by Andy Warhol
Bob said that at the Ann Getty dinner we went to last night he heard Diana Vreeland tell off “Suzy” for saying in the newspaper that the lights in her Met show were too low. Diana said, “Now listen, Aileen, just in case you didn’t realize it, the Metropolitan Museum is not a department store. Nothing there’s for sale, so we really don’t have to light it up like Bloomingdale’s.” And “Suzy” was mad but she couldn’t think of a comeback.
Monday, December 15, 1980
I asked autograph seekers outside the Regency who they were waiting for and they said James Cagney was staying there and that he was really hard to get.
A lady from 67th Street rang the bell and said we were flooding her house and I looked in the back and there was a lot of water, but I didn’t know what to do until Jed came home. It was a water pipe broken, shooting upwards.
Tuesday, December 16, 1980
Truman was reading at Lincoln Center and Brigid decided she wasn’t going to go because she felt too fat, but she made me promise to swear that she was there if he asked. Jane Holzer was sending the limo to pick me up. It was the Mitzi Newhouse Theater, we had fourth-row center, next to Halston and Martha Graham. Lester was there, and Suzie Frankfurt, and Rex Reed. It wasn’t completely sold-out, but it was pretty filled. Truman was cute, he explained each thing first, he got up on his toes and snapped his fingers and it was like disco and that was the best part. He read and acted the parts out. He read the maid story, and he read “A Christmas Memory” and a couple of other ones. Then afterward everybody was telling him how wonderful he was, because it was all friends. Rex told him the reading “touched my soul.” Truman was shaking. The first thing he asked me was where’s Brigid and I swore she was there, and he said, “Well, then where is she?” and I said she had to go home, but I think he knew.
Wednesday, December 17, 1980
I was upset because two paintings cracked, I guess because of the cold. Then a limo arrived and I had to leave with Robert Hayes to go to the Mayfair to meet this German guy from Dusseldorf who wanted to meet me. We only had drinks with him, champagne. I was being funny, I told him I wanted to work on a line of “invisible clothes.” And as I was leaving he said [imitates], “Just send me da particulars, I vant to work vid you on dis line.” He wasn’t kidding.
Thursday, December 18, 1980
Got an urgent call from the office saying that there was a rock star down at 860 waiting to have his picture taken by me. I called Fred to find out what it was about but he didn’t remember. I said I’d be right down, and it took twenty-five minutes (cab $5.50). He turned out to be Rie Ocasek from the Cars. They’re from Boston, and he has an earring and capped teeth and he’s not really good-looking because he has dyed-black hair, but he’s sweet and as charming as David Bowie. Lunch was actually for Diane Lane who Ara Gallant was bringing down. She’s fifteen and so beautiful.
Then Bob was busy on the phone, and we had to meet Doria and Ron and their friend Cal at the movie Flash Gordon on 53rd Street. They were in the next-to-the-last row with the Secret Service behind them. The movie wasn’t really good but it was fun to watch. Then after the movie they went in their car and didn’t offer to take us so we got a cab up to the Gibbon restaurant to meet them. Those kids aren’t going to have any friends, because it’s just too scary being with them, with all these big guys guarding them, you think you’re going to get bumped off. And the Secret Service rented a room from a lady in their building—her living room—and they sit in there and watch with the door open all the time. The Secret Service guys I guess don’t like Japanese food because they just had coffee.
Cal said our invitations for the inauguration had been sent out already and Bob asked Ron and Doria if we were invited to the right parties and they said they thought so. They said they weren’t going to go in a limousine, they were going to try to rent an army truck. Bob said how it was easier to just go along in the limousine.
Bob told his Liz Taylor stories, but then he started talking about the basement of Studio 54, and I don’t know what he was thinking of. Doria is going to interview Adam Luders from the New York City Ballet for us.
Friday, December 19, 1980
C.Z. Guest called and I really have to make up my mind if I’m going out there on Christmas Eve. And Cornelia was at the office all dolled up, getting her picture taken. She wants to be a model.
John and Kimiko Powers came by with a present.
