The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby

by Tom Wolfe

  But Baby Jane Holzer is a purer manifestation. Her style of life has created her fame—rock and roll, underground movies, decaying lofts, models, photographers, Living Pop Art, the twist, the frug, the mashed potatoes, stretch pants, pre-Raphaelite hair, Le Style Camp. All of it has a common denominator. Once it was power that created high style. But now high styles come from low places, from people who have no power, who slink away from it, in fact, who are marginal, who carve out worlds for themselves in the nether depths, in tainted “undergrounds.” The Rolling Stones, like rock and roll itself and the twist—they come out of the netherworld of modern teen-age life, out of what was for years the marginal outcast corner of the world of art, photography, populated by poor boys, pretenders. “Underground” movies—a mixture of camp and Artistic Alienation, with Jonas Mekas crying out like some foggy echo from Harold Steam’s last boat for Le Havre in 1921: “You filthy bourgeois pseudoculturati! You say you love art—then why don’t you give us money to buy the film to make our masterpieces and stop blubbering about the naked asses we show?—you mucky pseuds.” Teen-agers, bohos, camp culturati, photographers—they have won by default, because, after all, they do create styles. And now the Other Society goes to them for styles, like the decadenti of another age going down to the wharves in Rio to find those rawvital devils, damn their potent hides, those proles, doing the tango. Yes! Oh my God, those raw-vital proles!

  The ice floe is breaking, and can’t one see, as Jane Holzer sees, that all these people—well, they feel, they are alive, and what does it mean simply to be sitting up in her Park Avenue apartment in the room with the two Rubenses on the wall, worth half a million dollars, if they are firmly authenticated? It means almost nothing. One doesn’t feel it.

  Jane has on a “Poor” sweater, clinging to the ribs, a new fashion, with short sleeves. Her hair is up in rollers. She is wearing tight slacks. Her hips are very small. She has a boyish body. She has thin arms and long, long fingers. She sits twisted about on a couch, up in her apartment on Park Avenue, talking on the telephone.

  “Oh, I know what you mean,” she says, “but, I mean, couldn’t you wait just two weeks? I’m expecting something to jell, it’s a movie, and then you’d have a real story. You know what I mean? I mean you would have something to write about and not just Baby Jane sitting up in her Park Avenue apartment with her gotrocks. You know what I mean? … well, all right, but I think you’ll have more of a story— … well, all right … bye, pussycat.”

  Then she hangs up and swings around and says, “That makes me mad. That was ———. He wants to do a story about me and do you know what he told me? ‘We want to do a story about you,’ he told me, ‘because you’re very big this year.’ Do you know what that made me feel like? That made me feel like, All right, Baby Jane, we’ll let you play this year, so get out there and dance, but next year, well, it’s all over for you next year, Baby Jane. I mean,—! You know? I mean, I felt like telling him, ‘Well, pussycat, you’re the Editor of the Minute, and you know what? Your minute’s up.’ ”

  The thought leaves Jane looking excited but worried. Usually she looks excited about things but open, happy, her eyes wide open and taking it all in. Now she looks worried, as if the world could be such a simple and exhilarating place if there weren’t so many old and arteriosclerotic people around to muck it up. There are two dogs on the floor at her feet, a toy poodle and a Yorkshire terrier, who rise up from time to time in some kind of secret needle-toothed fury, barking coloratura.

  “Oh,———,” says Jane, and then, “You know, if you have anything at all, there are so many bitchy people just waiting to carve you up. I mean, I went to the opening of the Met and I wore a white mink coat, and do you know what a woman did? A woman called up a columnist and said, ‘Ha, ha, Baby Jane rented that coat she went to the Met in. Baby Jane rents her clothes.’ That’s how bitchy they are. Well, that coat happens to be a coat my mother gave me two years ago when I was married. I mean, I don’t care if somebody thinks I rent clothes. O.K. ———! Who Cares?”

  Inez, the maid, brings in lunch on a tray, one rare hamburger, one cheeseburger and a glass of tomato juice. Jane tastes the tomato juice.

  “Oh, ———!” she says. “It’s diet.”

