The moods could get a little crazy—cocaine was the drug of choice—but, Geraldine says, “being brought up in a mad family, I just thought everyone had mad or manic moods. I was totally innocent and didn’t do drugs.” After six months, she left to marry David Ogilvy, a Scottish lord. “Andy was sort of horrified,” she remembers. “He said, ‘You belong here and you’re just throwing yourself away. You’re better than that.’” An interesting take because, according to Bob Colacello, “Andy always advised someone to marry someone rich.” In any case, Geraldine “never really saw him again, after that.”
Fred went to Geraldine’s wedding in 1980. We danced together. It was one of the better society balls because it took place at the Rothermeres’ country home; was superbly organized by Lady Elizabeth Anson, the Queen’s cousin; and had the right mix of generations, and an element of surprise via glamorous characters like the former King Constantine of Greece and fashion empress Diana Vreeland.
During my brief period of assisting Fred at the Warhol Studio, Vreeland had called. However, just as I was getting used to Fred’s friends, habits, and signs on his desk like SHIT OR GET OFF THE POT and NO FAVOR GOES UNPUNISHED, I was replaced by Sam Bolton—one of Andy’s walker-cum-minders. Suddenly I was working for Vincent, whose official title was vice president of Andy Warhol Enterprises. His large office was on the studio’s ground floor and opened onto the reception area. Lacking windows, it had to be artificially lit.
Thinking back, I doubt that any other organization—whether based in New York, London, or Los Angeles—would have kept me on. It would have been a straightforward case of “Andy died and so did your job description.” Allowing me to stay demonstrated the tremendously decent side of Fred. He knew that I was a wage slave who counted on a monthly check. And so I became Vincent’s assistant and haunted the studio’s glorious ground floor.
Having been a former Con Edison building, it had soaring ceilings, bleached wooden floors, and long corridors, and boasted certain areas that were painted fire-engine red and Irish Kelly green. The entrance consisted of a towering early-twentieth-century paned window with a gothic-style door. Andy et al. had arrived there in 1984 from 860 Broadway, the former Factory. There was still that just-moved-in atmosphere. In the ground-floor corridor there were an old carpet-covered sofa and Romanesque busts, while artworks like Andy’s Flower paintings, a Palais de la Nouveauté framed poster, and a nineteenth-century female portrait leaned against the tiled wall, and Keith Haring’s papier-mâché elephant perched on a ledge just below a stuffed lion. Fred had been the studio’s unofficial architect. His upstairs lair—painted Diana Vreeland red—was much more organized. It had a neo-gothic bookcase, a pair of Andy’s Liz paintings, and a tiger-skin rug. On one side, there was the dining room with a long table where friends or business associates were either entertained over lunch or grilled about their intentions. On the other side of Fred’s office, there was a narrow balcony that looked over the studio’s reception area. Pushing open the sliding doors, Fred would either come out barking orders—a sharp-suited version of Julius Caesar!—or have a quick smoke or tell a little story that amused him. The last was the most frequent.
Being Fred, he had his bêtes noires. One was an older woman named Ruth from the company’s accounts department. Clad in a thick coat even in the spring months, she was a skinny little creature with a light puff of gray hair on her head. “Good evening, Mr. Hughes,” she’d croak. Somehow Ruth would always catch Fred on his Caesar-like perch. And as soon as she left, Fred would imitate her, saying, “Good evening, Mr. Hughes.”
I wondered what irritated him. Ruth was well-meaning and harmless. Yet he claimed she was disingenuous. Perhaps she was a reminder of someone or something from his childhood. It was strange because Fred was chivalrous toward women, particularly older ones.
It was behavior that I never witnessed with Vincent. Good-natured, he had a West Coast and former hippie’s “We’re all equal” respect for people. Having originally come to New York in August 1969 when he was part of a rock band—the Babies—he had enough of a seasoned sense of humor to deal with the studio’s pet monster, Brigid Berlin; Jay Shriver, the studio’s resident stud; Sam Bolton, who appeared to have problems; and Ed “Fast Eddie” Hayes, the new official attorney for the Andy Warhol estate.
