by Andy Warhol
I finally decided what I’m going to give all the Halston family for Christmas—Halston and Steve and Dr. Giller and Bianca—paintings of a free drink ticket from 54.
Cabbed to Tom Armstrong’s ($3.50). Merce Cunningham was there and John Cage and Jasper Johns, but they were just about leaving. Leo Castelli was there trying to dance with his drunk wife. I took pictures. Hilton Kramer was there, the art critic. I’d never met him, so I met him. He’s the one that hates my work. Mark Lancaster was there, I had fun with him.
Oh, I read a great column in the Times! It was something like “Funky, Punky, and Junky,” and they had been talking about it at Tom Armstrong’s—it was about “silly people” and it (laughs) had me in it a lot. No mention of Steve Rubell, no Halston—just me, Marisa, Bianca, Truman, Lorna Luft—the silly people and the silly places. And later, at Halston’s, Halston said he’s glad he wasn’t mentioned because he said [imitates], “I’m! Not! Silly!” And then everyone started calling Bianca “silly pussy, silly pussy.” And Marisa came over and when she heard about the “silly” column she was upset to be “silly.”
Oh, and have I said that Bob said that when he introduced Jerry Hall to Tennessee Williams down in Washington a few weeks ago Tennessee told her that she was the prettiest girl he’s met since Candy Darling.
Wednesday, December 20, 1978
I’d accepted Marisa’s dinner at Mortimer’s but just as I was leaving the office I noticed in the book that it was the night of Jackie O.’s Christmas party and I invited Bob and he said he was thrilled, that it made his day, that it was a little something to look forward to. Cabbed to 1040 Fifth ($5). When we got there it was sort of getting over with. Lee was there, leaving. Caroline has turned into a raving beauty—she’s thin, her face is thin, her skin is perfect, her eyes are beautiful. We were talking to her and then a cute guy came over, Tom Carney. I asked her if it was her boyfriend and she said yes. He writes for Esquire, he did the article on Tom McGuane. She asked about her old flame from London, Mark Shand.
Jean Stein was there with the Russian poet she wanted to introduce to society—some name like Andre Bosh-in-eck-shinsk. She’s still writing her book on Edie. Cocktails were from 6:00 to 8:00 and then dinner was being served for the people who didn’t leave. It was really good food —baked ham and some new potato salad with red lettuce from Cape Cod—she always goes to the best shops. Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton were there, and Bob heard—overheard— Jackie saying that something Warren did in the hall was “disgusting,” but we were never able to find out what it was. We left around 9:00. Got the elevator down with Pete Hamill and the Duchins.
Cabbed to Mortimer’s for Marisa’s dinner ($2). Marisa looked beautiful in silver, and Paul Jasmin was with her. She’s finally leaving town. She’s mad at Barbara Allen because Barbara was seeing her husband, Jim Randall, out in California, so Barbara wasn’t invited. Steve told us that Warren had fucked Jackie O., that he talked about it. Bianca said that Warren had probably just made it up, that he made it up that he slept with her, Bianca, and that when she saw him in the Beverly Wilshire she screamed, “Warren, I hear you say you’re fucking me. How can you say that when it’s not true?” and she said she embarrassed him. But then Bianca said that Warren had a big cock, and Steve said how would she know, and she said that all her girlfriends had slept with him. Oh, and Diana Ross was at the dinner, she was fun.
So then after dinner everybody wanted to go to Studio 54. Steve had his Mercedes, and Diana Ross was afraid to drive with him, but I assured her that he was a great driver, which he is, even in his drugged states, and so she squeezed in between us. Got there and it was jammed—some party for CBS Records. Steve’s been having open bar since the bust. James Curley was there with a girl he said he’s going to marry so he was cool to me. He was in white tie and tails, he’d just been to a debutante ball—they’re all this week.
Oh, and Bob was in heaven when we left Jackie O.’s party, raving about how nice she’d been to him, pronouncing his name correctly and sharing her glass of Perrier with him when the butler forgot to bring his—she said, “It’s ours.”
