1963
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(codes
in parentheses refer to references)
Andy Warhol rents his first studio. Lou Reed injects heroin. Andy Warhol does his first ommissioned portrait. Andy Warhol designs an album cover. Andy Warhol meets Jane Holzer. Andy Warhol meets Gerard Malanga. Andy Warhol sees Sunday with "De." Andy Warhol buys a movie camera. Ted Berrigan meets Andy Warhol. Taylor Mead meets Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol films Jack Smith. Holly Woodlawn meets Candy Darling. Andy Warhol shoots Kiss. Andy Warhol goes to poetry readings. Andy Warhol meets John Ashbury. Andy Warhol has a second show at the Ferus. Andy Warhol goes to Los Angeles. Andy Warhol takes "Speed."
EARLY 1963: ANDY WARHOL RENTS HIS FIRST STUDIO.
Warhol subleased part of an old firehouse on E. 87th Street that the tenant was leasing from the City of New York for “about one hundred dollars a year.” (POP25)
Andy Warhol's first studio
Hook & Ladder Co. #13 (1963)1963: LOU REED INJECTS HEROIN.
Lou started injecting heroin while still a student at Syracuse University. His previous drug use was limited to psychiatric drugs, pot, pills, acid, mushrooms, coke and Placidyls which you could still get without a prescription. (LR68)
1963: ANDY WARHOL DOES HIS FIRST COMMISSIONED PORTRAIT.
Warhol's first commissioned portrait was of ETHEL SCULL - based on photos taken in a photo booth.(BC28)
1963: ANDY WARHOL DESIGNS AN ALBUM COVER.
In addition to his commercial illustrations in magazines Warhol had designed various album covers. This particular recording was made by Billy Klüver of interviews with pop artists.
The cover resembled a supermarket ad with "GIANT SIZE $1.57 EACH" in bold black lettering. The record accompanied The Popular Image exhibition at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art. The edition of seventy-five numbered record covers are considered fine-art prints today rather than mass-produced record covers. (AWM65)
Klüver was was a staff scientist at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., from 1958 to 1968. He was particularly interested in the relationship of art to technology. He was one of the founding members of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) which earned him a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from France and the Royal Order of Vasa from Sweden.
When Warhol later created his Silver Clouds, he asked Klüver to come up with a way of making them float. Klüver died on January 11. 2004.
SPRING 1963: ANDY WARHOL MEETS JANE HOLZER.
Holzer had recently married real estate magnate Leonard Holzer. She was twenty-two when she first met Warhol. NICKY HASLAM took Warhol to Holzer's Park Avenue apartment for dinner. DAVID BAILEY was also at the dinner. Bailey brought along “the lead singer of a rock and roll band that was playing the northern cities of England - MICK JAGGER - who was staying at Nicky’s apartment on East 19th Street. Nicky had met him when he was Jean Shrimpton’s younger sister’s maid.” (POP58)
Mick had responded to an ad that Jean’s sister had put in the paper for a cleaner. At that time he was a student at the London School of Economics cleaning flats to pay his way. (POP58-9)
JUNE 9, 1963: ANDY WARHOL MEETS GERARD MALANGA .
Warhol had asked CHARLES HENRI FORD if he knew anybody who could help him with silkscreening. Ford suggested Gerard Malanga, a 5' 6 1/2" student (GMW49) at Wagner College on Staten Island. Gerard had also been a dancer on Alan Freed's Big Beat television show. The show was closed down when Freed was busted in a payola scandal. (UT6)
Ford brought Andy and Gerard together at a poetry reading at the New School. Gerard immediately started working for Andy for the State minimum wage of $1.25 an hour. Andy overheard Gerard talking to Charles Henri on the phone telling him he thought Andy Warhol was “frightening” and in a hushed voice said, “Frankly, I think he’s going to put the make on me.” (POP26/27)
According to Bob Colacello, Andy Warhol hired Gerard Malanga (who he described as an "art student and budding poet") in 1962. Gerard had spent the summer of 1962 silkscreening neckties in the garment district. (BC28)
According to author Patrick Smith, Gerard Malanga first met Warhol in 1963 at a party given by Marie Menken and Willard Mass. Willard Mass had been Malanga's faculty adviser when Gerard was a student at the Wagner Memorial Lutheran College in Staten Island, New York. (PS139)
In his book Archiving Warhol, Malanga said that the Menken/Maas party occurred in the fall of 1962, not 1963. He mentioned that he was introduced to Warhol at the party, although in a different section of the same book he gave the June 9th meeting as the time he was introduced to Warhol. (GMW139)
According to Gerard Malanga, his poetry had appeared in Paris Review, Partisan Review, Poetry and The New Yorker prior to meeting Warhol. After working for Warhol for almost a year, he decided not to go back to college for his final year. The first painting he silk-screened for Andy was a 40 x 40 inch silver Elizabeth Taylor. (GMW31)
Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga on
Gerard's first day of work at Warhol's studio
at the Firehouse, NYC (June 11, 1963)
(photo: Edward Wallowitch)1963: ANDY WARHOL SEES SUNDAY WITH "DE".
