by Andy Warhol
Then we all went over to Studio 54, and they had an elephant cake for Peter come down from the ceiling because Peter took all those great African elephant pictures. Arnold Schwarzenegger was there. I left around 2:00 just as Halston and Bianca were coming in. They were both in elephant masks, but the photographers didn’t care, they’re tired of Bianca. She better get out of town for a while.
Tuesday, January 24, 1978
Suzie Frankfurt called and said her facelift was very painful.
Since it was nice weather I walked down to work. Victor called and said that he’d done “something terrible” but wouldn’t say what it was on the phone, that he would come over (lunch for Victor $5.29). But he still wouldn’t tell what he did. Later when I was talking to Bianca I got it out of her, so I called him up and said, “Gee, Victor, I had a dream last night that you were painting on top of my painting. Isn’t that crazy?” And he started to freak out that I really had dreamed it, and then I said not to worry, that I knew what he’d done and that I’d give him another one.
Later that night at Studio 54 there were two little kids from Caracas there, and Victor got jealous when I was talking to them, and they knew exactly where Victor was from when they heard him talk—it turns out Victor has the “Brooklyn accent” of Caracas.
Philip Niarchos arrived with Manuela Papatakis. Bianca was thrilled that Barbara and Philip seem to have broken up.
Wednesday, January 25, 1978
When I walked into the office, the lunch for Carole Bouquet, the beautiful French actress, was going on, but she wasn’t there because she was still filming her movie. Peter Beard was there, though, and Mona, and it was half from William Poll, half Brownies. The cute guy with the burned hand, Peter’s friend Tom Sullivan, was there. We liked his boots so he asked us our sizes and called this place in Georgia to send three pairs up. He’s been living in a suite at the Westbury for months waiting to have skin grafts on the hand he burned in his plane crash. I think Catherine has a crush on him.
Worked on some paintings in the back. I’m really tired, though, I’m not getting enough sleep. Bianca stopped by and five minutes later Mark Shand did. And Brigid told me, “All day long Lady Isabella Lambton picks her nose and eats it, and if you say something to her about it, she just laughs and goes right on doing it. She told me that at night she and her boyfriend pick each other’s noses. It’s hard to take.”
Went up to the Olympic Tower to see Halston’s new offices (cab $3). It’s on two floors and it looks out on St. Patrick’s steeple. We had some drinks. We dropped Catherine off and she didn’t have any shoes on so Peter’s cute friend carried her up six flights.
Thursday, January 26, 1978
When I called Catherine at home in the morning before I left a man answered and said she’d already left for work, and it was Tom Sullivan from the day before. He said he was just there dropping something off. He shouldn’t have answered the phone. When I told Catherine later that he had, she said, “Well, you got me,” and she was slightly embarrassed.
The boots arrived at the airport and Peter Beard brought them down. Mine fit perfectly, I’d told Tom to get me 8-D—the only thing wrong was that I had said round toe and they came with the pointy toe. And they’d all come in a big box and Peter had taken the shoes out of the box because it was so big, and thrown the box away, and then we found out that one of Catherine’s pair was still in the box, and so Tom’s driver went back uptown looking for where they’d thrown out the box, and he did come back with it, so Catherine was thrilled. They’re cowboy boots made out of elephant ears.
Lunch for Isabella Rossellini (supplies $7.13, $16.41). John Richardson was there and gave me a present of a picture of his cock. Bianca was wearing white with a purple Halston stole and she and Tom Sullivan, Brigid said, “were practically fucking against the wall, it was really disgusting”—and Isabella Rossellini, Robin West, and Claus von Bulow were there. Dinner was at Bianca-at-Halston’s, it was veal blanquettes. Diana Vreeland was there with Fred, and Stevie is so funny, he said to me she was “fascinating,” and then later in the evening he said she was so boring he didn’t know how to get rid of her. And you know, I’ve come to realize lately that Diana Vreeland is just a person. I realized it a few months ago when I was thinking again about the thing in the sixties with Viva at Vogue, when Diana killed the pages on Viva that would have made Viva’s career. Diana does do things for her “career”—she listens to people who tell her if something’s a bad thing to do, if she’d suffer professionally, and then she does what they tell her. Somebody must have told her that if she ran the Viva photos it would be a bad thing for her. You think that she doesn’t think that way because she’s Diana Vreeland, but then you suddenly realize that she does.