Thursday, December 21, 1978
Yesterday Jackie O. kept calling me at the office. She called three or four times. But I didn’t call back, because the messages were complicated—they were like, “Call me at this number after 5:30, or before 4:00 if it’s not raining.” And then finally she called me at home—I wonder how she got the number—and that was strange. She sounded so tough. She said, “Now Andy, when I invited you, I invited you—I didn’t invite Bob Colacello.” She said she was upset because Bob “writes things.” And now that I think about it, Caroline made some comment like that at the party. And I mean, there were lots of journalists there—Pete Hamill and Caroline’s new boyfriend. I told her not to worry, that Bob wasn’t going to write anything. So something must have happened there that she doesn’t want written about. She was thinking about it all day, I guess.
Catherine wanted to go to Cowboys (cab $2). It’s so great going in there, a black hole with all boy beauties and all available. And then every other person there is somebody. Charlie Cowles was there. Henry Post was there, he’s one of these kids that I like that everybody else says is terrible, but there’s something nice and intelligent about him. I asked him what he was doing there and he said he was doing research for a story.
Friday, December 22, 1978
Bob picked up Paulette Goddard and then they came and picked me up. When we got to the Iranian embassy I gave Hoveyda a print. And it was in the papers that the Shah’s going to abdicate and his son’s going to ascend. Paulette was acting nutty—I think she’s losing her marbles—she was talking about her legs getting machine-gunned. And then when we were inside at the table the wind blew the doors open and Paulette got up and was crawling out of the dining room toward the doors to the buffet room … well, not really crawling, but she got up and tried to flee the room, and Hoveyda said, “Where are you going?” And she said, “I want to hide.” It was peculiar. She kept saying that the evening was so “morbid” because all the Iranians were looking for new jobs.
Bob dropped me home. When I was in bed, already asleep, around 2:00, Victor called and told me to come over to Studio 54, that it was fun, that they had snow all over the floors. But I didn’t.
Saturday, December 23, 1978
Talked to Tinkerbelle and she was saying how she makes out with everybody she interviews, that she was making out with Christopher Walken and that his wife was getting upset. She said she cut her arm falling on the glass from a skylight—she’d broken into a friend’s apartment—she thought they had some drugs in there. I guess Tinkerbelle’s really wild.
Sunday, December 24, 1978
Up early. New York was so unbusy, there were lots of cabs. Everybody must have gone away because it was great, everything was open and nothing was crowded. Then cabbed to Union Square ($3). I got Rupert to come up and help me work, I decided to do prints of the Ali paintings.
Oh, and in the morning I called David Whitney to wish him a Merry Christmas and Philip Johnson answered the phone and said he was cleaning up because the big winds had blown in a sheet of glass—he was at the Glass House in Connecticut—and it could have cut him in two. Isn’t that scary? David wasn’t there, he was down at the greenhouse. Truman called and said he was alone because Bob MacBride had to spend Christmas with his kids. I worked all afternoon, left at 5:00, dropped Vincent and Rupert ($4.50).
Tom Cashin came over to the house for a fast turkey dinner before we went to Diane Von Furstenberg’s. And Diane didn’t invite Bob Colacello to her party. Now everybody’s saying that they only like me when Bob and Fred aren’t around with me, that’s the new thing. Everybody’s being mean to Bob. But they’ll be turning on me soon, too, probably.
But when we got to Diane Von Furstenberg’s she had a guilty pang and started saying, “How could I be so evil? How could I be so rotten to Bob?” and then she called him, but he was already going to
Adriana Jackson’s, but he said he’d come after dinner.
It was really raining when we were going over, really hard. It was a horrible Christmas party with horrible people—about fifty of them—so I didn’t see why she couldn’t have invited Bob in the first place.
Barry Diller was there and I guess the reason he and Diane are a couple is because she gives him straightness and he gives her powerfulness. He’s very powerful. And that producer Howard Rosenman was there, and someone screamed, “Rosenwoman!” and that was funny. Truman was having fun talking to Cappy Badrutt. She was the only fun person there.
