The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Then we went back to Richard’s room with him to wait for the girls that were coming at 12:00 and had tequila with him. When the girls called on the phone he asked them to bring some jeans and a T-shirt for Claudia, because they would all go nightclubbing and she hadn’t brought anything to wear.

  Claudia used to be an airline stewardess and I guess that’s where Richard met her. She’s very pretty and she’s the best secretary. She just does everything.

  The girls arrived and they looked like New York models, very tall and blonde and pretty and they were wearing the same kind of clothes, jeans and T-shirts.

  One of the girls was more the hustler and she went after Richard. All they could talk about was Vitas so they called him in New York. The clothes they brought for Claudia fit perfectly.

  Fred and I went to our rooms. They were big and clean and everything, but you’d wake up every half-hour because of the air conditioning. I slept in my clothes because I knew there was a six o’clock wake-up call.

  Thursday, September 22, 1977—Columbus—New York

  Valentino was at the office for lunch. Barbara Allen and Joe Eula were interviewing him. Suzie brought Paige Rense who said, “I might as well ask you right now and get it over with—can I do a story on you in Architectural Digest” I said no, and she said, “Okay, I accept that,” but still she offered to show me a good time in Los Angeles when I went. She said she fell asleep with her soft contacts in and ruined her eyes for a while, and she can’t find her glasses. Joel Grey’s daughter Jennifer was there, too. When Valentino heard I was going up later to interview Sophia Loren he said that she was the stingiest person, that she went to his place and wanted a 70 percent discount and he said goodbye.

  Cabbed up to the Pierre with Victor and Robert Hayes in rush hour ($4). Went to the thirty-sixth floor to see Sophia. On the way in the cab I warned Victor everything he shouldn’t talk about, like that we were suing her husband.

  John Springer met us. Sophia came out looking beautiful. Then she kept telling us how poor she was, it was so ridiculous. Like we asked her if she wore Valentino clothes and she said oh no, that they were much too expensive for her, and she said she wouldn’t be able to afford to stay at a place like the Pierre herself—that the movie people were paying for it. Like she didn’t mention that she could have stayed right down the street in her own apartment in the Hampshire House. But Victor was fun, he opened champagne and said he saw all her movies in Venezuela when he was a baby. I’d told Victor he couldn’t say any dirty words, because when we went to Carlo Ponti’s villa in Rome a few years ago they told us that Sophia didn’t allow any dirty words in her house and that we’d get kicked out if we said any. Well, the running thing while we were at the Pierre, it turned out, was that Sophia kept saying “fuck.” She and Marcello Mastroianni are on the front page of the Post for being on the new Dick Cavett interview show on channel 13 and Marcello said, “You have to fuck a lot,” when Dick asked him how do you be a Latin Lover. Sophia seemed to think that was so “cute,” so she was repeating it. After about an hour she wanted to get rid of us, and we ran out.

  Friday, September 23, 1977

  Another cousin of Catherine’s was in town, Evgenia something, a Guinness, and she came by to get a copy of the issue of Interview that has Erskine as an “Interman.” I asked her what she was doing in town and she said she’d come “for a funeral,” and I asked who died and she said her stepfather, Robert Lowell. He’d just come in from Ireland and got a cab at the airport and had a heart attack. He was sixty-one. I guess he was the number-one poet since W.H. Auden died.

  Sunday, September 25, 1977

  Had a bad night. Woke up at 6:00, fell back asleep, up again at 8:00 and 9:00, turned on the TV and watched all the cartoons. Archie and Amos were still away, they’d gone out to Montauk with Jed—we’re still trying to rent the place.

  Diana Vreeland called and said someone should talk to Fred about his drinking problem, to tell him he’s so attractive but that when he’s drunk he’s so unattractive.

  Stevie Rubell called and said he had tickets to the Lillian Carter dinner at the Waldorf. I had to get into black tie again but the bottoms always itch so much, that’s why I wear bluejeans usually with the black-tie top. But tonight I innovated something, I put the black pants on over my bluejeans and it didn’t really look lumpy, it worked, so I walked out of the house in two pairs of pants at 6:15. Cabbed to the Waldorf ($2.50). When I got there Stevie was nowhere around.