Saturday, December 20, 1980
Vincent was having a party so cabbed there ($5). It turned out to be a really great party. I was taking pictures of this handsome kid I thought was a model and then I was embarrassed because it turned out to be John-John Kennedy. Fred brought him and Mary Richardson. And Chris Makos was there taking party pictures. And Debbie Harry gave me a present, and she said to open it up and I said no, that I’d wait till I got home, and I’m glad that I did, because I just don’t know what it is. It’s this black thing. I wonder if it’s a cock ring, because it’s rubber with a stick on it, but it has this one piece that doesn’t make sense.
Monique’s getting ready to push her book, and she wants the cover of Interview, which actually might be fun.
Sunday, December 21, 1980
Jed’s decided to move out and I don’t want to talk about it. The apartment he bought on West 67th Street to work in, now he’s decided he’ll live in it, too.
Went to church. Worked in the freezing cold at the office and I’m not going to send in the rent.
Monday, December 22, 1980
A terrible day, no Christmas spirit at all, and it even got worse as the day wore on. I screamed at everybody, and I made them feel bad, it was like that all day. I couldn’t shake it, even at night. Curley started crying and I told him he had to stop it or I was on the verge of cracking up.
I was supposed to go out to lunch with de Antonio but I didn’t want to. I just ordered in and De and I ate in the conference room and the place was freezing and Mike the super, the only one who knows how to get a little heat out of the boiler, was out. I was in a terrible state, I felt a cold coming on, and I just can’t work in the cold.
Hans Mayer came by to pick up some paintings and we had them bubble-wrapped. I gave Hans a painting and I gave De a painting, trying to get into the Christmas spirit, but I couldn’t. I paid some bills.
I thought C.Z. Guest’s Christmas Eve dinner would maybe be just the thing to get me finally in the mood, so Bob and I decided we would go out there and take Jerry Zipkin and Liz Smith and Iris Love, so that’s settled. I’ll take Popisms to give as presents.
Curley called and invited me to dinner and then Whitney Tower called and said Mick and Jerry would like to see me, and I asked if I could bring Curley and they said yes. I stayed by the electric heater all afternoon, but if I moved an inch away it was freezing.
I sent roses to Jon Gould—I want him to get Paramount to advertise in Interview.
Curley picked me up in a limo at 9:00, then we picked up Whitney. Jerry has a new apartment at 135 Central Park West and she just got a farm in Texas with her money and she wants a tractor. She gave me a present, just what I’ve always wanted—a complete set of china from the Concorde! And I was so surprised, I was so thrilled, I don’t know how she knew I liked it. But it’s so funny to get something you really really want. And Mick was so friendly for the first time, talking and talking, and it was like we were best friends, telling me all about leaving for Paris on the twenty-seventh for the Herzog movie, Fitzcarraldo. And telling me all about it and being really nice.
Meanwhile Curley was getting really drunk and I knew I had to get him out of there soon when he started calling Mick “Michael” and taking pictures. Curley still believes my father died in the Pittsburgh coal mines and because his mother’s family, the Mêlions, own Pittsburgh, he feels guilty, so that’s funny. So I got Curley out of there and I thought I could sober him up a little if I took him to the Brasserie. He’s drinking so much these days, and it’s still fun, but if he keeps it up, it�
�s like it’s going to turn. At the Brasserie I ordered just everything ($50). Then Curley started crying and I said he had to stop so then he was good and started laughing and staggering again. He dropped me, and it was still only 1:30 and still freezing.
Tuesday, December 23, 1980
I’ve been having the most un-Christmas spirit of my life. Woke up with my little cold. The office called and said there was no heat down there, so I was thinking about that, and then it started to snow and the flakes were so big and beautiful but before I could get to the window with my camera it had stopped.
The office was having the Christmas party, they said they were waiting for me, they said they had turkey and ham and booze. I wanted to Christmas shop but then I decided it might be too hard later to get a cab, so I got one right then (cab $7). John John Kennedy was at the office, and Cornelia Guest, and John Samuels, and Jimmy Burden—all these kids that I knew when they were babies, it was so strange. And Jackie O. didn’t invite me to her Christmas party this year. I gave out some Popisms. Ronnie gave me one of his artworks, it was really great—a spear.