Friday, January 27, 1978
Went over to Halston’s. The Halston crowd coordinate themselves, they talk to each other and decide what color themes are on for the evening. It was back to black and red this night. Pat Mori the model was there in black and red, and Halston had his red socks on with his regular black and white.
We went over in the limo to Studio 54. I was there until around 6:00 in the morning but all I remember is Catherine and her new boyfriend Tom Sullivan who I do think is a coke dealer. Bianca said she got a movie part opposite Jeff Bridges.
Saturday, January 28, 1978
Picked up Bianca and went over to the Dakota for Susan and Gil Shiva’s party ($2.50). Lina Wertmuller and her husband, Enrico Job, were the guests of honor. He was the production designer on our movies Frankenstein and Dracula. Her movie A Night Full of Rain with Giancarlo Giannini and Candy Bergen is opening. Neil Sedaka was there. People kept bringing Woody Allen over to meet me so I met him four times. And Betty Bacall was there, she lives in the Dakota, too. And Judy Klemesrud the nice girl from the Times was there, and that Nancy Collins, the one who used to be at Women’s Wear who’s now in Washington, and Candy Bergen was there. Also at Gil Shiva’s, Andrea Portago and Mick Hick, back in town after their wedding, and Bianca said, “He wanted to make me at Studio 54 last night, he attacks me now that he’s married—he never attacked me before.”
Then we left for Studio 54. Catherine was there with Tom Sullivan, and they were going to the Brasserie for cheeseburgers and invited me, and so I went.
Forgot to say the most exciting thing about the evening, When we left the Shivas, Bianca wanted to stop back at Halston’s to pick something up. When we got there, there was a pretty boy in a fur coat standing outside, and when we walked in, there was Liza Minnelli talking to Halston. She wanted to know if she and Baryshnikov—it was him outside—could spend some time at his place. So we weren’t supposed to see this. And Liza and Baryshnikov were taking so much cocaine, I didn’t know they took so much, just shoveling it in, and it was so exciting to see two really famous people right there in front of you taking drugs, about to go make it with each other.
Liza is just back from the rest cure in Texas, and she’s going to start doing The Act again.
Sunday, January 29, 1978
Barbara Allen called and she wanted me to take her to the New York Film Critics dinner, and she sounded down in the dumps. She told me that it’s really getting to her that Philip and Manuela are around. Everybody’s calling Barbara and saying, “We’re inviting Philip and Manuela—do you still want to be invited?” She’s unhappy.
At 8:30 I went over to Halston’s. Bianca was wandering around with her tits showing. Mark Shand’s left town.
We cabbed up to the Iranian embassy ($2.50). Maximilian Schell was there and he’d gotten a supporting role award for Julia. I had never met him before and I was disappointed that he was fat, but he was really sweet. He said that I did great things for him in Germany, that he’d seen Flesh and hated it and then gone back to see it again and again and loved it, and that he thought, If this is a movie, then I can make a movie, too. I didn’t know what to say, so I decided to give him Bianca, and they went crazy over each other from then on. I’d always heard he was
a fag, but the way they were carrying on, that image was fading. And Sissy Spacek introduced me to her husband, he was very nice, and Bella Abzug’s campaigner—what’s her name? Shirley MacLaine told me she had the picture I did of Bella on her bureau. And John Simon was there, he was intrigued by Bianca. She had her hair in big pincurls that she said was a Nicaraguan style, but it looked Puerto Rican. S.J. Perelman was there and I wanted to talk to him because Nelson always said he’s the funniest man in the world, but I didn’t.
