The Andy Warhol Diaries

by Andy Warhol

  In the Herald Tribune they describe the horrible death of Steve McQueen. They really went into detail.

  Rocksavage invited us over to see his place. There was a big piano and I asked him to play and he just played the most beautiful music. I haven’t heard good music played on the piano in so long. I didn’t know—these different periods you go into, I never even get to a concert anymore.

  Later Fred poured me a big glass of Mirabelle and I guess I told him I had personal problems and then we talked about art things to do. Fred thought we should do a series of Disney/Warhol, that we should do Snow White and a couple of the dwarfs, and Bambi and anything—Donald Duck. And so I was really thrilled after we decided to do that, and I hope Ron Feldman will think it’s a good idea.

  I was reading Interview and Bob really wants to drop Tinkerbelle but her interview with George Burns—who I think’s had it—she somehow made very interesting. It’s a good piece of writing and I think we should keep her. She gets Bob really upset, but she’s one of our good writers.

  Saturday, November 15, 1980—Cologne—Paris

  We were going to a monastery and we had to be there at 12:00 because if we got there one minute after 12:00 we wouldn’t be allowed in. Herman drove really fast in this pouring rain. After we got there we weren’t allowed to say one word to each other. We went into the lunchroom and then the monk read something for twenty minutes while we ate our lunch—sour apple cider and lentil soup which tasted like canned to me but when I said so everyone just looked at me like I’m crazy, but—I think I know my soup.

  There was one really good-looking priest and he was behind me. Then we left and went to Paris.

  Sunday, November 16, 1980—Paris—New York

  Got to New York and dropped Fred off (limo $S0). I had an appointment to meet Bruno Bischofberger at the office at 11:00. He invited us to Julian Schnabel’s loft on 20th Street. He’s a friend of Ronnie’s, an artist who’s with Castelli now. We got to the place and there were three limos out front—Bruno sure knows how to spoil artists fast. Julian lives in the same building as Les Levine, and I was so jealous, Julian bought it so cheap four years ago. He’s just married, he introduced me to a sort of beautiful wife. And does sort of bad paintings. He’s very pushy. There’s this whole group of kids doing this bad art, I think they’re all influenced by Neil Jenney. Then Bruno comes along and says, “I’ll buy everything,” and these kids get used to big money, and I don’t know what they’ll do when it’s all over—oh but by then it’ll be something different, I guess.

  I went to church, gave my thanks for the trip and getting back alive. Did phone calls, and somehow got mesmerized. I got so nervous thinking about all these new kids painting away and me just going to parties, I figured I’d better get cracking. Thomas Ammann called inviting me to dinner with Richard Gere, but I was too tired. I watched Saturday Night Fever on TV and it was great.

  Tuesday, November 18, 1980

  I was invited to lunch at the Met so I stayed uptown. All the people there were so classy and elegant and smart and when I tried to say little comments they wouldn’t listen to me. They were rich and young and glamorous and English.

  Had a martini with a little vodka. I needed it for courage because the people were so highfalutin’. Prince and Princess Michael of Kent arrived and they were really classy. She had on a little hat and a big dress, and she explained that she was pregnant—she was friendly to me. She showed me a picture of her eighteen-month-old baby. The prince had on a well-cut suit—the English know how to give you a new body with a suit, putting the stuff in all the right places. Left there and went down to work.

  I’d asked John Reinhold to be my dinner date so he picked me up (cab $5). Downstairs at the Italian Pavilion. Joe MacDonald was trying to slip out because he said he had “a fuck date.” We finished dinner at 12:00 (cab $4.50). After I got home John called and said his wife wasn’t home, that this was the first time that’d ever happened. I didn’t know what to say, I’d already taken a Valium and didn’t know what to do.

  Wednesday, November 19, 1980

  Walked up Madison, decided to visit Jane Wyeth at Sotheby’s. We have two big ads from Christie’s and we’re still trying to get Sotheby’s. The auction business is so booming. I couldn’t even carry all the catalogues I walked out with. These auction places are so fake, though. They just put things out again if they don’t sell them and then eventually a sucker who’s born every minute comes along. I wish I’d thought of that line—“There’s a sucker born every minute” (cabs downtown $3.50, $3).

