The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Ronnie came with a girl dressed as a nurse who’s a bartender at the Mudd Club. Then out came the birthday cake which was a huge baked cookie, like a Famous Amos, only it looked like a big plop of shit, it was funny.

  Halston didn’t give me the kind of expensive presents he did last year, I guess he thought it was too hard to go through that and do it every year, so he broke the tradition and gave me twenty boxes. One had skates, another had a helmet, another had a radio, and then earphones, and then kneepads, and then gloves, and a How to Skate book. And Victor had his own skates, too, so we went outside and skated in front of the house. It was fun. Jane Holzer and Bob Denison came late. Then we ordered limos to go to Studio 54. Oh, and Steve gave me a good present. A roll of 5,000 of the new free drink tickets he’d just had printed up for the new year.

  Wednesday, August 8, 1979

  Commissioner Geldzahler called and said he was upset because Raymond was leaving town. Fred brought in the pictures of Liza and they were horrible. I mean, they were clear and sharp, but Liza’s not fat and they made her look fat, and like a drag queen. The expressions were wrong, too. Richard Bernstein’s going to have to do a big creative job on them for the Interview cover.

  Later that night we cabbed to Studio 54 ($4). Steve was at the door and he said that Valerie and Robin Williams were inside and he brought me over to them. There’ve been stories in the papers that they were getting divorced, but Valerie said it wasn’t true. Cheryl Tiegs came in with Peter Beard and I guess she wanted to have her picture taken with Robin but Valerie said no, no pictures. Valerie’s very tough, she runs things, and then she turned to me and asked if I thought it was okay that she was that tough, if she should be. She said that Robin was invited to Fire Island for the weekend but she didn’t want him to go. She said, “It would be too big a strain on both of us.” So then I thought that maybe she’s afraid he could be a fairy. She said she wanted them to go someplace like Nantucket instead.

  I introduced her to a cute waiter named Robert who wasn’t working, and she seemed sort of hot for him and they danced but then she got nervous—maybe she’d just wanted to get Robin jealous for a minute. He’s still wearing the clothes we bought that day down in the Village. He’s got such a funny-shaped body.

  Steve was smoking a joint and when the person who gave it to him wanted it back, Steve started screaming.

  Sunday, August 12, 1979

  I’d taken the Popism manuscript home with me to read and so I worked on that all afternoon and then called PH and discussed it. Went to church for a few minutes. The weather was awful, it was pouring.

  Friday, August 17, 1979

  Went to the Gulf + Western building for a meeting with Paramount Pictures to do the poster artwork for the movie The Serial. I didn’t realize it was such a big meeting, I was fifteen minutes late and there were twenty people there. Fred was there with a hangover, really sick, so he was no help. The guy—his name was Cohen with a “K”—Kohen, he pointed out the window, he had a corner view, and said, “You’ve got to do a good job so I can keep the office.” He kept saying, “I’ll know it when I see it.” It was so old-fashioned.

  After we left the meeting Fred and I walked a lot because he felt so sick. We thought that it wasn’t really a good thing to do, so he’ll just tell them a really high price, and if they say okay then I’ll do it.

  Read in the Post that Truman lost round one of the court battle with Gore Vidal, the million-dollar lawsuit. The judge decided not to throw it out of court.

  Monday, August 20, 1979

  Cabbed to Irving Place, got out at Gramercy Park ($1.50). Saw a squirrel eating a nut. Went to 65 Irving and de Antonio and his wife were already there. We asked him to write for Interview and he’s going to find someone to interview.

  While the lunch was going on, the owners of 65 Irving were interviewing for new waiters off in a corner. Left lunch about 4:15 (lunch $67).

  Ran into Barry Friedman on the street and he gave me the cold shoulder, I don’t know why. He was with a girl, and either he was drugged or wigged-out or gone up in the world, I don’t know.

  Tuesday, August 21, 1979

  Worked until 7:30 (cab $4). Went home and did some drawings. Not one single person called. I guess everyone must be on vacation.

  Sunday, August 26, 1979

  Barry Landau called and said that The New York Times had been over at his place asking him if he’d seen Hamilton Jordan in the basement of Studio 54, and he said that he’d told them yes, that he couldn’t lie. I went to church.