Bianca came running over and told me that for the first time she’d fallen for an older man. She said she had to leave, that she had to go home and cook a dinner for Halston, and I guess I laughed out loud because I remembered when Amanda Lear told me that the reason Mick’s left Bianca is that she never made him a meal. When she’s after somebody, though, she’s a real coquette, out to prove she can do all the things. So we went back to Halston’s. Maximilian let his car go, I guess he was cheap.
Stevie called and said come to the club. Victor and I had a feast in the kitchen—we made popcorn and I had orange juice and vodka. We left Bianca and Maximilian hugging and kissing in the other room. Halston took Linda and went to bed. Then we went over to Studio 54 and it was jumping.
Monday, January 30, 1978
I was supposed to interview Fran Lebowitz on her new book at lunch but Bob said that she couldn’t have her regular column plus an interview, too, in the same issue, so Fran got upset and cancelled.
Catherine got a call from Tom Beard and Joel McCleary inviting us to a dinner they were having at Elaine’s with Bill Graham, formerly of the Fillmore, who gave us—gave the Velvet Underground—our first big break in the sixties but then kicked us out.
Dinner wasn’t until 9:30, and Catherine’s been out so late, she falls asleep all day, so she wasn’t ready until 10:00 and I picked her up. She was packing her tote bag to go over to the Westbury because Tom Sullivan is out of town and told her she could stay there and order room service, so all she could think about was sausages and eggs in the morning. He left her a limousine, too. She’s really in love with him. She wears his clothes, his Valentino coat and leather jacket. She said his father died when he was very young and left a lot of money, that he’d made a lot of money on a radiator part (cab to Elaine’s $2.60).
There were a lot of famous people there that I knew, but I didn’t go to say hello—Candy Bergen, Joel Schumacher. Fred was already with the Carter people—Tom Beard and Joel McCleary. Bill Graham and I got right to the central incident of our relationship—him kicking the Velvets off the bill at his San Francisco Fillmore in I guess ‘66—and it finally came out after all these years that what made him really hate us wasn’t the Velvets’ music—it was that he saw Paul eating a tangerine and throwing the peels on the floor of the theater! (laughs) Can you believe how long it takes to get the real story? So then everyone at the table thought we hated Bill Graham and didn’t talk to him—Bobby Zarem was there, too, with us, and he’s getting fatter and fatter—but it wasn’t that we were mad, I was just dead tired. But they thought there was “tension at the table.” Dropped Catherine at the Westbury ($3).
Tuesday, January 31, 1978
Rupert was at the office. Maximilian Schell came by and the minute he walked in the door Brigid immediately asked him for five autographs and Catherine asked for eight, then Chris Makos was snapping away, too, and poor Max was bombarded. They did need one picture, though, to go with the interview we were doing. He was calling a girl to meet him down at One Fifth.
At dinner at “21,” Jody Powell was with a girl. The whole idea of the dinner was to interview Joel McCleary, but then my tape recorder was doing funny things. I sat next to a girl, Lynn, who said she and Joel were first sweethearts but that they never got married because he was a hippie and she was a Marxist. It was fascinating to see two hippies who couldn’t make it because they were different kinds of hippies. She said that Joel used to be so skinny, but now he’s gotten fat, but that fat was better for politics, that it was better to see a big hunk of man up there. She said her guru told her that if you’re a man and you’re thin, then you turn homosexual, and I’m thinking I agree with that because of all the models. She said she and Joel meet once a year and tell each other off. So I guess people do do that. I told her that was what the couple does in that Broadway play Same Time Next Year.
Lynn said she’s involved with that Pillsbury guy’s foundation, but when I asked her for money she said she’s only able to give it (laughs) to “people in New England.”
Wednesday, February 1, 1978
Victor picked me up and we went to Chinatown. I hadn’t been there for years. I still think they have the one kitchen in the back of Chinatown with the one big pot that they all dip into. We ate at some dump on Canal Street. We went to a lot of Chinese stores, and one Chinese girl recognized me. Then we took the limo to the Spring Street Bar and had drinks ($6) and I realized we should have come there for hamburgers, that would have been the better thing.