Andy Warhol went to the Film-Makers' Cooperative with “De” (EMILE DE ANTONIO) to see a film De made called Sunday - a film of a protest that took place in Washington Square Park after police outlawed folk singing there because it attracted undesirables. (POP29)
Andy regularly attended underground film screenings at the Co-operative, telling poet John Giorno (who later appeared in SLEEP), "They're so terrible", and saying "There are so many beautiful things... Why doesn't somebody make a beautiful movie?" (L&D176)
JULY 1963: ANDY WARHOL BUYS A MOVIE CAMERA. (POP29)
Gerard Malanga and Charles Henri Ford went with Warhol to Peerless Camera where he bought "a 16mm Bolex with thru-the-lens focusing complete with motordrive that allowed for a one-shot three-minute take." (GMW37/106).
Warhol's first film was SLEEP, starring JOHN GIORNO, an ex-stockbroker who had “dropped out” to become a poet (later starting the telephone service Dial-A-Poem in the late sixties). (POP33)
John Giorno in Andy Warhol's Sleep
on the front cover of the Winter 1963/64
issue of Film Culture magazine No. 31LATE JULY 1963: TED BERRIGAN MEETS ANDY WARHOL.
Poet Ted Berrigan met Warhol at a poetry reading given by Frank O'Hara. Shortly thereafter, Warhol designed the front and back cover of the September issue of Berrigan's poetry magazine, C: A Journal of Poetry. The title of the magazine is reminiscent of the title of Warhol's later book - A: A Novel. The September issue of C was devoted to the poetry of Edwin Denby. The photograph that Warhol produced for the front cover of the magazine showed Gerard Malanga standing behind a seated Denby who was holding Malanga's hands on his shoulders. The back cover photograph showed Malanga kissing Denby. (RW20/21)
According to Gerard Malanga, Warhol filmed O'Hara at the Cafe Le Metro in Spring 1964 but the film was never screened and "disappeared into Andy's apartment..." (RW21, 160 fn 26)
Warhol filmed a Screen Test of Berrigan on March 3, 1965. (AD37) Warhol filmed Denby's Screen Test "probably" in early 1964. In 1965 Denby wrote dialogue for a movie that Warhol planned to make - Messy Lives. Denby's contribution was later published and performed as a play - Four Plays by Edwin Denby - at the Eye and Ear Theatre. Warhol's film was never made. (AD62)
SUMMER 1963: TAYLOR MEAD MEETS ANDY WARHOL
According to Andy Warhol Screen Tests: The Films of Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 1, "Taylor Mead met Warhol in the summer of 1963, when Henry Geldzahler took him along on a visit to Warhol's home on Lexington Avenue." (AD126)
AUGUST 1963: ANDY WARHOL FILMS JACK SMITH.
Andy spent a lot of his summer weekends going to Old Lyme, Connecticut where WYNN CHAMBERLAIN was renting the guest house on ELEANOR WARD’s property.
TAYLOR MEAD was one of the regular guests in Old Lyme. JACK SMITH did a lot of filming there and Andy adopted some of his methods: “the way he used anyone who happened to be around that day, and also how he just kept shooting until the actors got bored.”
Among the underground films that Jack Smith made was the 45 minute Flaming Creatures (1963) which was controversial for its open display of homosexuals and transvestites. It was shown at underground screenings until Jonas Mekas arranged for a public screening in New York in early 1965. Mekas was arrested and the film confiscated. In 1969 there were three public showings - two in Los Angeles and one in Chicago. The Chicago showing was raided three days before the end of it's five week run and the owners and employees of the cinema were arrested. (FF21)
Andy’s second 16 mm film was “a little newsreel of the people out there filming for Jack.” (POP31-2) Warhol's film was a two minute, forty five second film that Andy made of everyone while Smith was filming Normal Love - “the one where the cast made a room-size cake and got on top of it”.
Warhol's footage was later seized by the police who were actually after Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures. The following year, Jack Smith would play the title role in Andy’s BATMAN DRACULA film. (POP31-2) Warhol would also use some of the same actors that Jack Smith used, such as MARIO MONTEZ.
1963: HOLLY WOODLAWN MEETS CANDY DARLING.
One evening, Holly Woodlawn was hanging out with her friend Libra outside an ice cream parlour on the corner of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue. Candy Darling was eating an ice cream cone when a hustler asked her for a cigarette. When she refused and then told the hustler to move because he was blocking her light, the hustler shoved the cone into Candy’s face. She stammered “in that affected Kim Novak whisper, ‘Well, I never ... how could you?’” Holly started talking to her, they became friends and Holly started going over to her house on Long Island where Candy lived with her mother. (HW69)
Candy’s mother was “an obsessed movie fan” who idolized Joan Crawford and often wrote her fan mail. One room of their house had been turned into a library filled with stacks of fashion magazines. (HW67) Candy wasn't yet living as a woman - just “a very pretty boy in makeup hiding behind dark sunglasses, his face peeking out of an upturned trenchcoat collar.” (HW69)
Candy had experimented with several names - Hope Dahl, Candy Dahl and finally Candy Cane until she met a transvestite name Taff Tits Terrifik who called her darling so much that Candy adopted it as her last name. (HW68)
ca. AUGUST 1963: ANDY WARHOL SHOOTS KISS.
