by Andy Warhol
Paul Morrissey came down and he said that Jean Stein called him and read him something that Rene Ricard had said about him in her Edie book, and he told her that if she printed it he’d sue her, and she said she was going to print it anyway. And Fred said I should be generous and find Billy’s pictures and give them to Jean, but I said, “You know, Fred, I really don’t mind spending all the time it would take to find the pictures, but I hear that Jean has some rotten things about me in her book and so I just don’t want to.” And he said, “Well if you feel that way, why don’t you just call her up yourself and tell her that.” And so I told him he should, but then I did, I called her and said, “You know, Jean, it’d take me a couple of afternoons to find the pictures and I would do it, but I hear that you put me down in your book.” And she said, “Oh well—well— well—I—I—it’s tape recorded, it’s taped interviews.” And I said, “Oh so then other people put me down.” And she goes, “Well I—I—didn’t—I didn’t really say that.” “Well then can you send me a galley?” “Oh but all the galleys, I’ve given them all out.” “Well, Jean, there’s always a Xerox machine.” “Well, I—I—but Billy wrote you that wonderful letter.” “Yes, Billy wrote me that wonderful letter.”
I mean she’s just that tough type of girl—it’s like Brooke Hayward. They’re just—Suzie Frankfurts. You know? They’re the same type. They pretend to be so femme and they’re these tough —things. You know? And the point is, none of the stuff she has in the book would bother me, I’m sure, because I’m sure I’d think it’s fascinating. But the one thing that bothers me is that she calls me a “social climber.” Isabel Eberstadt let that slip out to me—and that’s—that’s just not true. Meeting rich kids wasn’t anything to me, and being invited to her stupid parties. It bothers me because it’s not true! The other things, I’m sure they’ll be fascinating, whether they’re true or not, but the “social climbing” thing just isn’t true. Oh but why does it bother me so much? I don’t know why, it just does, I don’t know….
Oh and Paul said he saw Ondine and that he’s still traveling around the country with a 16mm print of Chelsea Girls, showing it and giving lectures. What is Ondine going to do when that print just disintegrates? Or if it gets lost? Now that’s a play. And he’s teaching rich kids acting at some school like Buckley so there’ll be this whole group of kids who’ll (laughs) act like Ondine. Oh and I can just see it if Billy Name comes to New York. Oh he won’t, he’s too shy, he won’t want us to see him fat. Oh but if he does—I can just see it—he’ll come on the bus with a YMCA satchel. And Tom Baker’s doing the same thing, he’s traveling around with a print of I, a Man.
And of course the big news of the day was that Claus von Bulow was found guilty in Rhode Island. I guess he’ll appeal the verdict.
Wednesday, March 17, 1982
I was picked up by Jon at 8 P.M. and we went to Diane Von Furstenberg’s, she was having a no-reason party but I think maybe it was for a rich Indonesian. Bob was coming after dinner because he was going to a dinner the Hales were giving for the attorney general.
Barbara Allen arrived, she said she was dropped off by Bill Paley and she broke down after I kidded her about Peter Duchin and she told me she was thinking of going back to Joe Allen. Because she was just fired by Valentino. I didn’t know that. She said she was hurt, and they owed her money, and she didn’t know why they fired her. And I asked her about Peter Duchin and she said he was okay but that he’d been married for seventeen years so he already had his habits. She said she was tired of having flings, that she thought it might be time to buckle down and become a hostess. She said that she could really make all the other girls jealous with the entertaining she could do. There was Italian food and South American drinks which I had and they were so strong.
Thursday, March 18, 1982
I read that Jean Stein’s book Edie got six figures from the Book-of-the-Month Club, and I got an idea what to do about Billy Name and his pictures—I think that if the book becomes big and Edie becomes a cult again, it would be better for Billy to publish his own portfolio of Edie pictures, he could make more doing it that way. I’ve got to write him a letter to tell him that because I just don’t want to give the pictures to Jean. I mean, there’s probably not even anything really bad about me in the book, but still I just don’t want to.