Then we left for Halston’s. Catherine was there and I gave her a painting with some of my come on it, but then Victor said it was his come, and then we had a fight about that, but now that I think about it, it could have been Victor’s.
Halston had a big fish. I had red wine and was getting so tired that when Tom Sullivan put a crystal of coke on my tongue for the first time it really worked on me. Just one little piece and it really woke me up. We were going to Studio 54 and I knew that we’d be up until 5:00.
Monday, December 25, 1978
Went to church. Tom Cashin called to say Merry Christmas.
The turkey at Halston’s was ready at 9 P.M. It was really good. We reviewed the night before. Halston revealed that Steve had spent the whole day with Roy Cohn and that he was only coming over for a while, he had to go back to see him some more.
At Studio 54 the IRS found a room full of cash. And now, when I think about it, hearing how much money Steve actually had, he could have been treating us so wonderfully. He could have been so generous and spending so much, and he just wasn’t. He did take us to La Grenouille once, but it could have been so much more.
And they were talking about Bianca’s divorce, Steve saying she should hire Roy Cohn and sue Mick for everything, but the thing’s so complicated—Bianca wants to get the divorce in London and Mick wants it in France because France is where she signed the paper saying she wouldn’t get anything in a divorce settlement.
Wednesday, December 27, 1978
Halston called inviting me to dinner for Diana Ross at his house. She was in the tightest black pants, like she was poured into them, and she’s so skinny—they were so tight she could hardly sit down. She was sitting next to me and she talked the whole night, touching me, I guess she was on something. She said that she told Cher she wouldn’t do her TV special, that Cher flew up to Vegas to see her last week about it, but she turned it down. She said, “That’s not my scene right now.” Diana uses the hip lines, she said, “I don’t mind the girl, but …” Weren’t they best friends once?
Sunday, December 31, 1978
Fred’s in the Amazon—no, wait. The Andes. I talked to David Bourdon, he was going to go to Rosenquist’s New Year’s Eve party. Rosenquist was hiring a live band again. It was so successful the year before that he’s doing it again.
I worked all afternoon at the office. It was nice working on New Year’s Eve, I painted backgrounds. Walter Steding came over to help me. Ronnie was having an Alcoholics Anonymous New Year’s, and Brigid stopped by to pick up some tapes.
I didn’t know the evening at Halston’s was going to be so chic, my dear. I’d asked if I could bring Jed and Halston said fine so we went over. Catherine brought Tom and Winnie—Halston’d said fine to that, too. Tom told me that he was giving Catherine and me points in the movie, and that they had to reshoot a little more, that somebody had just given $150,000 so they could. Bianca was in a Dior.
Oh, and Vincent called earlier and said that Mrs. Winters had called and said that Mr. Winters had what they think was a heart attack.
Diana Ross looked beautiful. And she had asked Halston over the phone if he was going to serve black-eyed peas at midnight because it was good luck. So Steve went around town getting soul food. And when she got there Halston was cooking ham hocks and ribs. A few people said to her, “Don’t you want to check on the black-eyed peas?” They knew the peas were her idea, and they were just trying to be nice. I guess she took it as an insult, though, because she said, “No, thank you, darling, I think I’ve checked them enough.”
And Mohammed the houseboy had a girlfriend there and she was Jake LaMotta’s daughter. He’s that boxer Bobby De Niro’s playing in the new Scorsese movie. She’s pretty.
While we were sitting at Halston’s we had the radio on and it was “live from Studio 54,” and we heard the announcer saying, “Oh yes! Here they come! Halston, Bianca, and Andy Warhol! They’re walking in the door right now!”
Then we all did go to Studio 54. They had decorated it great, put silver glitter on the floor, and they had someone on a trapeze, and white balloons. And they were saying that Bobby De Niro had been there since 10:00. They’d been having a press party.
The whole night was spent losing and finding and looking and finding and looking. John Fairchild, Jr. has a crush on Bianca so we were looking for her, and then losing her, and then losing him and finding her, and then losing me, and looking for me, and losing him….