Some Warhol scholars date the Kiss films from November/December 1963. However, Warhol probably started shooting them much earlier - around August 1963 and continued to shoot them through the end of 1964, if not beyond. (SG144/CA) According to Warhol in Popism, they were still doing KISS movies in the summer of 1964 when Gerard Malanga and Mark Lancaster did one - in August 1964. (POP71/M)
According to Bob Colacello, the idea for KISS - close-ups of couples kissing each other for three minutes each - came from the old Hayes Office regulation forbidding actors in movies from touching lips for more than three seconds. (BC29)
Warhol also produced a silkscreen called The Kiss, based on a film still from the Hollywood horror classic Dracula (1931) of Bela Lugosi biting the neck of his co-star, Helen Chandler.The silkscreen was done on November 22, 1963. (GMW81)
Amy Taubin, who would later become the film critic for the Village Voice, first saw some of the KISS films in 1963 at the Grammercy Arts Theater on West 27th Street. At this time the KISS series of films was called The Andy Warhol Serial "because it was shown in weekly four minute installments." (WI24)
(To filmography)
AUTUMN 1963: ANDY WARHOL GOES TO POETRY READINGS.
In addition to attending underground film screenings, Warhol went to poetry readings with GERARD MALANGA - including Monday nights organized by PAUL BLACKBURN at the Cafe Le Metro on Second Avenue between 9th and 10th Street where each poet would read for five or ten minutes. (POP51)
SEPTEMBER 1963: ANDY WARHOL MEETS JOHN ASHBERY.
The poet and sometimes art critic, John Ashbery, met Warhol and Gerard Malanga while Ashbery was on a trip to New York where he gave a poetry reading at the Living Theatre. Malanga attended the poetry reading. Frank O'Hara gave a party for Ashbery during his stay in New York and it was "probably" at this party that Ashbery actually met Malanga who took him to Warhol's studio. (RW86) Warhol shot a Screen Test of Ashbery in 1966 when he was working as executive editor of Art News magazine. Ashbery found his Factory experience "intimidating," because "there were all these people doing their strange tasks." (AD33)
SEPTEMBER 30 - OCTOBER 1963: ANDY WARHOL HAS A SECOND SHOW AT THE FERUS.
Warhol's second show at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles included his ELVIS paintings. (L&D502/PS221) Warhol's film footage, Elvis at Ferus, was shot during this show.
Irving Blum:
"Andy sent a roll of printed Presley images, an enormous roll, and sent a box of assorted size stretched bars... I said, 'You mean, you want me to cut them? Virtually as I think they should be cut and placed around the wall?' And he said, 'Yes, cut them any way that you think should... The only thing I really want is that they should be hung edge to edge, densely - around the gallery...' And that's exactly what I did... Sometimes the images were superimposed one over the next. Sometimes they sat side-by-side. They were of varying sizes... All the same height - roughly six-and-a-half feet, as I recall. Really, life size... And I got up as many stretched up as required to fill - densely - the gallery, as per Andy's instructions. And I sent what was left on the roll back to Andy and opened the exhibit." (PS222)
EARLY OCTOBER 1963: ANDY WARHOL GOES TO LOS ANGELES.
Warhol and his entourage (including Wynn Chamberlain, Taylor Mead and Gerard Malanga) drove to L.A. to see his second exhibition at the Ferus Gallery.
As Andy and Gerard did not know how to drive, Taylor and Wynn shared the driving. Although Andy had been around the world once in the fifties, he’d never been west of Pennsylvania in the U.S. (POP35)
While in Los Angeles, they were joined by Warhol's first superstar Naomi Levine and shot scenes for TARZAN AND JANE REGAINED... SORT OF including around the bathtub of their suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. (POP43)
to filmography
Dennis Hopper and Taylor Mead during the
filming of Tarzan and Jane Regained...WINTER 1963: ANDY WARHOL TAKES "SPEED".
Warhol got a prescription for pharmaceutical "speed" (Obetrol) from his doctor after seeing a picture of himself in a magazine and deciding he looked fat. (POP33) Warhol also took Seconal in order to counteract the "speed" and allow himself to sleep. (L&D224) According to author, Victor Bockris, Andy took Obetrol until late 1968 when he was forced to stop while recuperating from his bullet wounds. (L&D312)
Warhol then started taking Dexamyl - a combination of amphetamine and barbiturate. (BC117) Brigid Berlin later told Bob Colacello that Andy took one or two Obetrols every day until he died. (BC50). Warhol told Bob Colacello in June 1972, during a trip to Mexico, that he took Dexamyl on a regular basis:
Andy to Bob Colacello: "It's just so hard to get up in the morning. It would be so much easier to stay in bed all day, wouldn't it? I have to take, uh, a pill to get going. I just don't have any energy since I was shot."
Bob Colacello: "What kind of pill?"
Andy Warhol: "Oh, uh, just a little Dexamyl. It's nothing." (BC117)