  Monday, August 27, 1979

  There was no lunch on, and I was being good and not eating, but then Fred wanted to try out the new thing in the McDonald’s commercial—the beef and onion sandwich. It tasted like cardboard and it was in pieces like it had already been chewed. The onions were the only good thing, they were real. That was strange, having real onions and the rest of the stuff phony. The sauce was good, but it was really sweet.

  There was a big thunderstorm in the afternoon.

  Tuesday, August 28, 1979

  On the front page of the Post was a big picture of Barry Landau saying that he saw Hamilton Jordan at Studio 54 asking where he could get coke.

  Wednesday, August 29, 1979

  Got up and cabbed to Union Square ($3.50). Walked to the office. Fred had the papers and we were reading about Studio 54 and really laughing it up. Then the phone rang and it was the FBI and we stopped laughing. I wouldn’t take the call, I had Fred talk to them, and they’re coming to see me today. Then Halston called and said the FBI had just been to see him, too, but he said he wouldn’t say over the phone what happened. It’s funny, they’re wasting their time on this stuff. Don’t they have a Ten Most Wanted list anymore? I mean, they’re trying to find Barry Landau who everybody else is trying not to find!

  Rupert and I worked on the Ten Most Famous Jews series. I haven’t been told for sure yet who’se in it. Sarah Bernhardt. Maybe Woody Allen. Charlie Chaplin, Freud, Modigliani, Martin Buber. Who is Martin Buber? The Guggenheims. Oh, and Einstein. And Gertrude Stein. Kafka (photos for research $2.20). I think they were considering Bob Dylan but I read that he turned born-again Christian.

  Thursday, August 30, 1979

  Cabbed to Union Square ($3.60). Walked to the office. Made some phone calls, had a little lunch. There was a crowd of models there that Barry McKinley was taking photographs of, mostly male models, they were so good-looking. Why are there so many to choose from now? Because there’s nobody in the army? Wouldn’t it be great to do a whole movie of nothing but good-looking kids—the butcher, the baker—all models.

  Friday, August 31, 1979

  The Interview arrived and it’s the Liza cover, there’s lots of smudges on it. I was disappointed because it didn’t seem that thick. Only forty pages of ads, the issue was only eighty-eight pages. And Vogue this month is so fat it looks like a telephone book.

  I had to meet my agent Joan Hyler at Elaine’s so I could meet the guy who might get me a guest appearance on The Love Boat (cab $3). Elaine was there looking very slim. It was Joan Hyler, Bob Feiden, Steven Gaines, and this guy Tim from The Love Boat. At the next table was Jerzy Kosinski and his girlfriend Kiki with a Polish kid, an assistant cameraman who just defected and he was overwhelmed, it was his first day in New York and he was meeting me. Because he’d read the Philosophy book in Poland. He hadn’t actually defected yet. You can’t defect on a holiday, so he had to wait until Tuesday.

  Then we went to Studio 54 and Mark let us in, and I made Curley dance with Tim to show him a good time. We stayed until 5:00 and then I took the kids to a coffee shop and we had tea ($15) and then I got a cab. Steve Rubell was at Studio 54, sober, and he said wasn’t it great what Barry was doing, and for a second I forgot Barry was doing it for Steve and so I started to say how horrible Barry was, but I caught myself. It’s Steve’s deal with the government—if he gives them names he’ll get a better deal. So Barry’s helping him give names.

  Tuesday, Se
ptember 4, 1979

  Bruno Bischofberger still is after me to give him a lot of my early photos for his photography collection. When did I start taking Polaroids? 1965? Bruno wants me to paint the Statue of Liberty and I haven’t decided yet if I’ll do it. I tried to talk him out of the Statue of Liberty and get him interested in the Heart paintings that I’ve been doing.

  Ran into Diane Von Furstenberg who said she’s not going to go to Studio 54 anymore because she thinks it’s wrong of Steve to be naming names.

  Wednesday, September 5, 1979

  It was the beginning of hurricane weather outside, grey. I wandered around, passed out Interviews—the Liza new ones—and thought about Montauk. They said this hurricane is traveling the path of the one in 1938, and that’s when Montauk took a beating. I ran into Charles Evans and he gave me a ride, and we had a good talk about all the girls he knows.