It was a sunny cold day. Cabbed to the Mayflower Hotel ($6) to interview Cher. She has a glamorous penthouse, like a two-story house on top, and she wanted to do it in the bedroom. Her bed overlooks Central Park. It was the fourth day she couldn’t eat, she couldn’t even swallow a vitamin pill, and she was taking medicine for her throat and it made her face break out and swell up and so she just drinks thick rich malteds so her weight doesn’t go down too much.
She was great, she just said everything. She said she has two boyfriends now, it just happened in one week, and she’s so happy because they’re real men, and I brought up Ron Duguay, that we’d heard she’d been seeing him and she said yes but that he was too interested in himself, he wasn’t for her. She talked about anything except her father, she said that was a “No.”
And Cher said that when they called and told her she had the second lead after Meryl Streep in the Karen Silkwood story she said she cried for five hours because everything she’d done up to now has been shit, except for the Come Back to the Five and Dime play, and she’s so happy.
Dropped Bob ($3.50) then was picked up by Jon and went to Ahmet Ertegun’s house. Bob said it was just for “sandwiches” but the stupid butler, he should have taken us upstairs, but he led us right in and everybody was sitting down at dinner, and Mica and Ahmet had to get up.
Then we went to the Bottom Line in a bus to see Ahmet’s new act, Laura Branigan, who was absolutely great.
Thursday, March 25, 1982
Lord Jermyn was giving a dinner for Fred at the Odeon (cab $8). It’s such a long ride down there. Mick Jagger arrived and that was the big moment, everybody in the place got excited. And Charlie Watts was with him. No Jerry. They were on the loose. Julian Schnabel still wants to paint me, and he says Saturday is the only day he can do it because he’s going away. He gets $40,000 for a portrait, he’s the Jim Dine of the eighties. He copies people’s work and he’s pushy and he’s a friend of Ronnie’s and he’s married a rich girl already. I’m going to have to sit for it. He does it abstract, anyway, but I guess I have to because he wants the inspiration.
I ordered sweetbreads which I hate so that I wouldn’t eat anything. Then we went to John Samuels’s birthday party at his father’s big loft on Broadway. Jane Holzer was talking about Ian Schrager, she’s so hot for him, she said he’s the best sex, and we sat there talking till 2:00 so I missed Jon’s call from California.
Friday, March 26, 1982
This was the night Radio City was having its fiftieth anniversary, and Maura Moynihan had called a few times during the day so I thought she’d be a good date, and we could continue the Music Hotel tapes—that’s what my musical is called now—about her and her two boyfriends. So cabbed to Radio City ($2). It was boring.
Maura called her boyfriends but they weren’t home. She’s working at the Post now. She makes $100 a day and she works about three days a week, reading things and editing them, I guess.
Saturday, March 27, 1982
Got a call from Jon in L.A., he was meeting Bob and Thomas Ammann out there for lunch.
Sunday, March 28, 1982
Bob came back from California, I guess just for a jeans party in Tribeca at some new cafe. He left Hollywood for that.
I ran into Mary Richardson and she said she was getting married to John Samuels’s roommate from Harvard. Carlos Mavroleon. Well that’s what she says but I remember he had a lisp. It’d be funny if he’s a straight person with a lisp, but I don’t know.
Monday, March 29, 1982
Got up early, tried to make exercise class on time. Lidija told me that Sharon said that the woman downstairs from her complained that we make too much noise
, and so that’s Sharon trying to tell us we can’t use the room anymore, so I guess our days there are numbered.
Bob arranged dinner with the mayor. This is the dinner for Alice Neel’s birthday that was scheduled for a month ago but then it was cancelled when the mayor’s father died. And Polly Bergen was having an Academy Awards party. And Lester Persky was having a dinner and party at Xenon to (laughs) “honor the stars.”
Cabbed to Gracie Mansion ($6). It was all artists, sort of horrible, Henry Geldzahler was there with Raymond, and Duane Hanson and Alice Neel and Tom Armstrong were there. And everyone was complaining because the Whitney hadn’t loaned the portrait that Alice Neel did of me for the dinner, you have to give them a month’s notice and I said that that was just fine with me, that it was a closet painting. And Alice had a nude of herself. Her family was there. She turns these paintings out so fast. And the mayor was nice, he made a cute speech, one-liners.
