The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  Friday, August 1, 1980

  I had an appointment to meet the new Lone Ranger, Klinton Spilsbury, at the office. Robert Hayes and I were going to interview him. He’s on TV tonight and I think I’ll take a look. He was really good-looking. Long hair, 6’5", and a face that’s a cross between Warren Beatty and Clint Eastwood. He had a bottle of wine. He was an art student, he said, out in California and he was married and had a little baby, but his wife—she was rich—she left him, he said, because he needed too much time (laughs) with his own thoughts. He was making movies, directing, and then he said he wanted to know how it felt to be an actor, so he took acting lessons and then an agent saw him and he went out for a part, and they gave him the first one, the Lone Ranger. But he didn’t want to sign at first because it included all the extra things he’d have to do, like wear the costume and sing things, but then they took that stuff out. He said he modeled once, that he didn’t really want to but someone had just asked him to, so he did. Then he was really drunk and gave me his belt. Then he started really talking, he told me that he’d been at Studio 54 and I’d gone over and said, “You have to be careful, you’re dancing with a drag queen.” Klinton said he’s a friend of Dennis Christopher’s, he fell in love with Dennis Christopher and then with that kid Bud Cort, who was in Harold and Maude. Then he said he’d been picked up by Halston and woke up in bed with Halston. And it was nutty, he was telling me all this and blowing his whole image.

  My “This Side Up” dress went for $450 at the auction.

  Saturday, August 2, 1980

  There was a big rainstorm but it didn’t cool off the city. Picked up John Reinhold for dinner, we went to Côte Basque. Left the place and I had a dish from the restaurant that I’d stolen and I dropped it on the street and it broke and then suddenly the police were there—they were down the street and they thought they heard a window break. But they recognized me and said, “Oh all right, Mr. Warhol.” It could have been bad. They could have taken me to the precinct.

  Sunday, August 3, 1980

  I got dressed and walked in the heat to church. I was going to go to work but it was so hot, I didn’t want to see anybody. It was Archie’s birthday and he’s eight or nine or even older. I gave him a box of Hartz Mountain treats.

  Tuesday, August 5, 1980

  Missed watching the Today Show with Truman but it sounds like it was the same old thing. Brigid tried to get Truman on the phone but he had it off the hook. The review of Music for Chameleons in the Times didn’t mention that some of the stories were from Interview.

  Halston wanted to give me a party for my birthday but I said I was going to the theater with Stephen Graham. I’m going to invite Susan Johnson for him because he likes dumb girls. I wonder if they’ll hit it off. No, she won’t like him.

  Halston gave me a whole box of ugly shoes for my birthday.

  Wednesday, August 6, 1980

  It was my birthday but I hadn’t slept all night so at 7 A.M. I took a sleeping pill, but it acted more like an up. I really feel like an old-timer this time. I can’t believe I’m so old because that means (laughs) that Brigid’s old, too. It’s too abstract. I can’t even squish a roach anymore because it’s just like a life, like living. I glued myself together and wanted to walk. Got a lot of phone calls about my birthday. Todd Brassner called and I told him to come down and bring me a present, but he didn’t. Victor Hugo sent orchids with beautiful ribbons. From Renny, that must be a very chic place.

  I had an appointment with Chris Makos at 860 (cab $5.50). Then the kids kept coming by. Curley brought me a piece of junk, an airplane light. I asked him to stay for lunch.

  Richard Weisman called to say he was coming down. I said I was going to 65 Irving for lunch, and to meet us there. We went over, ten of us. Pingle—the Princess Ingeborg Schleswig-Holstein—came, who works at Interview now. She’s related to Queen Elizabeth. And Brigid came. We were having piña coladas and then strawberry daiquiris and then Richard had the idea to have blueberry daiquiris. It was fun.

  Rupert gave me 300 ties. Robert Hayes gave me a silver set of Elvis records, every record he ever made. Mimi Trujillo brought two dresses to show me and Victor made her give them to me, they’re great. Then I had to go to the theater. Halston sent a singing telegram that had three people singing it. They were awful. They’re trying to be in show business and I asked them not to exaggerate it and to sing it quietly. Halston sent a big cake in the shape of a shoe and it must have been the best cake because Brigid ate all of it.