The overworked Vincent had his moods—his favorite expression was “cranky”—but no sweeter guy existed. He enjoyed the company of women: his terrific wife, the art director Shelly Dunn, certainly indicated this and was also amused by a strong character. It was just as well. Vincent now claims, “I thought you were wonderful until I started asking you to do things.” Apparently, I would hand back assignments with a smile. I love the idea of being cheeky but strongly doubt that I was that bad. I think Vincent was surprised to have inherited me and didn’t quite know what to do.
A Speedy Gonzales on the typing keys, Vincent had never had an assistant before. Until Andy’s death, he’d been a one-man show who looked after the books, chased debtors, and made sense of the organization. However, it was to change with the business of Andy’s litigation, the lawsuit against the New York Hospital, and all the old Warhol art that was coming out of the woodwork at an alarming rate.
Andy’s final show, The Last Supper, had opened six weeks before his death. Commissioned in 1984 by Alexander Iolas, the work was based on Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece and planned for an exhibition in Milan at the Palazzo delle Stelline. Warhol produced nearly one hundred variations on the theme via silkscreens and acrylic paintings on canvas.
At the time, The Last Supper was viewed as the largest series of religious-themed work created by an American artist. Rupert Smith, the master printer in Andy’s studio, couldn’t find a decent photograph of Leonardo’s painting—the images were too dark. So Andy and his team worked from a white plastic sculpture found on the New Jersey Turnpike, because that had clear definition, as well as images found in a Korean religious store and a Jesus night-light newspaper advertisement.
Other series that Andy had been working on included his Fright Wig self-portraits, his Piss paintings (he had done a 1982 portrait of Basquiat using the oxidized technique), his Camouflage paintings, his Statue of Liberty paintings, as well as Ten Great Conductors of the Twentieth Century, which was commissioned by Thaddaeus Ropac for his Salzburg gallery. “Andy was obsessed with Herbert von Karajan—how he was an untouchable,” recalls Ropac. “And the idea was to do five historical conductors like Gustav Mahler and Toscanini and five living ones like Georg Solti and Leonard Bernstein.” The project was to take a year and the goal was about 150 drawings, paintings, and prints, but Andy died halfway through.
Since the show was slotted for August—a prime time in Salzburg—Ropac had to rustle up a new one. With the help of Leo Castelli, Andy’s New York dealer, Ropac exhibited iconic work, such as a Campbell’s Soup Can drawing, Triple Elvis, a Marilyn, and an Electric Chair. “At the time I sold a few, but it was hard,” he recalls. “For instance, I couldn’t sell the Triple Elvis that has become now one of the most demanded Warhols. People were complaining that it was wrinkled.”
The Triple Elvis was then priced at $400,000 but today would go for $80 million or even $90 million, Ropac says. When Andy died, the market for his work was fairly flat. “The problem was that Warhol was not taken seriously during his life. He was considered a lightweight and social figure. But the brilliance of Andy was the incredible force of ideas. He took Marcel Duchamp . . . to another level.”
Andy also had a wicked sense of humor, reflected in his attitude toward Jay Shriver, his last studio assistant. Jay liked roles and titles, but when working on Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes, which was directed by Don Monroe and produced by Vincent, he became anxious. “Jay asked me to ask Andy for a proper title,” recalls Vincent. “And so Andy says, ‘Tell him he’s a big-shot executive.’ So I said, ‘Jay, you’re a big-shot executive.’ But I made him an associate producer.”
Dear Jay, the producer not to associate with, except yours truly did. He lived in faded Levi’s and button-down shirts. The look suited his body, which, with no effort, consisted of a toned figure, with broad shoulders and muscular arms. His chiseled face and large green eyes were quite beautiful. But the problem was his megalomania. Jay admitted as much, boasting that even Andy teased him about his ego.
Unsophisticated as Mr. Shriver was, he was il capo dei capi. It was actually part of his attraction and allowed him to swivel from being charming to being exasperating to being charming. A power game began between us. (Oddly enough, a few months before, a fortune-teller had predicted this.) Sometimes our arguments became so heated that Vincent would say, “Guys, pleeease,” and tell us to leave his office. But as often happens with two stubborn, feisty characters, there was a chemistry. The fights softened and cooled, and within a few weeks, he would ask why I wouldn’t go out with him. Our courting sessions often occurred in the afternoon when I was doing the Andy scrapbooks.