And then suddenly some creep got up and started a speech and it was Stewart Mott and it was the oddest speech. He talked about how Alice Neel had lived in the gutter for so long and didn’t have a pot to pee in and how she lived on like 109th Street on the East Side and then on 105th Street on the West Side and now, as a present to Alice, would the mayor please give his views on nuclear war and disarmament. And the mayor said something like, “Now listen here, we’re finished with your speech.”
Bob told the mayor we wanted him for the cover of Interview and the mayor said, “After the election,” and Bob said, “Oh couldn’t it be before?” but the mayor said, “After’ll be better.” So that was disappointing.
And did I ever say that my favorite person is Mrs. Senator Al D’Amato. She actually talks like Judy Holliday. A real person who actually talks that way.
Tuesday, March 30, 1982
Christopher wanted to go out looking for ideas. It was a beautiful day. We went to Dubrow’s the cafeteria, this is in the garment center, and they have all the red lights on the food so it all looks so good and everything is oversized and it’s full of air. I thought it’d be cheap but it wasn’t ($20). Then we only had time to do the bottom floor of Macy’s because Chris had an appointment.
Talked to Jon, he was entertaining Barbara Allen out in LA, she’s out there with John Samuels.
Then there was a gallery opening at the Sperone Westwater Gallery for Cy Twombly. David Whitney and Sandro Chia and a couple of Italian artists were there. Then we went to Odeon. I was next to Si Newhouse who talked about the new Vanity Fair. He just bought a $800,000 Jasper Johns. I told him I had some Warrens and Natalies that I would part with.
Saturday, April 3, 1982
I went to Pasta & Cheese and I took out a jar from the refrigerator there and I dropped it and it hit the floor the right way to open it and the top came off and marinara sauce went all over and all over me, it was so embarrassing. They said not to worry about it. It’s never happened to me before.
We went down to Lafayette to Bob Rauschenberg’s party and on the way we ran into Henry Post. Lady McCrady was there and she’s doing drawings at the Hellfire Club which is a straight club where girls lead the men around on leashes and things, and it’s piss and shit for straights.
Left there at 12:30. Went to Studio 54 where there was a birthday party for the black star on Saturday Night Live who’s just signed to do a movie with Paramount. Eddie Murphy. And he’s sort of handsome. The place was jammed but with nobodies.
Sunday, April 4, 1982
Chris called and said he wanted to go to the P.S. 1 thing out in Queens. This thing had gotten good writeups. And Henry Post’s live-in boyfriend was exhibiting. The place was packed, and it reminded me of years ago, going to places like Settlement House for these types of things. But years ago they did have better people—Oldenburg and Whitman. Brooke Adams was there, she was sweet, she said hi. And Princess Schleswig-Holstein—Pingle—who we sort of let go from working at the office because she was such an egghead, she was there and now she works at this place about one day a week. We had her give us a tour.
And we saw Henry Post and looked at his boyfriend’s stuff which was okay but it was just a copy of Jedd Garet. Jon really sees things in paintings that I don’t see. Like, there was an abstract painting and he saw all these figures of people painted over it. They were there but I hadn’t seen them and paintings do have things to say, but I never looked at them that way.
There was a cocktail party that Henry was having at Anna Wintour’s place where she lives with that Michael Stone.
And Henry put down the Rauschenberg party the day before, saying his was going to be so grand, so chic. But I’m beginning to think that maybe Henry doesn’t really know what an elegant party is like, that he hasn’t been to many. Because this party—I mean, they didn’t even really have food. It was 6:30 to 8:30 and it was broken-up crackers. It was on Broadway and 70th and 71st. And they had big trees and three maids, but so what, because there was no food. And the reason I’m putting it down so much is because Henry put down Rauschenberg’s so much, saying how much better his was going to be. And Jed was there. I’d asked Henry if he was going to be, and he said yes, that Jed was one of his best friends. And there were no stars.
