with it, how she’s not sued. Like she said that Richard Simmons is carrying Rex Reed’s baby, and she says that Christina Onassis looks like an ape, and she did a thing about Nancy Reagan picking her nose with a breadstick. But then afterwards everybody was talking like her, so I guess she’s popular.

  Saturday, February 5, 1983

  Catherine Guinness is in town. She’s staying at her old apartment, she kept it. And she’s getting married to the lord who dresses like the nineteenth century, Jamie, so there’s dinners for her. She’s been calling every day, she wants to go out.

  Sunday, February 6, 1983

  Went to church. Worked some more on drawings. Went to bed early. The phone didn’t ring all day.

  Monday, February 7, 1983

  Went to get black-tied for the Newsweek party. Lincoln Center by cab ($4). It was a boring party. No stars. Just Nancy Reagan and President and Mrs. Carter. Basically it was a big office party. The show of past Newsweek covers was interesting. Through all these years, it was all war war war. We wanted to leave early to go to Marianne Hinton’s party for Catherine on East 57th Street (cab $5).

  Catherine’s husband-to-be was there, Lord Neidpath. He was in Intervie
w once as a “First Impression.” I met him a few years ago. He has long black curly hair and he looks like he stepped out of the sixties, like right off the King’s Road—britches, and a silk jacket. And Fred was there and Shelley Wanger and Steve Aronson. So Catherine’s going to be a lady.

  Thursday, February 10, 1983

  I invited Jane Holzer to the Rolling Stones’ party for their movie opening because she was the one who introduced me to them in the sixties in the first place and she wanted to feel young again. Jane looked great. Cab to the Corso on East 86th Street, got there right at the right time. There were 100 policemen ($3).

  And a freelance photographer kid took my picture and said that the National Enquirer had called him about getting a picture of me for the cover. What can that be for? A palimony suit? Dying of cancer? It made me nervous trying to think.

  Missed a call from Jon in Las Vegas where Paramount was having their seventieth anniversary party.

  Friday, February 11, 1983

  The snow hadn’t started at the beginning of the day and I just didn’t believe it would, the weather reports are always wrong. But by 12:30 it’d started (cabs $5, $3, phone $.50).

  Interview was having a screening of The Lords of Discipline at Paramount and I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to get around so I hired a limousine. And then I went into Interview and invited some of the kids to ride up with me, and then Fred screamed at me that I had destroyed the office protocol. I keep forgetting that at Interview they have all these levels of who gets invited to what with who, based on how important your title is. Like a regular office. And I didn’t invite Robert Hayes to ride up with me because he was with his sister and his boyfriend Cisco, and Cisco has AIDS so I didn’t want to be that close to him.