The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Then I left to meet Richard Weisman and Catherine at the Mayfair House. Catherine’s been working for him and they were spatting. It came out that she’d just told him she quit. It was an easy job—he just was sending her out to buy his presents for him, I think (drinks $20).

  Cabbed to Diane Von Furstenberg’s ($4). I had a fight with the cab driver, he wanted to go the way he wanted to go. Richard wasn’t invited but he was Catherine’s date. The first person I ran into was Laverne of Laverne and Shirley, and we talked about the “L” painting I was going to do for her. Richard was acting like a host—he always does, somehow. He’s very insecure and he does drive you up the wall, but he’s nice. He thanked Diane for inviting him, but she hadn’t. Harry Fane was there, and Barry Diller. It was a party for Nona Summers and her husband, whose name I always forget, so they think I’m wigged out. That’s the new thing they’re calling me. Like in Newsweek they called me that.

  The same people as usual… Berry Berenson and the Niarchos kids, who it’s so funny to listen to after you’ve heard Fred imitate them, the lisps. And Barbara Allen was running around saying that all her boyfriends were there—Mick Flick, Mick Jagger, Philip Niarchos, and Bryan Ferry. Barbara looked gorgeous.

  DVF said she couldn’t wait to read Popism, and that everybody loves it. And then Silvinha arrived with Richard Gere and said that I was her sixties, so she’d try to be my eighties. Silvinha takes painting lessons from Mati Klarwein the painter, who has the kid with Caterine Milinaire.

  So Silvinha and a girlfriend were talking and Silvinha said she was making it with Max DeLy’s friend, that Italian kid Danilo—she was saying this when Richard wasn’t nearby—and then she said, “I don’t know what to do about Richard, we stay out till 4:00 and then sometimes we have sex and then sometimes we don’t, and I want to expand his mind and take him to art galleries.”

  François de Menil was there, I didn’t even know it. And in the bedroom they were all taking stuff. And Harry Fane was putting the make on Silvinha or her girlfriend that she was talking to, he put on the “Fuck Me” look. And Barbara Allen was running around saying who should she go home with. And then just as I was quietly slipping out, Richard Weisman saw me and was screaming, “Andy! Andy! Are you leaving?” And then he wanted to leave, too, and he does his thing of saying goodbye to everybody, just what I didn’t want to do. And then in the car he said, “Do you think I made a mistake the other night, going to bed with Catherine?” I said, “What?” I mean, I knew that he and Catherine had had sex once a while ago, but now here he was saying that they just had it, and I mean, I can never bring it up to Catherine because it’s too embarrassing. And Richard was saying how he felt guilty and did I think that was why Catherine quit, because when you do it with somebody you work for, then you think you always have to do it.

  Wednesday, March 19, 1980

  We were going to see Heartaches of a Cat, the play that Kim D’Estainville produced. At the Anta Theater.

  I went over to pick up Paulette and we went over to the theater. Paulette signed autographs. The play was so cute, so unusual. Really beautiful masks of the animals. All the actors have animal faces, like the toy things in old French books. Everybody loved it. It could be a hit. I mean, if the kids love Peter Pan they’ll just love this. It’s the Argentinian group that broke away from Paloma’s husband.

  Claudette Colbert was with Peter Rogers, and for some reason she’s always so happy to see me. Jerome Robbins was there, I think he helped with it.

  When they did the speeches in French it must have sounded so elegant, but in English, Miss Piggy speaks so much better.

  Then we went across the street to Gallagher’s for the after-the-show party.

  Bianca, it turned out, never came because she had to wait at the airport for three hours to pick up a painting for Thomas Ammann and she was mad ($10 to the limo).

  A nice lady came to ask Paulette if she would give her daughter her autograph and Paulette took the lady’s hand and lifted it off her shoulder and said, “I hate greasy hands on my white dress.”