The article in The New York Times about Françoise de la Renta was just so disgusting, as if she and Oscar have this great life, when it’s all just him and the friend and her suffering through it. And John Richardson was disinvited by them to Santo Domingo because he gave a quote, which wasn’t even really bad. And Bob told me that it turns out Françoise wasn’t born in Paris, she was born in Mozambique or someplace like that, and she’s just—trash.
Wednesday, December 24, 1980
Cabbed up to Jerry and Mick’s apartment for Christmas lunch. Jerry’s pregnant sister Cyndy just married Robin Lehman, and so everybody was happy. Jerry’s mother was there. Jerry had an apron on that when you unzippered it a big cock came out, so I was taking funny pictures of that, her cooking a turkey with a cock in her hand.
Earl McGrath was there, and Ahmet Ertegun stopped by for a second. The food was ready at 5:00 but it was supposed to have been ready at 2:00. Everything was great, though, it was the best turkey and everything was fresh, the peas and everything, so I porked it up.
The limo came at 6:30 to take us out to the Guests’. We picked up Barbara Allen who was wearing a green taffeta YSL and then we went to the “hem of Harlem”—that’s what Jerry Zipkin calls his neighborhood—and picked up Jerry and he had Nelson Seabra with him. It was a sit-down dinner and the turkey was terrible. It was like canned stuff, and the cranberry sauce was canned and there were eighteen different desserts but none of them were good. I was next to “Suzy” and Bob was next to Liz Smith and Iris Love, and Iris had a kilt on and let me feel if she was wearing underpants. Cornelia looked beautiful.
Then I had to get back to Halston’s in town and it had suddenly dropped from forty degrees to minus fifteen. Halston gave me a green beaded dress to hang in my closet. It’s like a $5,000 dress. It’s his art. But it’s not really my favorite green although it’s a nice green. I would rather have had a red one.
I felt another cold coming on and I wanted to go home to bed, but since the house was empty I didn’t. I gave Halston a chocolate box of art candy that I made, not too great, and a Diamond painting, and I gave Victor a Shoe one. I got home about 1:30 and opened my packages. John Reinhold gave me a little TV set, a 2” x 2” Sony Trinitron.
Thursday, December 25, 1980
It was the coldest day ever. And I’d been afraid to go to sleep because I was alone in the house. I’d like to get Nena and Aurora’s brother Agosto to be a bodyguard, although he’s like only two feet high, but he’s just out of the Marine Corps and it’s “Yes, sir!” and “No, sir!” and he’s great. I was on my way to work but since there was no heat, I decided I just couldn’t.
Picked up John Reinhold and we went to Sharon Hammond’s for Christmas dinner (cab $5). But there wasn’t anybody good there.
Sharon took me in the other room and showed me a picture of her English lord pissing, and his cock is like a horse’s. She doesn’t know if she should marry him, but I told her she should, with a cock like that. He didn’t give her the pillows she wanted for Christmas, he just gave her a TV for the bathroom. And no jewelry. He’d given her jewelry for her birthday and five minutes later she lost it in a cab so I guess he decided not to give her any more.
Friday, December 26, 1980
The day after Christmas and I was doing Christmas cards for next year for John Loring at Tiffany’s. Since he took ads in Interview, I have to do it, and it’s a really good idea—diamonds with real diamond dust on it, a set of nine. Each card has part of the diamond and when you put the nine together it makes one diamond. It’s artistic, so if they don’t like it … What I always remember when I think of Tiffany’s is how in the fifties I left my drawings there once and somebody stole them.
I called Marina Schiano to say Merry Christmas. She’s going to Naples to see her mother in the hospital. She gave me her sympathies about Jed moving out. And she brought up how he’s out in Colorado skiing with Alan Wanzenberg.
Wednesday, December 31, 1980
Still no heat at the office so it was hard to do things. Brigid called the landlord a bastard on the phone, he’s in Horida.
Wilson Kidde called and said he’d made it with a girl.