  Ran into Edmund Gaultney, his opening of my show was at night. It was a show of something you wouldn’t think I’d do at a place you wouldn’t think I’d be, but he didn’t tell me the one great thing about it until after it was over—that it was only for one day! Isn’t that great? But he didn’t tell anybody.

  I did an interview for Henry Post for a New York magazine article he’s doing on elegance, things money can buy. I suppose he’ll probably promote Jed’s fancy decorating business in the article. They’re friends. Fred and I had a business talk. Bob got some Washington ads because of the Reagan kids’ interviews in the issues.

  Went to the gallery, it’s at 24 East 82nd, and it was really cute. Tom Cashin was there, he said he tried out for Oklahoma! and I told him he should try out for Brigadoon, he’d be better than John Curry. I was standing next to Paloma’s husband, Mr. Picasso, but I just can’t remember anybody’s name, so I couldn’t introduce him to anybody, and I think he was mad. Chris Makos was there with Peter Wise and a gay vice-president of Paramount, Jon Gould.

  We went to the Gibbon for dinner. It’s half French food and half Japanese. I like the Japanese half better. The headwaiter finally showed his true colors and was a big fairy. Dinner must have cost Edmund a fortune. Home at 12:00.

  Thursday, November 20, 1980

  Called the office ($.25 because I didn’t have a dime). Walked down Madison. Somebody stopped me with really bad breath. I’ve been trying to clean Archie’s teeth but it’s not working. I love the natural toothpaste I get at Brownies—cinnamon and spearmint—but what I really love is Close-up and Ultra-Brite. Close-up is so good, really poisonous-looking. And when Brigid and I go to May’s, you see people opening the toothpaste tubes and taking a taste. Brigid does that.

  Worked till 7:30. Dropped Rupert off. Barbara Allen called and was upset with what Scavullo said in the newspaper—that he doesn’t know how some people get into high society because they don’t know anything, like Barbara Allen. And she had on her high-class voice (cab $6).

  Then I went to Lee Thaw’s party at 72nd and Park for the Maharaja of Baroda because he’d just done a book called Palaces of Jaipur published by Alex Gregory who publishes all the big bombs. And the maharaja said he was going to be on To Tell the Truth next week, which was so funny because I mean you hear people at these parties saying they’re going to be on the Today Show and Meet the Press and things, and then he says, “I’m going to be on To Tell the Truth.” So they’ll be guessing who he is.

  I met Shirley Lord, who’s English, from Vogue. A beauty editor. She was fun. She has big tits. And next to her was Daniel Ludwig, the richest man in the world, and he wasn’t talking and she wanted to get him to, and she knew the odd kinds of information, like how scientists can now look with microscopes at babies and predict where their future wrinkles will be. And then I talked to Mary McFadden and she was such a camp. She said, “People put down your portraits, and I defend you. I tell them, ‘At least they have good color!’ “ Home at 12:00.

  Saturday, November 22, 1980

  Got up early. Cabbed ($4) to the office to meet Diana Vreeland and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.

  I’d painted a background and thought it would dry before anyone got there and that I could roll it up. So I had it spread out on the floor and then suddenly they arrived and Prince Michael walked right on it, he thought it was a floor covering. So Fred asked him to autograph it. And he just signed
it “Michael,” he doesn’t use “Prince.”

  Monday, November 24, 1980

  Bob said that Cal—the friend of Ron Reagan called “Chocolate Boy”—called and said that Ron had just gotten married, so Bob set up a dinner the next night, Tuesday. Then Bob was being interviewed by some newspaper and he told the girl we were having dinner with them at Le Cirque and I got mad and told Bob he shouldn’t have, so then he changed it to La Grenouille because otherwise they would have sent a photographer to Le Cirque. The story about the marriage made the papers by 5:30.