  Saturday, March 22, 1980

  Worked till 7:30. Then cabbed to Si Newhouse’s ($4) on East 70th Street—a big wide house. An art party. Bruno Bischofberger was there. And Mel Bochner the artist who was married to Dorothea Rockburn the artist and got ideas from her. And Mary Boone who said she’ll give Ronnie a show, but he’s not interested because she calls him every night at 4:00 in the morning. Carl Andre was there. I invited the Newhouse daughter to lunch on Monday, she’s just a shy girl, but then I found out that her parents were divorced when she was little, so I don’t know if she’s in the bucks or not. Mark Lancaster was there.

  Bianca had called me before I went to the Newhouses’ and invited me over to Halston’s later, but I couldn’t bring Mark because Halston gets upset when you bring another person. So cab to Halston’s ($1.50).

  Bianca was talking on the phone to Steve Rubell in jail, and Steve was having to put in nickels every three minutes. Because you can’t call them and you can’t write them letters, or he doesn’t want you to or something. Somebody asked him if the phone was tapped and he said, “No, no.” But then somebody else was saying that when they talked to him before, they could hear a guy warning him to watch what he said. Another inmate giving him advice.

  Steve said he’s having a wonderful time, that he’s put on eleven pounds, and he had sloppy rice for dinner. He said that if he can get his liquor license back for Studio 54 then he’ll liquidate, because it’ll be easier to get rid of it with a liquor license.

  He said that the top people were there. I think he said Sindona, but I’m not sure. He said Ian sleeps all the time. Bianca was saying all these things to him, like that she was going to Magique later to try it out and that she’d been at Xenon the night before. I guess she thinks that kind of talk—that that’s the kind of talk that’ll excite him. He kept putting nickels in. Bianca had John Samuels there, he got a haircut, and he looks fifteen.

  Monday, March 24, 1980

  I bought Wrestling and Petland and Jet—lots of different magazines—to see what they were like to get ideas for Interview ($8.50, cab $3).

  I had to be photographed by some ad agency and they did their whole setup and then asked me why I was so creative, and I said, “I’m not.” So that blew their whole thing, they didn’t know what else to ask. Then I took the car up to Bloomingdale’s. I was forty-five minutes late and they were mad. I autographed a lot of books. Then the car drove me home. It was raining.

  Went to La Boîte to the dinner Bob organized for Popism. And there were terrible speeches by Henry Geldzahler who said I was the mirror of our times, and Ahmet who said everybody loves me. Richard Gere was sweet and said he’d read the book and loved it. Stallone crashed with two girlfriends, and he and Bianca had a big fight because he heard her putting him down. Everybody sang “Happy Birthday” to John Samuels who turned twenty. And our editor Steve Aronson was there and he kept his whole table laughing.

  Sunday, March 30, 1980—Naples

  Lucio Amelio put us in the Excelsior Hotel and kept saying he got us the “Elizabeth Taylor” suite. But they gave Beuys the bigger suite upstairs—that’s why they kept pushing the Liz Taylor business to me. But the rooms were big, really big, looking over the black-market people who sell cigarettes.

  Then we rested and were taken to Graziella’s brother’s who lives on the waterfront and they made us some dinner. There was an old ex-movie star and an ex-fashion designer. They served all this food but Graziella and her brother didn’t eat anything themselves, and that does make you feel very peculiar, so I learned my lesson—from now on when we invite people to lunch I’ll eat.

  Monday, March 31, 1980—Naples

  We had to do TV in the streets, in the slums of Naples. Suzie hid her jewelry. We toured and it was great to see that old-time thing of clothes hanging in the street from one window to another.

  We went back to the hotel to meet Joseph Beuys and then we had di
nner with Beuys and his family at some funny little Italian restaurant. He was sweet. Really a lot of fun.

  Tuesday, April 1, 1980—Naples

  Up at 10:00, interview with Expresso again. Lucio picked us up and took us to the gallery because we had a press conference with 400 people. Joseph Beuys loves the press now because he’s running for president of Germany under the Free Sky Party and with me he can get more coverage—no, it’s the Green Party, that’s it. Then São Schlumberger arrived and we invited her to lunch at this waterfront place. Then we were picked up for the opening and there were at least 3,000 or 4,000 people there, you couldn’t get in, it was horrible, and finally we slipped away, they were giving us a party at a place called something like City Hall, a drag nightclub. Finally after three hours of waiting, this drag queen with hair on his chest came in and I was talking so she told me to shut up, she did a couple of numbers and then all of a sudden pushed me aside and stormed out and we didn’t understand what had happened, but somebody said she was too emotional because she was singing for me, she gets that way. But it was too boring. Fred got insulted because the TV lights were shining on us too long, and told Lucio off, that it was the most ridiculous evening, and that Lucio had wasted our time because that kind of evening wouldn’t sell pictures, and that he was just using us to get into show business. We didn’t get into bed till about 4:00.