  I glued and was late but then Susan Johnson was even later and I screamed at her. Stephen was already inside on the aisle when we got there. Annie was wonderful (cab $6). It was packed, you’d never think there was a recession. Standing room. The audience loved it, mostly old people. I was trying to keep awake. Afterwards we went backstage. I didn’t see Alice Ghostley. I went to school with her husband.

  We got a dumpy limo outside to go to Mr. Chow’s. Mr. and Mrs. Chow greeted us. I didn’t want to sign the guest book there because I wanted to do it with my own pen the next time. Tina Chow wished me happy birthday. We had champagne. Robin Williams came in and said hello, I asked him to join us but he said he was at the bar with someone, that he’d see. With some lady friend. And then I remembered that somebody told me he met a girl the day he married his wife and that they’ve been having an affair ever since. Anyway, he didn’t come back. He had a short-sleeved shirt on and his arms are so hairy, that’s how Susan recognized him. I hope Popeye is a hit for him because his TV show just died. Stephen invited a girl to join us for dinner, a sculptress who lives down near Rupert. She made a sculpture out of a napkin as a present for me, but then we didn’t notice when the waiter took it away. Stephen was nervous and he almost started drinking. We dropped him on 57th and Second, then I dropped Susan (cab $5).

  Thursday, August 7, 1980

  We drove out to Old Westbury with Whitney Tower to see the studio of his great-grandmother, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, to see if Interview might want to do some shooting there (toll $1, gas $30). The house was just beautiful, Whitney said it was designed by William Adams Delano. She had a whole room with murals done by Maxfield Parrish. Her sculptures were all around. Then we went next door to Whitney’s grandmother’s, Mrs. Miller, but she’s in her eighties and she was “resting” so we just wandered around.

  Back to the city ($1). Stopped at Philip Johnson’s apartment, talked to David Whitney for an hour. He’s working on the Jewish Museum project. He says the show should be plain, with no gimmicks. But I think it should be funny, I don’t know, I think the designer can really make a show interesting. But I guess the museum has no money to spend.

  Richard Weisman had invited me to meet Ann Miller, Patti LuPone, and Phil Esposito and him at “21” for dinner at 11:00. At “21” they looked at my bluejeans and they were about to say something but I rushed in fast. I finally talked Bob into putting Patti LuPone on the cover of Interview. She’s so funny and Bob finally fell in love with her.

  All I could do was stare at Ann Miller. Her face is flawless. Not a wrinkle, not even a smile line, and she said, “One of these days I’m going to have to get a facelift.” I don’t think she has, really, because her skin isn’t pulled at all—her face is fat but it’s unlined and not pulled. And she has tiny petite hands with long fingers. She’s been married two and a half times—one was annulled. She said, “I married the richest Texans in the world, but as soon as the marriages started, the romance was over.” She was cute, she ate like a Hollywood starlet on her first date—she had chicken hash. That’s Hollywood style. And her nose is so fine, so perfect, it has to be a fake nose.

  Ann said that when she was at the bottom some people dropped her and now when those people send her flowers for Sugar Babies she writes back, “Thanks for nothing.” And the person who really did it the worst was Betsy Bloomingdale, Bob’s best friend. And she said that Denise Hale was “trash.” And she’s known Reagan for years but said she wouldn’t vote for him. But
she’s like me—after every putdown she says, “Oh but don’t get me wrong, Reagan’s wonderful, I just wouldn’t vote for him.”

  Bob walked me home and when we got to 66th Street there was a big fire across the street from me in front of the Ugandan building. A brand-new tree was burning because someone had set fire to the garbage underneath it, and this whole family was sitting on the steps just watching the fire burn—it looked like Puerto Rico—and I just got furious—it looked like Africa—and they were just staring at this beautiful tree burning that was put in right when the one in front of my house was, and they didn’t even call the fire department! And I don’t understand because the doormen on the block must have seen it, too, and nobody was doing anything. So Bob and I went in and he called the fire department and they came in one second and put it out, but I don’t know if the tree will make it.