  The Girl of the Year. It is as though nobody wants to give anyone credit for anything. They’re only a phenomenon. Well, Jane Holzer did a great deal of modeling before she got married and still models, for that matter, and now some very wonderful things may be about to happen in the movies. Some of it, well, she cannot go into it exactly, because it is at that precarious stage—you know? But she has one of the best managers, a woman who manages the McGuire Sisters. And there has been talk about Baby Jane for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the movie, and Candy—

  “Well, I haven’t heard anything about it—but I’d love to play Candy.”

  And this afternoon, later on, she is going over to see Sam Spiegel, the producer.

  “He’s wonderful. He’s, you know, sort of advising me on things at this point.”

  And somewhere out there in the apartment the dogs are loose in a midget coloratura rage amid patina-green walls and paintings by old Lowland masters. There is a great atmosphere in the apartment, an atmosphere of patina-green, faded plush and the ashy light of Park Avenue reflecting on the great black and umber slicks of the paintings. All that stretches on for twelve rooms. The apartment belongs to the Holzers, who have built a lot of New York’s new apartment houses. Jane’s husband, Leonard, is a slim, good-looking young man. He went to Princeton. He and Jane were married two years ago. Jane came from Florida, where her father, Carl Brookenfeld, also made a lot of money in real estate. But in a way they were from New York, too, because they were always coming to New York and her father had a place here. There was something so stimulating, so flamboyant, about New York, you know? Fine men with anointed blue jowls combed their hair straight back and had their shirts made at Sulka’s or Nica-Rattner’s, and their wives had copper-gold hair, real chignons and things, and heavy apricot voices that said the funniest things—”Honey, I’ve got news for you, you’re crazy!”—things like that, and they went to El Morocco. Jane went to Cherry Lawn School in Darien, Connecticut. It was a progressive school.

  And then she went to Finch Junior College:

  “Oh, that was just ghastly. I wanted to flunk out and go to work. If you miss too many classes, they campus you, if you have a messy room, they campus you, they were always campusing me, and I always sneaked out. The last spring term I didn’t spend one night there. I was supposed to be campused and I’d be out dancing at El Morocco. I didn’t take my exams because I wanted to flunk out, but do you know what they did? They just said I was out, period. I didn’t care about that, because I wanted to flunk out and go to work anyway—but the way they did it. I have a lot of good paintings to give away, and it’s too bad, they’re not getting any. They were not educators. They could have at least kept the door open. They could have said, ‘You’re not ready to be a serious student, but when you decide to settle down and be a serious student, the door will be open.’ I mean, I had already paid for the whole term, they had the money. I always wanted to go there and tell them, well, ha ha, too bad, you’re not getting any of the paintings. So henceforth, Princeton, which was super-marvelous, will get all the paintings.”

  Jane’s spirits pick up over that. Princeton! Well, Jane left Finch and then she did quite a bit of modeling. Then she married Lennie, and she still did some modeling, but the real break—well, the whole thing started in summer in London, the summer of 1963.

  “Bailey is fantastic,” says Jane. “Bailey created four girls that summer. He created Jean Shrimpton, he created me, he created Angela Howard and Susan Murray. There’s no photographer like that in America. Avedon hasn’t done that for a girl, Penn hasn’t, and Bailey created four girls in one summer. He did some pictures of me for the English Vogue, and that was all it took.”

  But how does one really explain about th
e Stones, about Bailey, Shrimp and Mick—well, it’s not so much what they do, that’s such an old idea, what people do—it’s what they are, it’s a revolution, and its the kids from the East End, Cockneys, if you want, who are making it.

  “I mean today Drexel Duke sits next to Weinstein, and why shouldn’t he? They both made their money the same way, you know? The furniture king sits next to the catsup king, and why shouldn’t he-sort-of-thing. I mean, that’s the way it was at the opening of the Met. A friend of mine was going to write an article about it.