  Picked Bob up at 7:45 and went to the Magno screening room to see Yanks. I invited Curley and he and Bob loved the movie but I couldn’t stand it. It was a forties movie, and if you want to see a forties movie they’re on TV all the time and you can have great-looking people like Tyrone Power, not Richard Gere! The movie had no war and no bombing.

  After the movie we went to a Claude Montana fashion show at Studio 54. It was just finishing. Larissa said that Claude Montana was a genius and she asked me if I wanted to meet him. I’d seen the big photograph of him out in the front, this eight-foot figure, and she pulled over this little twerp of five feet with a mustache and American clothes and said it was him and that he was shy.

  Thursday, September 6, 1979

  I got up and David was around—Hurricane David. I guess it rained all night, that’s what must have gotten me up in the middle of the night.

  Went out and passed out Interviews. On the street I ran into David Kennerly, the White House photographer, he was in town to promote a book, he said. Only I didn’t recognize him at first, then finally he said something about the White House and it was able to dawn on me who he was.

  Walked down a little ways and wandered into all the usual places. The hurricane never really happened. It stopped raining. The trees in the park were sort of down, but not much.

  And the headlines are about David Kennedy going to Harlem to buy drugs. He’s the crazy one who had the fight with Fred at Xenon. It was cute when he said to the police, “I’m David Kennedy, please don’t tell my family, I just want to go to Hyannis.”

  Saturday, September 8, 1979

  Drove to Forest Hills. Had good seats. Went to the locker room. Billie Jean King said hello. Watched Martina Navratilova and Tracy Austin play, but I hate watching girls play, I hate the way they play, they just don’t play that well, I can’t stand it.

  McEnroe and Connors played each other, and they’re the same kind of people, the same type.

  Tuesday, September 11, 1979

  I was taking Marina Schiano to Charles Evans’s dinner and I had to walk over to the armory to pick her up. She was at the antiques fair there with Jed. Admission was $3 5 which I stupidly paid because nobody told me that it was put on by the Folk Art Museum that I’m a trustee of. I met up with the guy who runs the museum, Bishop, who thinks my collection’s no good. He’s stupid. I hate all that American Primitive stuff now anyway, the jazzy painted stuff—it looks like junk —the toys and dolls and merry-go-rounds and Indian baskets.

  At Charles Evans’s dinner Bo Polk was there, and he knew every single girl in the room. He and Stephanie McLuhan are broken up, but she was there, too. Bo accused me of being the one who introduced him to Barry Landau, but really he knows I really warned him.

  Saturday, September 15, 1979—New York—Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania—New York

  Suzie Frankfurt picked us up in a limo that belonged to a decorating client of hers. A beautiful day. We went straight to the Brandywine River Museum and then someone there took us to Frolic Weymouth’s house. He had a tent over the whole place and good chicken salad. All the right people were there. Lady Bird Johnson, Henry and Shirlee Fonda, rich old ladies who look like bulldogs.

  Then we went over to Jamie Wyeth’s who spent the whole time giving an interview to WWD, and Phyllis was in the pool. I talked to Shirlee Fonda. She said they sold their East Side New York house on 79th Street to David Brenner, but then he backed out at the last minute, he said that he was too famous to own a house. She said that if Henry Fonda could own a house, David Brenner could, too. But she’s very happy because now they’re renting the house for $5,000 a month and making more money that way. When she was cleaning the place out, she found a big gold cross worth about $20,000 behind the bookshelves and they’re going to try to find out who it belonged to. She said that she wouldn’t have felt right keeping it. I could see that Suzie really wanted it badly, she likes gold crosses.

  We went back to Frolic’s to change. The girls got into their ball gowns. Oh, and Henry Fonda has all his teeth. He was eating green apples. I’m sure they’re his because they’re sort of darkened.

  Suzie was rolling a joint and it was embarrassing. I had one of those peppermint drinks, mint julep, and I threw it out. Suzie forgot to feed the driver and that was terrible.