  Saturday, August 9, 1980

  Vincent was at the office with his whole TV crew. Don Munroe and everybody. They filmed me doing some introductions to the shows he’s shot, to give me a bigger presence in the programs. I think they’re going to call it Andy Warhols TV. It’s interviews with people—just the people talking to the camera. Painted at the office till 8:00. Bill Schwartz called, he’s in town from Atlanta for the Democratic convention and he asked me for dinner, he’s staying at the Mayfair House.

  Glued, and walked over to the Mayfair House. When I got there a man signing in said, “You painted my wife.” And I didn’t recognize him and then his wife was there and I didn’t recognize her, either. It was awful because there weren’t too many people around. She’d dyed her hair blonde and that threw me. It was Mr. and Mrs. H&R Block. And I was looking so squarely at them. It was really bad. I invited them down to the office.

  Sunday, August 10, 1980

  Bob called and said I was meeting him at 7:30 to pick up Ina Ginsburg to begin coverage of the Democratic National Convention with the Newsweek party at the Rainbow Room that Katharine Graham was giving. Went up to the Metropolitan Club where Ina was staying. Ina was in a black one-shoulder dress held up with a diamond pin that was maybe a Halston. She had on white shoes, she was nice. Then cabbed to the Rainbow Room ($3.50). Liz Carpenter was there, she used to be Lady Bird’s social secretary. And she’s big and fat and Texan and she was wearing an American flag dress with a watermelon across the front of it. And Peter Duchin said, “I know that dress is patriotic … somehow.”

  It was wall-to-wall everybody rich and famous and you couldn’t understand how they were all in town because it was August, and then you know it is a great city if the convention could get all this together. Tom Brokaw was there and Barbara Walters with her beau, and Ina knew everybody and was introducing us to everybody but I could only remember half of the names of the people I knew, so I wasn’t so good for her.

  John Tunney came over and put down Reagan and Bob got in a snit. John Tunney called me “Peter,” though (laughs), and he thanked me for doing the Kennedy poster. He thought I was Peter Max. And then it was funny because then somebody came up and said, “Oh thank you for doing the Carter poster.” Saw Art Buchwald, and Jan Cowles was there with her husband, and Mrs. Graham we said hello to and later on goodbye to. Her daughter Lally was there with Alexander Cockburn.

  Ina introduced us to a girl named Dolly Fox, a rich girl who’s staying at the Ritz Towers and she’s a runner but she has a pink ticket and that means she can go all the way to the president at the Sheraton. She’s in high school still, but she acts like an older person. Her mother Yolanda was a Miss America in the fifties. We invited Dolly to dinner with us at Pearl’s.

  Pearl’s was jammed with convention people. We got a table. And then Ina noticed that the Blair boy and his father, Bill Blair, the ambassador to Denmark, were also having dinner and she went and invited them to join us, but the boy said it was his eighteenth birthday and he’d like to have it just with his father and that they’d come over for coffee. Liz Carpenter was there with I.M. Pei and his wife and a woman who’s the Secretary of Education, Shirley something, and she I think was drunk and tough and asked me my philosophy on education and I told her I couldn’t even think, and she said, “You have to! Quick!”

  We ordered dinner. Bob got screaming and crazy for a second when Ina said something against Reagan, but he caught himself and apologized. Ina and Jerry Zipkin want Bob to get them invited to Richard Weisman’s lunch for Miz Lillian. Then the Blair kid came over and talked and he and Dolly sort of picked each other up. But Dolly is seventeen and acts forty and he’s eighteen and acts ten. Dinner was cheap and we even had champagne for the boy ($125).

  Then we cabbed to Park to a party that Ina got us invited to given for the Rhode Island delegation. A lot of rich presidents of corporations. Alice Mason was there looking like a mammy in a turban and a red dress. She came over and said she was so thrilled to see me. Bob thought she was being mean, but she was nice. Everybody thinks Carter will win on the first ballot and then they’ll have to work really hard to get him reelected. There’s so many Democrats around. They had good coffee—you can always tell if a party’s good by if the coffee’s good. This may have been the kind from a restaurant that you get in a container. I don’t know.