  “I mean, we don’t lie to ourselves. Our mothers taught us to be pure and you’ll fall in love and get married and stay in love with one man all your life. O.K. But we know it doesn’t happen that way and we don’t lie to ourselves about it. Maybe you won’t ever find anybody you love. Or maybe you find somebody you love four minutes, maybe ten minutes. But I mean, why lie to yourself? We know we’re not going to love one man all our lives. Maybe it’s the Bomb—we know it could all be over tomorrow, so why try to fool yourself today. Shrimp was talking about that last night. She’s here now, she’ll be at the party tonight—”

  The two dogs, the toy poodle and the Yorkshire terrier, are yapping, in the patina-green. Inez is looking for something besides diet. The two Rubenses hang up on the walls. A couple of horns come up through the ashy light of Park Avenue. The high wind of East End London is in the air—whhhooooooooo

  OOOOOOOOOOOOOSH! BABY JANE blows out all the candles. It is her twenty-fourth birthday. She and everybody, Shrimp, Nicky, Jerry, everybody but Bailey, who is off in Egypt or something, they are all up in Jerry Schatzberg’s … pad … his lavish apartment at 333 Park Avenue South, up above his studio. There is a skylight. The cook brings out the cake and Jane blows out the candles. Twenty-four! Jerry and Nicky are giving a huge party, a dance, in honor of the Stones, and already the people are coming into the studio downstairs. But it is also Jane’s birthday. She is wearing a black velvet jump suit by Luis Estevez, the designer. It has huge bell-bottom pants. She puts her legs together … it looks like an evening dress. But she can also spread them apart, like so, and strike very Jane-like poses. This is like the Upper Room or something. Downstairs, they’re all coming in for the party, all those people one sees at parties, everybody who goes to the parties in New York, but up here it is like a tableau, like a tableau of … Us. Shrimp is sitting there with her glorious pout and her textured white stockings, Barbara Steele, who was so terrific in 8½, with thin black lips and wrought-iron eyelashes. Nicky Haslam is there with his Byron shirt on and his tiger skin vest and blue jeans and boots. Jerry is there with his hair flowing back in curls. Lennie, Jane’s husband, is there in a British suit and a dark blue shirt he bought on 42nd Street for this party, because this is a party for the Rolling Stones. The Stones are not here yet, but here in the upper room are Goldie and the Gingerbreads, four girls in gold lamé tights who will play the rock and roll for the party. Nicky discovered them at the Wagon Wheel. Gold lamé, can you imagine? Goldie, the leader, is a young girl with a husky voice and nice kind of slightly thick—you know—glorious sort of East End features, only she is from New York—ah, the delicacy of minor grossness, unabashed. The Stones’ music is playing over the hi-fi.

  Finally the Stones come in, in blue jeans, sweat shirts, the usual, and people get up and Mick Jagger comes in with his mouth open and his eyes down, faintly weary with success, and everybody goes downstairs to the studio, where people are now piling in, hundreds of them. Goldie and the Gingerbreads are on a stand at one end of the studio, all electric, electric guitars, electric bass, drums, loudspeakers, and a couple of spotlights exploding off the gold lamé. Baby baby baby where did our love go. The music suddenly fills up the room like a giant egg slicer. Sally Kirkland, Jr., a young actress, is out on the studio floor in a leopard print dress with her vast mane flying, doing the frug with Jerry Schatzberg. And then the other Girl of the Year, Caterine Milinaire, is out there in a black dress, and then Baby Jane is out there with her incredible mane and her Luis Estevez jump suit, frugging, and then everybody is out there. Suddenly it is very odd. Suddenly everybody is out there in the gloaming, bobbing up and down with the music plugged into Baby baby baby. The whole floor of the studio begins to bounce up and down, like a trampoline, the whole floor, some people are afraid and edge off to the side, but most keep bobbing in the gloaming, and—pow!—glasses begin to hit the floor, but every one keeps bouncing up and down, crushing the glass underfoot, while the brown whiskey slicks around. So many heads bobbing, so many bodies jiggling, so many giblets jiggling, so much anointed flesh shaking and jiggling this way and that, so many faces one wanted so desperately to see, and here they are, red the color of dried peppers in the gloaming, bouncing up and down with just a few fights, wrenching in the gloaming, until 5 A.M.—gleeeang—Goldie pulls all the electric cords out and the studio is suddenly just a dim ochre studio with broken glass all over the floor, crushed underfoot, and the sweet high smell of brown whiskey rising from the floor.