  At the museum Frolic introduced me to Governor Scranton and his wife and some old ladies. Had a few drinks, pictures, dinner. Marina Schiano and Jed changed placecards so they’d be next to each other, they weren’t happy. I was next to Nancy Hanks on one side and the sister of Henry Mcllhenny, Bonny Wintersteen, on the other side. Nancy Hanks is the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, I guess, she got Jamie on her advisory committee, The National Council on the Arts. Bonny Wintersteen was fascinating and fun. She’s fat with grey hair pulled back very tight. She sold her ten most famous paintings to the Japanese a few years ago when they were going for very high prices, she said she got tired of people showing up at her house and demanding to see them.

  I met a lot of kids in black tie who said they met me twenty years ago at the University of Pennsylvania when Edie and I went there for my show. We left at about 10:30 and I fell asleep in the car.

  Sunday, September 16, 1979

  Went to Lester Persky’s Yanks party at Trader Vic’s. It turned out to be a really intimate dinner for only about fourteen people. Lester arrived with Richard Gere, and John Schlesinger arrived and Tommy Dean. Lester has a thin mustache now. Richard Gere asked me how Lester and I had met and I told him that we met in the gutter ten years ago, and this time Lester didn’t like that, so it was my first faux pas. Richard Gere said that ten years ago he came in on a bus from New Jersey and went to see our movie Bike Boy in the Village, and he said from then on he’s been trying to be an actor—it took him eleven years, he said. He’s big and good-looking. We were talking about girls and he was talking about meeting the most beautiful girl in Rome—Dalila DiLazzaro—at a party in Zeffirelli’s backyard and I told him we discovered her—that Paul Morrissey had seen her doing a soap commercial on Italian TV and made her the star of Frankenstein—and he was impressed. He’s going to be in a new play called Bent which is an English one about homos in concentration camps. I asked him if he was Italian and he said no, that he was French and Irish.

  Steve Rubell came later. When Steve’s normal, he’s so distant. Lester told funny stories. Then I made another faux pas, I said that it was so much fun there, nobody should leave. And Steve was sitting right there. And I wasn’t even thinking about the party at 54, I was just wanting to make Lester spend more money entertaining us because he’s always so cheap. John Schlesinger gave a speech.

  Monday, September 17, 1979

  Cab to Union Square ($4). There was a lunch for Jack Kroll from Newsweek and I had invited two friends of his, too, one who made a movie that Jack liked called Anti-Clock, and I didn’t know if the girl was his girlfriend or if she did P.R. It’s a small movie, an art movie. They told me, “It’s your kind of movie” (laughs), so you can imagine what it’s like.

  Bob told me the reason he’s after Newsweek is so they’l
l do a cover story on me, but I don’t want one. I mean, what’re they going to say? Reporters will just rehash. “He lives on the Upper East Side with two dachshunds and he’s a sometimes walking-stick for Paulette Goddard.” Well maybe they’ll feel the same way I do, too, that it’s too boring. I mean you have to do something different like get married and have a couple of kids or take a few drugs or lose a few hundred pounds or die, to be good copy.

  Dropped Rupert and Bob ($4) and went home and got into black tie. Robyn’s mother, Mrs. Amory, invited me to the Cancer dance. I invited Gael Malkenson. I went over to Gael’s and she was in a bright green dress. We had a drink there. Her boyfriend is out of town. He works at a cheese company, and she’s gotten fat because he brings home all this cheese. Cabbed to Lincoln Center ($2.50).

  They had an orchestra and all the old bags were out on the floor doing the foxtrot, and there’s always that one seventy-five or eighty-year-old lady who gets out there and is the first to start really jumping. These old bags still want men to go to bed with them. They look like the ladies at Bonnie & Clyde, that dyke bar downtown where every table it’s women who look like anybody’s mother.

  The Gilmans were there, they’re now best friends with Robyn’s mother, they have a house next to her in Tuxedo Park. And I asked Sondra whatever happened to Adela Holzer, and she said, “My dear, you won’t believe it, she’s been staying with me at my house for eight months and she’s going to come out of court victorious.” That’s a good friend, I guess. But then if she’s such a good friend, why did she let her sit in jail for four days?