  A boy took me to a small room on the side where there was a reception for Miz Lillian. She was wearing a blue sort-of-nightie and she was really thrilled to see me, she loved the pictures I’d done of her, and she invited me to the party in her room afterwards. She told me it was 7-N. Finally Stevie came in, he’d just had a joint, he said, because these things made him so nervous. He said he’d never been with so many other Jews before. It was the Synagogues of America— something like that—giving a medal to her.

  Then we went into the big room. I was at table 3. There were about thirty-five Jews on stage. The Edgar Bronfman guy—the kidnappee’s father—paid for the dinner. He talked very classy— if you closed your eyes you thought it was Dick Cavett—and he was the only one who had a pretty young wife who didn’t look Jewish. Andrew Young came over and shook my hand, he looks like a butch Johnny Mathis. Then we had gefilte fish, and it was a dairy dinner. While we ate they gave speeches and they sang “God Bless America” in English and Jewish. The cantor had a very good voice. It went on for hours. Andrew Young gave a speech about the United Nations and freedom. The food looked like airplane food. The best line of the evening was when Miss Lillian said, “I’ve never met so many Jews in my life. I must tell Jimmy.” Everyone was so shocked they laughed. She was good, nervous. There were autographed copies of her book Away From Home at every place and I stole an extra one because Richard Kiley hadn’t shown up.

  So Stevie and I left the Waldorf and went out to look for his car, parked on Lexington. A $30,000 Mercedes. He says it’s his only big enjoyment in life, having a car and parking wherever he wants to, spending money on parking tickets. He said he has money in shoeboxes. He says we should go around to discos together because he has to pick up boys to work at Studio 54.

  Bob Weiner is doing his first big story for New York and it’s on Stevie and Studio 54. Bob Weiner seems like he’s in love with Stevie. (laughs) Deeply. Bob used to be so straight, producing Broadway plays and then around ‘69 he became a hippie type and started listening to rock and roll and writing for that dirty newspaper that was like Screw.

  At the party at The Ginger Man for the opening of the New York Film Festival, Leticia Kent was there and John Springer who gave the party, and Marcello Mastroianni and Gerard Depardieu who looked wonderful. He asked me for a French cigarette and I told him I didn’t have one but that I could get him a Quaalude, so I went over to Stevie and he gave me one to take and I broke it into fourths and then didn’t take it. But Stevie kept saying, “You didn’t take your Quaalude.” They don’t forget—people on drugs really do remember. So I let him see me taking part of it.

  Then I saw Howard Smith from the Voice so I went over to say hello. Howard’s been writing letters to Valerie Solanis, that’s the latest thing, he must have run into her in the Village. He told me he was sorry he’d started that, that he doesn’t know how people that crazy are out in the streets. I told him maybe it was because she worked for the CIA.

  Stevie wanted to go to the Village to the clubs, he wants to open one down there. The first place we went to was the Cock Ring. The area has changed, they got rid of the back rooms and the bars are really crowded. Stevie is Mr. Big down there, he recruits all his waiters from there. Right before we went into the Cock Ring I took my outer black formal pants off and went in my jeans underneath. It was jammed with cute kids dancing.

  Then Stevie gets bored right away everywhere and wants to leave. Went to 12 West and I wouldn’t dance, so Stevie danced with a pillow. He kept getting popp
ers and putting them under my nose. Bob Weiner saw Stevie holding the poppers and me sniffing and went out to the car. Later he said that his whole clean innocent image of me was blown, that there I was on Quaaludes, taking poppers and drinking. I said, “Did you actually see me take a Quaalude?” Then I showed him the bits of the Quaalude still in my pocket and I informed him that I hadn’t been inhaling when Stevie put the poppers under my nose. Then he said okay, but that I was drinking, and I said, “I always drink.”

  Then to the Anvil for a minute. There was a colored guy at the door who didn’t want to let Stevie in, he started screaming that Stevie hadn’t let him into Studio 54 and who did he think he was now, trying to get into the Anvil, but then he saw me and he waved me in, and he finally let Stevie in, too, but he made him pay. Upstairs there was “entertainment.” It was a drag queen. Richard Bernstein was there, he told me that Valentino had ordered forty portraits from him, then only took two. Remember, he’s the one who called Sophia Loren the cheapest person in the world for wanting a 70 percent discount! A part of the show that I did think was funny was a boy taking off fifty pairs of jockey shorts.