Steve Rubell was there. But the strangest thing is that he was with the prosecutor who sent him to jail! And I think Henry—who actually wrote the article that started all the trouble—I think Henry got them together. I mean, it’s like if somebody got you evicted from your apartment and then you decided the next year to be friends with them. Or is it trying to get involved with the guy who’s smart enough to get you, and getting him then involved in what you do.
Monday, April 5, 1982
Worked all afternoon. The place suddenly got busy. I remembered I had tickets that Susan Blond gave me to the rock kid who ate the heads off bats, Ozzy Osbourne, but then Thomas Ammann called and invited me to dinner at Mr. Chow’s and I gave the tickets away to Agosto. Cabbed to Mr. Chow’s ($7).
We talked art. Thomas told the story of the Picasso he bought from Paulette Goddard, it cost $60,000 and he brought it to one of the Picasso kids and they said it was a fake, and he said Paulette gave him a hard time, that she was “difficult,” but she did give him his money back. But when you think about it, thirty years ago would somebody really be doing a forgery of Picasso? He started to get really really big in 1950. I came to New York in 1949 and Sidney Janis and those galleries were around and the Museum of Modern Art and art became really big and Picasso became the number-one artist. But it’s very early to have somebody be doing a forgery, so I don’t know.
Then Thomas had invited Jerry Zipkin and he came by. He puts people down when he’s “on,” though, he thinks he has to entertain. I was saying that Holly Solomon and her husband owned the building that Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller lived in and Jerry was putting her down, the way she looks, the way she dresses. And Jerry said that what a lot of wives do is they tell their boyfriends they want a $150,000 pin and the boyfriend gives them the money and then they tell the husband the same thing, and he gives the money, and then they buy the pin and they pocket the other $150,000 and each one thinks they bought it. And also he said that a lot of husbands buy their wives jewelry in the company name so that when they break up, the jewelry belongs back to the company. But a lot of wives have copies made and sell the real ones before that.
Wednesday, April 7, 1982
We still didn’t have an Interview cover and then I guess they decided to use Dyan Cannon, and Robert Hayes told Bob that I’d said it was okay, which I know I didn’t because I would never say it, because I can’t stand her so much. We had tried to get Rachel Ward but her agency said no.
I decided to go see Cat People. Was picked up by Jon and went to the Gemini (cab $3, tickets $10). I really liked the movie so much. I guess I really like the Scarfiotti art direction. And this time I really loved the arm being bitten off and how they did it and the snap when it came out of the socket.
Friday, April 9, 1982
&
nbsp; It was my last exercise class at Lady Sharon’s. I’m so mad at her, she got us all involved in this, and then she just dumps us out on the street and she says it’s the people downstairs complaining but I know it’s not. If it didn’t bother them before, it’s not bothering them now. So I’ll be doing classes at John Reinhold’s for a little while and by then the exercise equipment I ordered should be at the office.
Monday, April 12, 1982
I don’t know why I should really hate Sharon so much, but I just do, I just resent her so much for getting me started on exercising at her house and then just kicking me out. I really resent her.
Billy Squier came to lunch, and also at this lunch was Issey Miyake, and he’s going to start a men’s line. He was saying that Japanese people spend so much on clothes and he told me about the 6’ x 4’ hotel rooms where you strap a TV around your head. He said that when Japanese people come to New York City they have nervous breakdowns because of “all the space,” and they can only send people from the suburbs there here.
Monday, April 19, 1982
Chris called and said there was a screening of the Fassbinder movie we’d seen them shooting in Germany. I had a lunch to go to so we only saw an hour and a half of the movie and that much was okay, but it was going to go on for another forty minutes.
Tuesday, April 20, 1982
It was a busy afternoon. Fassbinder and his producer came by, I told him I loved the movie. Then they went out and the producer came back and said he’d left Fassbinder in a porno shop in the Village. He’s strange, Fassbinder. He was nice when I introduced him to the boys at the office, but when I introduced him to Lidija the exercise teacher he was peculiar.