We stopped in at the O K Harris gallery and Ivan had just put a new show up and it was really crowded. Then we went around the corner costume-hunting to a store where a boy who was a camp sold $2,000 capes made out of gold thread. Then we went over to Fabulous Fashions.
Victor thought it was the most fabulous place I’d ever taken him. He bought things for Halston there. And then after Fabulous, he dropped me off at the office because I had to meet the Hoveydas there, they were bringing a famous Iranian and his wife down and then we were all going down to Ballato’s. Mr. and Mrs. Ghaferi.
Ballato’s was very exciting because John and Yoko Lennon and Peter Boyle and his new I think wife were there. Catherine asked John for his autograph and he said no, because he said he just read that Robert Redford doesn’t give autographs, so he wouldn’t either. And Calvin Klein was there with that girl who gave me my first job at The New York Times—Carrie Donovan. The food was really good and Mr. Ballato was there, and I paid the check with a check and then it was so early, 10:30, but they dropped us home.
Oh, and in the middle of dinner I told Catherine how Brigid and Chris Hemphill were both refusing to transcribe any more of the interviews that she does because they said they were so bad, and I told Bob he’d have to straighten it out. And later he told me he doesn’t know what to do, because on the one hand Catherine’s interviews are really bad—I mean, she asked where the Bronx was in one of her interviews, and then even left it in the article because she thought that was “fascinating”—but on the other hand Brigid and Chris shouldn’t be allowed to decide what they’ll transcribe.
And at dinner the Iranians told me that when I paint the Shah to go easy on the eye shadow and lipstick. They said, “Keep it casual but conservative.”
Thursday, February 2, 1978
When I got to the office, Brigid was still embarrassed because Lucio Amelio, the art dealer from Naples, had arrived earlier for an appointment with Fred and when he got to the reception desk he stared at her for a long minute and then said, “Brigid Polk? La actress famosa di Chelsea Girls?” And Brigid was mortified that now she was a receptionist so she told him that she’d just appeared in Bad, too. He was so excited, telling the people with him how famous she was and acting like he’d just met Greta Garbo and (laughs) poor Brigid had to keep answering phones.
Ran into Robert Mapplethorpe near the office. He told me he has a show opening in San Francisco and he’s going there for a month for a “sex vacation” because “San Francisco is the best place for sex in America.”
Went home to change and then went to pick up Barbara Allen to go to a party at Diane Von Furstenberg’s (cab $2.60). I wasn’t invited—Barbara invited me as her date. Her ex, Philip Niarchos, was going to be there with Manuela.
We got to 1060 Fifth Avenue about 9:00, and it was a super party. Diane has a big apartment, huge, with fabric on the walls. She has a bathroom as big as a living room. Barry Diller lives there now, too, when he’s in town. She had wood painted white and the
n painted wood-grained, like Art Nouveau. I made a faux pas. I walked into the room where everyone was eating, and Carl Bernstein was talking to Helen Gurley Brown, and he looked up and said to me, “Do you think Bob Colacello is attractive?” and I didn’t know what was going on, and I guess I put my foot in it, I said, “Well, he’s not my type,” and she got up and walked away. And then he told me that she’d mistaken him for Bob Colacello, and when he got insulted she was telling him how attractive Bob Colacello was and I blew it.
Barbara is really unhappy—Bianca’s got herself a movie career and Manuela has Philip. She had a good long talk at Diane’s with Philip. And Manuela isn’t good-looking at all.
Barbara said the same thing that Bianca did, that Mick Flick was after her.
Friday, February 3, 1978
Had to get up early—at 6:30, the sun rises after 7:00—to call Catherine and tell her I wouldn’t be going to Mardi Gras.
The lunch at the Lachmans’ was at 1:30. Jaquine Lachman wants a painting but she wants a bargain price. I mean, her husband owns a third of Revlon! Bob is going to tell her no bargain.
When we got to the Lachman apartment, I could see that Mrs. Lachman was this French lady who’s really so bored with her husband. His daughter from another marriage told her father he should paint, so now all he does is stay home and paint all day. He paints one painting each in the style of every artist. And he follows his wife around the house, he literally bumps into her when she stops.