Ordered from Airline Stationery, the scrapbooks were vast black books with stiff black pages that I would paste with countless newspaper clippings about Andy’s death. It was an archival activity that I enjoyed, and having Jay’s handsome presence at my side made it fun.
Warned by Fred that Jay was “a must to avoid” who only went out with models and the occasional fashion stylist, I held him off at first. Then lamely tried with “I’m not your type, Jay.” This briefly led to Signor Shriver getting snarky until he tried the softer approach. “If I wore a suit, would that make a difference?” he once whined. Suit, when I found him hot stuff in jeans? Still, I thought it was adorable that he was prepared to make that effort. I was also touched by the description of his wearing bandages on his eyes when he was a little kid. That image lingered and touched a tender place.
Finally, Jay had a physical presence, a fact that Andy frequently mentioned in his diaries. And as my favorite biblical saying goes, “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Put more simply, he had a body, I had a body. But it was doomed from the word go.
Shortly after it began, Fred and I shared a cab. Perhaps prompted by that afternoon’s incident when Jay and I held up the studio’s elevator, Fred suddenly said, “I hope you’re not seeing Jay.” I didn’t answer. “Because he really, really has no idea.” Then he stopped. Smart Fred. I was too wily to ask what he meant. But he was warning me again. Of course, I was keen to prove the old-fashioned Fred—who believed that the well-born should stick to the well-born, and likewise for the creatively bohemian and so forth—wrong. Jay lacked enthusiasm and respect for Fred too. In his opinion, he couldn’t light a candle to Andy, who “brought everything together and sort of balanced it all out.”
As Fred predicted, it quickly transpired that Jay and I had fat zero in common except arguing and talking about work: dull after a certain moment. However, since it was my first New York romance—adding downtown into the equation—I was determined to make a valiant go of it. It appealed that he lived at 342 Bowery—a building belonging to Andy—that was right around the corner from Jean-Michel Basquiat’s studio at 57 Great Jones Street, another Andy building. The tales about Basquiat’s decadence were notorious. Wilfredo Rosado recalls “parties being catered by Mr Chow, six large tins of caviar bought with cash, and bringing out a bottle of Mouton Cadet de Rothschild costing $1,000 when it was Andy and just me.” Thanks to Basquiat’s extravagant handouts, there were also the hobos and tramps hanging outside his door who could be kitted out in the smartest Armani suits.
When Basquiat came into the studio to see Fred, it looked as if there were needle marks all over his hands. It was obvious that he was a full-fledged junkie. Although I doubted Jay’s absurd idea that Basquiat had even injected his prick. Much as I admired the artist, I knew not to talk to him. Basquiat’s face was a picture of pain and vulnerability.
In spite of the growing disastrousness of my relationship with Jay, I persuaded myself that each element meant something, whether we visited a fortune-teller together—calling Woody Allen—or waited in line for some dull artsy film or ate at a diner serving tasteless food. That said, I was hopeless at managing Jay’s moods, which were omnipresent and roller-coaster exhausting. I’d always been with men who were talkers. Not so Jay, who was Mr. Big on brooding. It made me more and more uncomfortable. And finally, at the end of July 1987, we both threw in the towel.
The problem with a failed office romance is the aftermath and the daily reminder of the foolish behavior. And I certainly, albeit briefly, suffered. Occasionally, Vincent would leave little packs of Kleenex on my desk and not say anything. Then once I was involved in the Manhattan razzle and swing, the memory of our flirt evaporated. And Jay and I got on as a result, even if I was probably the only person in the organization not to be invited to his first wedding—funny that!