  Monday’s papers will record it as the Mods and Rockers Ball, as the Party of the Year, but that is Monday, a long way off. So they all decide they should go to the Brasserie. It is the only place in town where anybody would still be around. So they all get into cabs and go up to the Brasserie, up on 53rd Street between Park and Lexington. The Brasserie is the right place, all right. The Brasserie has a great entrance, elevated over the tables like a fashion show almost. There are, what?, 35 people in the Brasserie. They all look up, and as the first salmon light of dawn comes through the front window, here come … four teen-age girls in gold lamé tights, and a chap in a tiger skin vest and blue jeans and a gentleman in an English suit who seems to be wearing a 42nd Street hood shirt and a fellow in a sweater who has flowing curly hair … and then, a girl with an incredible mane, a vast tawny corona, wearing a black velvet jump suit. One never knows who is in the Brasserie at this hour—but are there any so dead in here that they do not get the point? Girl of the Year? Listen, they will never forget.

  Part 3

  A Metropolitan Sketchbook

  OLD FACES, NEW FASHIONS

  The Modern Churchman at the hootenanny, reaching the Urban Young People.

  The New Dandies: cart-pullers in the Garment District, also known as “Seventh Avenue aviators,” wearing Continental clothes exclusively.

  The Suburban Bohemians, showing the world that despite baby, hubby, and mortgage and the breezeway, they are still … hip.

  TEEN-AGE MALE HAIRDOS

  The basic ducktail: rear view The flat top

  The basic ducktail: side view

  The “Chicago Boxcar,” a combination of the flat top and the ducktail

  The Presley haircut

  The ducktail tease

  THE SUN-WORSHIPPERS

  Lunch-break Acapulco: aluminum-foil reflector under the chin in Verdi Square.

  Shop-owner’s Boca Chica: basking on his sidewalk in Chelsea.

  The Working Girl’s weekend resort: rooftop on 19th Street.

  The Biggies’ weekday resort: rooftop at a midtown men’s club.

  THE ZOO IN CENTRAL PARK

  THE VIEW IN CENTRAL PARK

  NEW YORK’S BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

  The maître d’

  The tour guide

  The cabdriver

  The parking lot attendant

  The parking ticket patrol

  Part 4

  Status Strife and the High Life

  Chapter 12

  The Saturday Route

  IS THAT JOAN Morse, the fabulous dressmaker, over there on the curb? With that fabulous Claude-yellow heath coat, those knee-high Rolls-Royce-maroon boots and the biggest sunglasses since Audrey Hepburn sunbathed on a cantilevered terrace in the Swiss Alps? Well, it has to be Joan Morse.

  “Joan!”

  And there at Madison Avenue and 74th Street Joan Morse, owner of A La Carte, which ranks in fabulosity with Mainbocher, swings around and yells:

  “Freddi
e! I saw you in Paris, but what happened to you in London?”

  One is not to find out immediately, because the light has just changed. Joan is doing the Saturday Route down Madison Avenue. Freddie is doing the Saturday Route up Madison Avenue. But they keep on walking because they know they will meet sooner or later at Parke-Bernet and catch up on London. Or if not there, at the Wildenstein Gallery, the Emmerich or Duveen’s or Castelli’s or one of those places.

  And so will Greta Garbo and her old friend, George Schlee—nothing retiring about Greta Garbo on the Saturday Route, no Garbo glasses, no peekaboo Ulster collar. And so will lovely Mimi Russell and her sister Serena and Nick Villiers—Mimi is not giving up the Saturday Route just because the newspapers run headlines such as “Indicted Deb Denies All.”

  And so will Herbert Lehman, Kirk Douglas, Norman Norell, August Heckscher, Emmett Hughes, Jan Mitchell, Pierre Scapula, Kenneth J. Lane, Alfred Barr, Dorothy Miller, Ted Peckham and, well, you know, everybody.