  Fred intercepted a call for me from “Chuck Roast” because he thought it was a crazy kid, but it was actually the Japanese kid who came to interview me once who asked me to give him a name.

  And downstairs the building directory was smashed right beside my name. It gave me an eerie feeling.

  Tuesday, November 25, 1980

  Mike the super came up and said that there wouldn’t be heat over the holiday weekend. That was a big disappointment because that’s when I was planning to get all my work done, that’s why I was staying in town.

  The Reagan kid cancelled dinner like I told Bob he would. Then it was in the papers that the Reagans were honeymooning with the Warhol crowd at Le Cirque.

  Thursday, November 27, 1980

  Got up and watched the Thanksgiving Day parade on TV. Happened to see Berkeley, John Reinhold’s little daughter—Superman’s float came up and practically touched them on the twentieth floor.

  Chris Makos called, he was up in Massachusetts seeing Jon Gould of Paramount Pictures.

  Worked at the office alone. Curley called and invited me to Thanksgiving dinner, he was cooking it at his parents’ apartment on Park Avenue. I said that I’d come up after dinner. Then Catherine called. I asked her if she wanted to come over and make it look a little like last year. She’d just gotten in from London and had had turkey dinner on the plane, and said she was the only one on Laker. I guess no one travels on Thanksgiving. Cabbed to Curley’s with Catherine ($3).

  Tuesday, December 2, 1980

  Richard Weisman called and invited me to the party for the famous Hollywood photographer George Hurrell at Doubles. Got there and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was coming out, and I asked him why he was leaving and he said because he’d stood in front of his photograph and had his picture taken by the press so then it was time to leave.

  The big stars there were Lillian Gish, Maureen Stapleton, Tammy Grimes. I met Mr. Hurrell and he’s really strong and straight and Paul Morrissey had said that he was about to pop off any minute, but there he was and he knew all about me and he raved and he was sweet and I asked him if I could take a picture and he said sure.

  Maureen O’Sullivan was next to me and she was saying, “Oh, I’ve just been throwing out so many Hurrells and Clarence Bulls, we’ve been moving.” I asked her what it was like to get so close to Johnny Weissmuller’s body and she said it was okay but that she only was interested in intellectuals, my dear. I said, “So is Mia really going to marry Woody Allen?” And she said that she really didn’t know, and then I told her that I was only kidding, that I didn’t care. And I met Teresa Wright and she looked good.

  Diana Vreeland called and said how much she loved her cover story in Interview. The cover makes her look about twenty, and she said, “The only problem is I’m beginning to think I look like that woman on the cover.”

  Thursday, December 4, 1980

  We’re taking the Reagan kids to dinner on Saturday, just Bob and me, because his wife Doria wants to work for Interview—they’re going on the road for four months and she wants to do a column for us from the road. Jerry Zipkin said that they liked Chinese or Japanese food, that that was more their style.

  Friday, December 5, 1980

  Catherine said she was going to France for a week because her Nazi step-grandfather just died, Sir Oswald Mosley, and her family was getting together there so she thought it would be a good thing to do for the book on the Mitfords that she’s helping her father with.

  And did I say that when Florinda Bolkan came down to have her picture taken, she wouldn’t do a thing until Marina Cicogna said it was okay—she wouldn’t even put her head down. And Marina is just like a truck driver, she pushes everybody around, and if that’s what love is, I guess that’s what love is.

  Saturday, December 6, 1980

  I called Bob to see if our dinner with Ron and Doria Reagan was on and he said it was. Rupert was there waiting at the office when I got there, and Jay came in. And then Joe Dallesandro called from California, somewhere around Sacramento, I think. He was calling for money of course, he said he was in a truck with his mother, they live in a truck or a trailer, I don’t know. I told him he should go to Los Angeles and be discovered. It’s so absolutely boring—he never calls and says do you want to do something together, it’s just always for money.