  Stevie said he had to get up at 8:00 because the restaurant meatman comes on Monday mornings and he has to pick out the meat. He lives in a new building on 55th Street. We got into the car and Stevie dropped me home and I kissed him in front of Bob Weiner so that Bob would have something else to write about. That was around 5:00.

  Tuesday, September 27, 1977

  Ahmet Ertegun called and invited me to a testimonial dinner for Pelé that evening. I spent the rest of the day calling people to be my date but nobody wanted to go. Dropped off Vincent and Catherine (cab $4). Changed, then took a cab to the Plaza ($2). Met Howard Cosell and his wife and was surprised he was so tall. I liked him, he was fun.

  My portrait of Pelé was going to be presented. Pelé’s mother and father were there and they were cute, and his wife, who was white, but everybody in South America is all different colors— his parents were different colors, too. After the dinner we went over to P.J. Clarke’s ($2.50). Tucker Frederickson, the football player that I like so much, was there. He’s so adorable I kept telling him he should do more TV, but he said he didn’t want to. Had a bowl of chili.

  Thursday, September 29, 1977

  Talked to Fred. We were arranging to go up to meet Nenna Eberstadt who worked at our office all summer for lunch at her school uptown on 83rd Street—Brearley.

  Before I left the house I happened to talk on the phone to David Whitney. David said he hadn’t even started on the Jasper Johns show. Then he told me something that scared me when I heard it, and scared me even more as the day went on. He said that when Rauschenberg was down in Texas for a show, all the art people were on a chic art-people charter bus and it stopped at a gas station and the men’s room was locked so Rauschenberg peed on the side of the bus and two Texas Rangers appeared and arrested him and took him to jail! I mean if you’re walking along the street in New York, what if you really have to pee or shit? What do you do? Do you have to do it in your pants? Will they arrest you if you do it in the street? And if you can prove that you really had to go, will they let you go but will you have a criminal record? I guess you have to do it in your pants.

  Cabbed up to Brearley with Bob and Fred. Left from the office so I took a stack of Interviews up with me. When we got to 83rd and First Avenue (cab $5) we walked in and left the magazines at the front for the girls to take. I forgot that this wasn’t all a high-school-age place. I was just thinking that all the girls were older, like Nenna. Well, Nenna came to meet us and she looked like she was suddenly ten years old! I couldn’t believe it! In a little black uniform and one of those skirts, you know that’s short, like—what’s the name? Like the ladies wore in the sixties … a miniskirt. And her friend was in a uniform, too, a very beautiful girl who also looked ten years old. And Fred told us a secret, that Mick Jagger had called Nenna and Freddy Eberstadt answered and started screaming at him, “How dare you call a young girl like my daughter? You, an older man of forty!” Mick took offense and said “I am not forty. I’m thirty-four. And Nenna goes out with Mr. Fred Hughes, who is also thirty-four. And besides, I don’t go around ringing people’s doorbells at 4:00 in the morning.” Which was a reference to Freddy Eberstadt ringing Mick’s doorbell at that hour looking for Nenna.

  As I looked around at how young the girls were, all I could think about was the Interviews upstairs and about Rauschenberg getting arrested in Texas and about Roman Polanski, how the poor guy could make a mistake because these young girls could be as young or as old as they wanted to look.

  Tina Radziwill was there at Brearley, too. She’s changed a lot since that summer Lee rented Montauk. She has so many pimples now. I mean, you’d think they would have found a way to cure pimples. If a girl like Tina who can spend all the money in the world to get rid of pimples can’t get rid of them, then there’s no hope for me.

  Nenna introduced us to another one of her girlfriends and she looked forty! She had tits so big and an ass so big. She was white, but there were a couple of coloreds around the school, too. Then they gave us a terrible tour of the library and the gym and where the twelve-year-olds eat. All I could think of was the magazines with maybe nude photos in them. I had Bob run upstairs to take them back, but they were gone. I told Nenna she just had to tell the headmistress that we’d just left them there meaning to pick them up on the way out and she said she’d try to fix it. Cabbed back to the office ($5).