  Left there about 12:00, walked Ina back to the Metropolitan Club. Home around 12:30.

  Monday, August 11, 1980

  It was a busy day around the office. Mr. Stern called and said the Flower paintings were dented when they got to Hartz Mountain in New Jersey. Robyn called to find out about it.

  Worked on paintings and paying bills up front where it’s air-conditioned because it was too hot to work in the back. The Princess Holstein hovers around me when I work. I gave her to Ronnie so he could show her how to trace. Robyn decided to ask around about the Holsteins and found out that they’ve got lots of titles but no money. We put on a TV to watch the convention.

  I dropped the princess (cab $4.50). She wants to help me with painting instead of work at Interview, but I can do it faster without her.

  All the real American people from the convention are around town and it’s sort of exciting. I saw a lot wearing cowboy hats.

  Went home and glued myself together. Victor said he’d meet us at Halston’s. I got there and Bianca was asleep under the covers in a white evening dress that I thought was a nightgown.

  Halston was working late, he had to finish the collection for China, he’s going to China and Japan.

  I read the papers and ate potato chips.

  We decided to go to Elaine’s. I wanted to get the Blair boy for Bianca but I couldn’t remember his first name or his phone number. Had a table in the back. Elaine’s a little heavier now.

  Bianca waved and Nick Roeg thought she was waving at him and came over. He was drunk and obnoxious—one of those people who scares me because they change in a second. He directed Mick in Performance. He just finished Bad Timing with Art Garfunkel. He was telling Bianca that he’d loved her for years, and I said, “Why don’t you use her in a movie, you can get her.” And he screamed, “How dare you, how disgraceful of you to say that, what bad taste!” and Bianca was protesting, too. She was nice to him, though, she didn’t put him down. I guess she does hope she’ll get work from him. He was hugging and kissing her. He said he loved Bad.

  And then he told me he saw “my mother” on TV in England, that stupid David Bailey “documentary” about me where Lil Piccard made believe she was my mother and Nick was going on and on about how wonderful she was and how sweet and how great it was to have a mother who loved me so much and he wished his did and I just didn’t have the heart to tell him that wasn’t my mother. He said it was so touching it had him in tears. He was yapping and driving us crazy. He’s fifty-two and he said how handsome he used to be and that look at him now, he said it all fell apart just recently.

  Then he and Victor had words. Victor had his Sony Sound-about on and Nick Roeg said how dare he be so rude and not listen to the conversation. And Victor said, listen, that it was his table and he c
ould do whatever he wanted, that Nick was his guest and how dare he complain when he’d barged in where he wasn’t invited, and so then when he saw that Victor was intelligent he was hugging him and apologizing.

  Tuesday, August 12, 1980

  At 12:00 I had an appointment to meet Debbie Harry at the office (cab $4). I was early and Debbie and Chris were on time. We worked all afternoon. Debbie was sweet, every picture came out perfect. Vincent was taping her for the Andy Warhol’s TV show and he had Lisa Robinson there interviewing her and Chris. I sat in on it so that I’d have a higher profile on the tape for the TV show. Lisa is a good interviewer. They were there till 4:00.

  And I’ve decided I’m not going to call girls anymore and invite them places because they’re too difficult. I called Sean Young, that really pretty actress who I met with Linda Stein, because I thought that Richard Weisman would like her. But she wouldn’t give me her home number so I could call her back and it’s too hard. I asked her if she wanted to go to a baseball game and she said she’d been to one once already. She’s in some James Ivory movie that’s about to come out.

  I had to leave early because I invited Bianca to the Peking Opera, she said yes, and I invited John Samuels, too. We ran into the Met Opera House and had just missed the curtain so we had to wait with Chinese people screaming why couldn’t they go in. I think it’s so ridiculous that the Met tries to be so sophisticated and not let you in if you’re twenty seconds late. Especially with something like this Chinese opera because Chinese people talk all through their operas and make noise anyway.