Several people became key to improving my social existence—namely Kenneth Jay Lane, who included me in all his smart Park Avenue lunches; Nell Campbell, the queen of the night and éminence grise of Nell’s nightclub, who enlisted me in most of her dinners; and Peter Bergen, a journalist who’d been at school with my brother and had very wild nights at his Hell’s Kitchen apartment. Other notable evenings included meeting Robert Altman with my stepfather (Altman had directed two Pinter plays for television); accompanying Vincent and the author Tama Janowitz to a screening of Merchant Ivory’s Maurice; attending Nancy Huang’s birthday party for musician Nile Rodgers, her boyfriend; having dinner with John Malkovich after seeing him in his smash-hit performance of Burn This; discovering Visconti’s Ludwig and other Italian masterpieces with director Paul Morrissey; and accompanying director Mike Nichols (an old friend of my stepfather’s) to Yankee Stadium and the private box of Lorne Michaels, Saturday Night Live’s producer.
Meanwhile, a welcome summer addition to the Warhol Studio was Len Morgan. He sat alongside Brigid Berlin at the reception desk, and I was relieved to discover that he was as wary of her but just wiser at hiding it. “The loyalty, how long Brigid had known Andy, and the fact that she was unfiltered could seem refreshing,” Len now says. “The fact that she could say to him, ‘You’re not the greatest thing on earth.’ So there was a certain gravitas that came with Brigid beside her insanity.”
The insanity. Yet a lot of Brigid was pretty darn cool. In stark contrast to others who lived off their Warhol 1960s past, she never referred to it. Brigid also stopped taking drugs and drinking: an achievement.
Having been obese, she had slimmed down to reveal a patrician profile—Brigid had the perfect nose and chin. It gave innate class to her appearance braless in T-shirts and long shorts. Every day, while her pug dogs, Fame and Fortune, snuffled and lay at her feet, she either knitted up a storm or needlepointed slippers that she would then sell for a famous fortune! There were also her moments of getting off on cappuccinos. Drinking seven in one bout and occasionally burning her tongue in the process, she would dance around the room claiming to see polka-dot bows.
The problem was that Brigid didn’t get my point. This was apart from a brief few months when she gave me one of her mother’s Scaasi dresses, showed me her “Prick Book” packed with pictures of famous artists’ members, and invited me to her younger brother’s home in Boston; she defined unpredictable diva. It was a shame, because Brigid was an original. Her stories about her privileged childhood alone merit an autobiography. Instead we endlessly fought, particularly about the air-conditioning. Her crowning blow to Len was, “Natasha is the sort of person who takes books out of libraries.” I did and do.
Fortunately, this was never the case with Len. He was wicked. He took a look at Linda, Fred’s new assistant who had a long dark braid that fell down her back, and she instantly became “Pocahontas.” And Len’s nickname stuck. Sharp-tongued but so pretty, imagine shiny chestnut hair falling fetchingly to the side, heavily lashed navy blue eyes, flawless tan, and relaxed preppy look via polo neck, long sh
orts, and bare feet in loafers. Andy treasured his company. With Wilfredo Rosado and Sam Bolton, Len would take him to parties. “The minute that Andy wanted to leave, we took him back home and could return to the party, if we wanted. You’d deliver him to the front door, he’d say, ‘Good-bye and thank you,’ and that was it.” Still, every function was about business. “I never understood Andy’s terrible reputation,” he says. “I remember my mother once saying, ‘What am I supposed to tell people?’ I said, ‘Tell them I work for Andy Warhol.’ It wasn’t as if he took drugs ever. We behaved more in front of Andy than behind him. . . . The minute he went, sure, but not in front of him.”
Andy could be perverse. “Once when I came into the office in shorts and a T-shirt, he picked that night to take me to a very grand dinner at Mortimer’s with Pat Buckley and people like that,” recalls Len. “I think purely based on the fact I was inappropriately dressed for the evening. And I remember thinking, ‘Do you really want to walk in with a seventeen-year-old looking like this?’ Still, everyone was very pleasant. There was a harmony to and around Andy.”
Once Brigid left Warhol Studio for the night, I would slip into the seat next to Len and we would watch The Partridge Family or The Brady Bunch on a minuscule black-and-white television set. Or we would talk and talk and talk. Vincent could not believe it. Coming out of his office, he would say, “Do you two never stop?” I learned so much from naughty Len, who was at Brown University and no stranger to fabled boats, châteaus, and Schlösser in Europe. And in turn I would throw in a few chestnuts about upper-class life in stately homes that never ceased to amuse him.
After Andy Page 15