  Wednesday, April 2, 1980—Naples—Rome

  Fred and I had to leave for our private audience with the pope by 10:00 so we left Naples at 7:00. When we came to the outskirts of Rome the driver didn’t know how to get into the city. We had to follow a cab to take us to Graziella’s office to pick up two tickets to have a private audience with the pope. Suzie was very upset because it was too exclusive for her to go, so she gave Fred her cross to have blessed.

  We got our tickets and then the driver dropped us off at the Vatican. When we saw 5,000 other people standing around waiting for the pope, too, I just knew that Graziella hadn’t gotten us a private audience. But Fred put on airs and went up to the guards and said that we had a private audience with the pope and they laughed.

  They finally took us in to our seats with the rest of the 5,000 people and a nun screamed out, “You’re Andy Warhol! Can I have your autograph?” She looked like Valerie Solanis so I got scared she’d pull out a gun and shoot me. Then I had to sign five more autographs for other nuns. And I just get so nervous at church. And then the pope came out, he was on a gold car, he did the rounds, and then finally he got up and gave a speech against divorce in seven different languages. There was a bunch of cheerleaders saying, “Rah-rah, pope.” That took three hours. It was really boring, and then finally the pope was coming our way. He shook everybody’s hand and Fred kissed his ring and got Suzie’s cross blessed. He asked Fred where he was from and Fred said New York, and I was taking pictures—there were a lot of photographers around—and he shook my hand and I said I was from New York, too. I didn’t kiss his hand. The people next to me were giving him a gold plate, they were from Belgium. The mobs behind us were jumping down from their seats, it was scary. Then Fred was going to take a Polaroid but I said they’d think it was a machine gun and shoot us, so we never got a Polaroid of the pope. As soon as Fred and I got blessed we ran out.

  We decided it would be fun to make up a good story to tell Suzie, so we went to have lunch on the Piazza Navona ($45). We made up that we’d had a private audience with the pope and that he liked Fred so much that he asked us to lunch and then he forgot to give us back Suzie’s cross.

  Saturday, April 5, 1980—Paris

  We went to Kim D’Estainville’s new shop near the Arc de Triomphe. A funny neighborhood. Kim’s recuperating from his play folding on Broadway. There was nobody in town to try to sell ads to. We had dinner at Club Sept (cab $4).

  We had a big table and we were disappointed, there were models there, but all the good-looking ones had been invited off to glamorous places and the ones leftover in town weren’t that good-looking. We were there for an hour, about, and then Francesco Scavullo and Sean Byrnes came in and they sat down with us, we invited them to dinner. And then Francesco told me about all the dirty things he heard I did at Studio 54 and I just couldn’t believe it, all the boys he heard I brought home to the house, and I just was shocked, I mean, I don’t know where he got his information, and I was just trying to find out where he got his gossip from so I could figure out why they’d say all those untrue things.

  Oh, and he told me Studio 54 shut down—that was the first time we got the news. Steve and Ian sold it. So the end of an era.

  And we also heard that Halston went to Xenon with Bianca, so that’s a first. And Bonds clothing store is going to reopen soon as a discotheque on Broadway. Scavullo paid for dinner—I didn’t want him to because I’d invited him, but he did.

  Sunday, April 6, 1980—Paris

  Easter. I had a horrible night. I had two nightmares about planes cracking open and the people falling out. Fred went out and ran into Shirley Goldfarb, she said her eighty-eight-year-old mother in Miami Beach just sent her the $25 she sends her every Passover for matzoh balls.