I was sober. I had lots of Perrier. The place was still jumping at 7:00. Went outside, it was warm out, and people were still waiting to get in, as if it were only 1:00. Only the light was different.
Monday, January 1, 1979
Maxime said she was giving me a dinner party, which I didn’t want. So I told her to invite Bianca and the Herreras and I picked up Catherine. And I also invited Allen Brooks, the porn star. Cabbed to 19th and Fifth ($5). Gloria Swanson was there with her new young husband. Gloria used to be married to Maxime’s ex-brother-in-law, the Count de la Falaise. And she started saying, “I smell terrible fumes. I have to go to the window to get away from them. Where are they coming from? Check your stove. I have a very good nose and I know there are fumes escaping.” And I just knew it was the perfume I had on that she was smelling. It was jasmine from Shelly Marks. PH and I are doing research for a new perfume line and I was trying it out. And so I didn’t want to go near Gloria. I went into the bathroom and tried to wash it off, and then for the rest of the night I stayed about four feet away from her even when she was trying to talk to me. I ran over and talked to Sylvia Miles. Gloria looked good, though, with short grey hair. Maxime served spaghetti.
Mario Amaya, that person who stopped by the Factory in ‘68 and wound up getting shot in the arm by Valerie Solanis when she was shooting me—he was there and he just quit his job at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk.
Tuesday, January 2, 1979
Went to meet Truman at Dr. Orentreich’s office on 72nd and Fifth to tape the two of them for Truman’s first “Conversations with Capote” series in Interview. We went in the back door, and Dr. Orentreich gave us free samples, and he thought it was an interview so he began babbling, saying everything he’s doing. Then he removed the veins from my nose. I’ve had it done before, by Dr. Domonkos. It doesn’t last, but for a while it looks great. For about three months, then you have it done again. He said that the doctor who sandpapered my nose twenty years ago had done a bad job, gone too deep.
Truman’s getting a facelift, but Dr. Orentreich isn’t doing it himself—somebody in his office is—it’s just going to be “supervised by” Dr. Orentreich.
Friday, January 5, 1979
Bianca had invited so many people down to the office to see the pictures I’m doing of her that it turned into a big lunch. And I’d invited all the kids who come after me in Studio 54, I figured that when you see somebody in the light all the glamour’s gone so it’d be a good way to end it all, let them get a hard, cold look at me in the daylight. I invited Curley, and Justin, and Pecker who got fired as a waiter at Studio 54 for serving drinks in the ladies’ room. But since the ladies’ room there is always full of men, anyway, I don’t know why they cared.
Bianca had tickets for the John Curry ice ballet show at the Minskoff Theater. After the show we went backstage to see John Curry. The dressing rooms at the Minskoff are new and beautiful, air-conditioned and everything. Jade
was with us. There’s something so good-looking about John Curry, he’s so adorable, and when I was leaving he kissed me on the mouth. They’re thinking of closing the show because he really hurt himself, but they’re going to run it for another week.
Saturday, January 6, 1979
Walter Steding called and wanted to freelance, so I had him deliver a Shadow painting up to John Curry (cab $10).
Vincent was calling Montauk because Mr. Winters was failing, and Mrs. Winters was upset. I just couldn’t believe that anybody who looked as good as Mr. Winters did was in bad health. But he has been really cranky, I think last summer with Tom Sullivan out there really made him cranky.
Then Bob called and said that Rod Stewart and Alana Hamilton wanted to see us for dinner, and that sounded like a fun thing. I worked at home until 10:00, and then Bob picked me up and we went to Elaine’s (cab $2.50). It turned out to be actually Swifty Lazar’s dinner party, and the Erteguns were there, and Rod’s manager, I think, or assistant, he was funny, talking gay with Bob. Well, the party was so stuffy, poor Rod looked miserable, you could see he really wanted a good time, and they all wanted blows and nobody had any. And then Françoise and Oscar de la Renta left and suddenly—it was incredible—everything picked up. Who would think that just two people leaving could do so much—the whole mood of the dinner changed.
Rod and Alana had the most beautiful coats. He had black mink and she had a matching white mink. He looked so great—he looked better than she did.