  Mick arrived twenty minutes late in a really good mood—I was photographing the Stones. Then everybody started arriving—Ron Wood and Earl McGrath and Keith Richards who I think is just the most adorable person, I love him. I told him I was the first person to meet his wife, Anita Pallenberg. In the sixties.

  Richard Weisman was sending down tickets to a party for Ali, if Ali won his fight with Shavers.

  Suzie Frankfurt called. She’s been seeing Sam Green all the time and I said to her, “Do you think that Sam Green doesn’t talk about you?” She said, “No, Sam loves me.” I said, “You mean you think he doesn’t go all over town repeating to everybody what you say?” She said, “But he doesn’t talk about you.’1 I said “Yes, and that is because I never never tell him anything.”

  Dropped off Catherine and Peter Marino. Peter and Catherine got friendly in Montauk. I can’t figure Peter out, he’s nutty. I told him how he owed his whole life and architecture career to us—how we gave him his first job—took him out of his business knickers and gave him his long pants and he said that well now he was in Armani suits and that we sure didn’t put him in those. He was funny (cab $4).

  Changed at home. Ate some of Archie’s food then started walking up to 730 Park Avenue to a dinner for a Swiss guy who’s in town, who said he’s been dying to meet me. After dinner I went down to 66th Street to wait for my date, Kevin Goodspeed, who I’d met at Studio 54. He’s big and he’s like my old crush from the sixties, Rodney La Rod, and at first I thought he’d be a good bodyguard until later in the evening when somebody stepped on his camera and beat him up.

  Cabbed to the party for Muhammad Ali at the Americana ($2.50). It was one of those parties where you’re Waiting for Nothing. Ali never came, they said he was too badly hurt in the fight. But one great thing happened. I met a black lady boxer. She invited me to go see her box.

  Then Richard Weisman wanted to go dancing so we went over to Studio 54. Walked. Stevie Ru-bell is madly in love with me. And Victor was there and got jealous of my date Kevin. Victor was wearing “punk pants” and they had a normal fly that was zipped and everything but at the bottom of the zipper was a hole for his cock to hang through, and you didn’t even notice it at first, everything looked like it was in order. He was also wearing a sequined Halston bandanna like the kind he gave me. Then Kevin and I went down to Kevin’s neighborhood on Third Avenue in the 30s to Sarge’s, the all-night coffee shop, and after we had coffee I left him with some people he knew there. It’s suppose
d to be the best coffee shop (breakfast $10). When I got out on the street a kid in a Mercedes pulled up and said he used to live on my block on 66th Street. I made him describe the street and he did know it so I got into the car and he dropped me off. By then it was 5 A.M.

  Friday, September 30, 1977

  The nightlife is running me down, I can’t even drag myself up on the pillow. And I’m still worried about getting arrested for leaving the Interviews up at Nenna’s school. What if there was a naked picture in that issue? I’m afraid to look. They only arrest the publisher. I’m the publisher, Fred’s the president. Oh God. I don’t want to think about it. What was Larry Flynt when they arrested him? The publisher? Why don’t they arrest the president—or the editor? Bob could just write his “Out” column from jail. It would be a new scene for him to cover.

  And speaking of scenes, Steve Aronson read PH’s first draft of Popism and said he will edit it for us, after all—that it needs work but that it’s fascinating because it’s a scene that hasn’t been shown yet.

  Paul Jenkins came to the office. He’s a painter who puts paint on canvas and lets it roll, and his work is like somebody else’s but he does it well. I think he’s interested in a portrait. He’s with the rich du Pont girl, Joanne.

  Saturday, October 1, 1977

  Went to the bus at Rockefeller Center to go out to see the Cosmos soccer team play (cab $3). The bus was loading with Nan Kempner and Jerry Zipkin and related types. The White House people, Tom Beard and Joel McCleary, were getting into a limo and invited me into that. The Carter son who isn’t married was supposed to be coming, that’s why the limo, but he didn’t come.