  Monday, April 7, 1980—Paris—New York

  Got up at 8:00 in Paris. Had a restless night because I thought I heard Fred slip out. I heard the door shut and the things click that would all mean he had slipped out. But then when I asked him in the morning, he said that he hadn’t, so I don’t know. All I would’ve had to do was look, but I didn’t. And I get so scared when I’m alone someplace, and I don’t keep people’s phone numbers—I should, but I don’t. But I will from now on.

  We got to the airport, Charles DeGaulle, really really fast so we had an hour and a half before the plane. Then there was a black guy in the waiting room and I wondered (laughs) how he could afford to be getting on the Concorde. And then he said to me, “You haven’t photographed me yet.” But I still didn’t know who he was. And then suddenly I figured out he was Dizzy Gillespie! He’d just been in Africa and he said things were great down there. He was adorable, so cute. He said he loved Africa, that there was a lot of dirt on the ground, that he liked that.

  He said he’d been photographed by a famous photographer once, and at first he didn’t remember who, but then I think he said Carl Van Vechten, and that made sense because he was in the Somerset Maugham biography I just read and he was jazzy, he always had these jazz people. Dizzy said he had a new book out and we said we wanted to interview him, so we took his number in New Jersey.

  Andrew Crispo was also on the plane. He’s bought all of somebody’s Art Deco collection. He had a Dunand vase with him, and he was with a cute boy.

  Didn’t see Dizzy get off the plane (tips $10). We went through customs easy because the customs guy was really impressed with the picture of us with the pope on the top of the bags. We got out and our car wasn’t there, so we jumped in a cab ($.75 toll). All the way in, even though it was the middle of the transit strike, there was no traffic! The driver kept saying he didn’t believe it. We sailed right in. But at 89th Street when Fred got out, a lady jumped in our cab who didn’t speak English because there’s a rule on that you have to have at least two people in a car during the strike. I saw a cop making a girl with a car give some kid a lift. So everybody’s meeting people.

  It was really a beautiful, beautiful day. There were so many people out walking because of the transit strike. Wandered to the office. Brigid and Robyn were there. I worked all afternoon, waited for Rupert who didn’t arrive till 6:30 because he walked. Brigid and I went out passing Interviews. A bag man started screaming that if I would only stand still he could get a picture of me. He was really screaming, looking through his bags for his camera. And then I asked him if I could take a picture of him and he said no, but I did, anyway. He really had a camera with a flash that worked. Maybe he was a playwright or somebody doing an article on what it’s like to be a bag man. He was about forty.

  Tuesday, April 8, 1980

  Rupert came in and we worked on
the Jewish Geniuses. Truman called and he sounded like his old self, he said he’d been working hard. He said that his Chameleon book is going to be in the Book-of-the-Month Club, and I asked him how you got that and he said (laughs) from being a good writer.

  Karen Lerner called and said that Hugh Downs was going to do an update on the 20/20 story and that it was for sure going to run this Thursday. She thinks it’s going to be thirteen minutes, and I’m just so scared, I just think our whole business is going to fall apart after that kind of big network exposure. That’s what I’ve really come to decide.

  I watched the Today Show where there was a forty-seven-year-old black man who was a boxer and then became a dentist for seventeen years and now he’s decided he’s going to be a boxer again, and it was such an up story.

  I bought some garlic pills because I just read a book that said garlic is against sickness, and I believe that, it seems right. Forgot to say that at a cocktail party the other night a woman came over and kissed me on the lips and then said, “I’m so sick, I’m dying.” Why do people do that? Are they trying to pass their disease on to somebody so they won’t have it anymore?

  Wednesday, April 9, 1980

  Walked in the rain to the office. Transit strike still on. Worked all afternoon. Locked up at 6:00. Gael Malkenson’s boyfriend Peter Love had a truck and it took us forty minutes just to go around the corner. In the truck was Robyn, Aeyung from Interview, Bob’s sister, Bob, and Tinkerbelle. And Tinkerbelle was putting down the Jews and we said, “Are you Jewish?” and she said, “Oh my God, no, of course not!” I said, “But Tinkerbelle is a Jewish name. I mean, ‘belle.’ “