  Worked all afternoon. Decided to go Christmas shopping. Rupert took some Interviews and we went down to the Village. People seemed out shopping early. I think this is going to be the most gigantic Christmas for sales, I really do. Country-wide.

  Ron and Doria were already at Nippon when we got there. The owner took us to one of the private rooms. Ron was in his alligator T-shirt to show off his muscles. The Secret Service jammed the place. The owner kept bringing in toys for us—he gave the Reagans this new kind of bottle-opener gun that opens up and you really could kill somebody with it. Bob asked if we could go to the inauguration in January and they said we’d be getting invitations. They said they were going to Bermuda soon, and Bob said he was seeing Lily Auchincloss so he’d ask if it was okay for them to stay at her house there. Doria’s really sweet and charming. Bob was so happy. We left them with the Secret Service and got home—walked—about 12:30 or 1:00 (dinner $200). And life gets more exciting every day, but then I had to go home to my horrible home life where the situation with Jed is getting worse every day.

  Monday, December 8, 1980

  Walked to Halston’s. All his girls were there wearing all his clothes. There were three limos out front and we went to the Met Museum, to Diana Vreeland’s opening-night Costume Institute dinner. It was the 650 people you know best. Someone who came in said John Lennon was shot and no one could believe it, so someone called the Daily News and they said it was true. It was scary, it was all anyone could talk about. He was shot outside his house.

  When I got home I turned on the TV and they said he was murdered by somebody he gave an autograph to earlier in the evening.

  Tuesday, December 9, 1980

  The news was the same news that had been on all night, pictures of John and old film clips. Had to take Archie and Amos down to the office to be looked at by the Lewis Allen dummy people (cab $5). When I got there Howdy Doody was waiting for me. I’m doing his portrait, he’s one of the Big Myths.

  After I photographed Howdy, I got into the barber’s chair that the dummy people brought. They did the back of my head, they put a wig hat on me. There were two photographers and Ronnie was taking 3-D pictures. They put gook on and covered my ears and eyes. They said, “Pinch me if you want to get out of it.” It was making me sick, and I had a cold, and I had phlegm that I couldn’t cough up, it was awful. They finally took the mold off but then they dropped it. They were saying, “We can save it, we can save it.” But then they said they might have to do another one and I said, “No you’re not.” They stuck my hands in some more gook and that got some air bubbles so they lost a couple of fingers on that try. Then they did my teeth. And while this was going on, Ron Reagan arrived, he’d just had lunch with his father at the Waldorf. I was so out of it I couldn’t really talk. Bob had given Doria the day off—she’s working for him now —but she didn’t go to the Waldorf lunch because Nancy still couldn’t get over the idea that her son had married without her consent.

  And Bob was feeling his oats because the collector’s issue of the Daily News that had “John Lennon Shot” headlines is the one that had the big story on him in it—“The Man Behi
nd Andy Warhol.” It was a long article, but it was boring.

  I watched the John Lennon news and it’s so scary. I mean, the other day, the kid named Michael who’s been writing me letters for five years just walked in—somebody buzzed him in—and he walked over and handed me another letter and left. Where does he live? In institutions?

  Wednesday, December 10, 1980

  The papers still have the Lennon news. The one who killed him was a frustrated artist. They brought up the Dali poster he had on his wall. They always interview the janitors and the old schoolteachers and things. The kid said the devil made him do it. And John was so rich, they say he left a $235 million estate.

  And the “vigil” is still going on at the Dakota. It looked so strange, I don’t know what those people think they’re doing.

  Sunday, December 14, 1980

  I was in a cab with a black driver during the minutes that were supposed to be silence to remember John and pray for his soul. He had a black station on and they had a ten-minute silence and the disc jockey said, “We’re up there with you, John,” and the driver laughed and said, “Not me, baby, I’m stayin’ right down here.” So he turned to another station and that station was (laughs) talking about the silence.

  Catherine was thrilled because Tom Sullivan is back in town and he’s telling her he loves her, but he’s full of baloney and she should be careful. She was leaving her key in the mailbox for him.