I was busy till about 8:00, then we left. Dropped Rupert. Went home, glued, then went over to Halston’s. Victor was helping his friend Benjamin Liu get dressed in drag. When he’s in drag he calls himself Ming Vauze. Then we went to the Olympic Tower for Halston’s New Year’s Eve party. The people there said that Steve Rubell had just called and said he’d be out of jail in two weeks.
Halston was still in the same kind of down mood, so he had mostly the girls and boys who work for him. He told me he dressed all the girls in tulle to make the place seem like it was full. From the window we could see the ball in Times Square coming down, and we could see the fireworks in the park. Marisol was there looking glum. Everybody was somebody you knew so you had to kiss them all.
Saturday, January 3, 1981
Worked all afternoon. Went to Chris Makos’s birthday party. Peter Wise had decided to give him a hotel room for a present, he got him one at that hotel on Central Park South that nobody seems to go to anymore, the St. Moritz, and so we all went there (cab $3). And Peter was sweet, he’d brought all Chris’s toiletries and Chris loved it, he was thrilled. Jon Gould the vice-president from Paramount arrived with an airline steward. I think the roses that I keep sending him at work are embarrassing him, so I’d better stop. He tries to play it macho.
Then we went over to John Reinhold’s apartment to see how the decorating job by Michael Graves is coming, and it’s taken like nine months for one room—they keep making the window either one inch too small or too big so it keeps having to be redone.
Sunday, January 11, 1981
Called Vincent and woke him up. He said a lot of my paintings at the office cracked from the cold.
I watched Giant on TV from 1:00 to 5:30. It’s so long. I even went to church in between and when I came back it was still on. James Dean’s acting when he gets old is the worst thing. But they did a good thing—when he’s drunk and talking into the microphone it’s like a rock star, he’s right on top of the microphone and it’s just noises coming out and so it’s abstract.
I had some wine and a couple of aspirin to try to get rid of the pain in my back. I’m also trying to take two aspirin a day so I don’t become senile because I just read that it stops the hardening of the arteries. But I don’t know, my mother took millions of aspirin and it didn’t do any good.
Bob said the inauguration is on Saturday. I didn’t realize it was so soon. Bob doesn’t care about discoing now, he’s just so happy with all his Republicans—with Doria and Jerry Zipkin calling him.
Monday, January 12, 1981
The sun was shining so I decided to work up front at Ronnie’s desk. I had to do some Joseph Beuyses. But Ronnie was careless, he’d left some paint in the middle of the floor and I kic
ked it and it went all over my boot and pants and it took the whole afternoon to clean up—that was the first time that’d happened. And then the rock star from the Cars, Ric Ocasek, wanted to bring his band by to see his portrait, so he did.
Tuesday, January 13, 1981
I looked for ideas on the New Myths series. Also looked for Mother Goose pictures. But I think the best thing we decided to do is have people come and dress up in the costumes and we’ll take the pictures ourselves, because that way there’s no copyright to worry about.
Wednesday, January 14, 1981
I had Brigid write a thank-you note to Gloria Swanson telling her how much I loved her book and saying that thanks to her I’m trying to get off candy. The purpose of the new thing of writing notes is to get notes back—the Joan Crawford thing. Oh, and Steve Aronson did one of his good, long interviews with Gloria Swanson in Interview, and she called the office for his number and invited him over for tea with no sugar.
And I was looking at Bob’s interview with the Borchgrave guy and Bob does do good political interviews, he knows his facts.
Tuesday, January 20, 1981—Washington, D.C.
The driver picked us up at Ina Ginsburg’s at 10:00, his name was Carter and he got us as close to the Capitol as he could and then we had to walk a couple of blocks and there were big crowds of people everywhere, lots of kids, lots of troops, marines, police. And finally we got through all the checkpoints and found our seats in section E and I was complaining about how far back they were, but then we saw this black Marine march up to two white marines and salute them and they said (laughs)—well, we thought they’d say something like, “The heads of state will be arriving soon and security is tightly under control,” but they said, “Robert Goulet and Glen Campbell are sitting in row sixty-four.” And then the three of them went marching off to look for more stars. We had binoculars. I focused on Rosalynn, she looked so sad.