So many people associated with Warhol's factory met grim ends

Warhol died suddenly during routine surgery, apparently drowning in his own fluids. Edie OD's, as did countless other drag queens. No surprise there -- he worked with lots of druggies, after all -- but what about the others?! Halston: AIDS. Jon Gould: Kaposi's sarcoma (went blind and was down to 70 pounds). Ex-boyfriend Jed Johnson: TWA plane wreck. Ondine: Liver cancer. Paul America was hit by a car while walking home from a dentist appt. Business manager Fred Hughes died of MS. Truman Capote died an empty shell with no friends, his liver pickled. Valerie Solanis died of pneumonia in a fleabag motel. WAS WARHOL CURSED?

• But then there's fame whore extraordinaire Bob Colacello, still soldiering on.

• OP, they cast themselves in those roles as soon as they entered his orbit. Glamorous, non-conventional, self-destructive. They knew EXACTLY what they were getting into.

• In just a few years, ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the people who ever set foot in the Factory will be dead.

• R3, state the obvious much?

• Makes sense I guess - responsible people who stay the course and make prudent life decisions are just not interesting, from a Warholian perspective.

• I'm Still Here.

  Joe%20Dallesandro%20

• Joe Dallesandro's end is anything but grim. Even now.

• The Factory seemed like a place where the only manual labor was done sitting on a couch, turning the pages of movie magazines.

• He did not die during routine surgery- he died post operatively of sepsis because his private duty nurse did not regognize that he was coding (in cardiopulmonary collapse). Had he been under the care of the staff nurses at the Harkness pavillion he would not have died.

  charlie

• Mary Woronov is still around, and gives a great account of just how debauched the Factory was in her book "Swimming Underground." You'll never want to do crystal after reading it.

  darren

• "The Factory seemed like a place where the only manual labor was done sitting on a couch, turning the pages of movie magazines." My dream job!

• I wonder... did Warhold encourage his "friends" to destroy themselves? Because there's a certain type of evil personality who considers that to be a thrilling power trip.

• KS doesn't kill you, dumb ass.

• OP,here's. little secret: EVERYBODY DIES

• The scene in Warhol's "factory" was just typical of the times: drugs, drugs and more drugs, particularly speed and heroin. I don't think Warhol encouraged it, but he did find the destruction of other human beings interesting. Edie Sedgewick was a particularly sad case. Supposedly Warhol said that if she od'd he would like to be there in order to film it. Warhol and Edie had been seen together at all the best parties and happenings; they both had silver hair, wore striped boat-neck shirts, like they were twins or something. She was in several of his movies and it was assumed they had a very close connection to each other. Edie became a speed addict; she had a major breakdown and was carted off to a mental ward. No one saw her with Warhol anymore. She wasn't in his movies anymore. She seemed to have disappeared. Warhol was asked: what happened with Edie? Warhol said she was just somebody who used to hang around; nobody knew where she was. He seemed quite unconcerned and nonchalant. And despite his previously being seen all over the place in the company of Edie, he claimed that he didn't really know her very well. Cold, cold, cold.

• Warhol was a brilliant artist, but he always struck me as a user and sociopath.

• OP, you left out Andrea "Whips" Feldman who jumped to her death at just 24, having summoned all her ex-boyfriends to her apartment building.

  http://www.warholstars.org/articles/laura/andrea.jpg

• If you poke around on the Internet you can unearth tape recordings of Edie talking in a drugged out stupor toward the end of her life. She returned home to Santa Barbara to be near family and died at 28 from a mix of medications.

  Lance Loud

• Besides Dallesandro, Viva's still around. Also Brigid Berlin and Paul Morrissey. Lou Reed looks terrible, but is in decent health I guess. Gerard Malanga is still alive and kicking. With heavy drug use, sometimes survival's just the luck of the draw.

• He seemed fragile and shallow to me.

• r15 -- Didn't Andy feel betrayed when she ran off with Dylan, who framed his intrusion as a rescue of Edie from the gays?

• Sam Bolton is alive and well in NYC.

• Susan Pile: alive, well.

  Anonymous

•  

• R17, thank you for that link! I was up for most of the night reading. Years ago, I came upon the Edie biography and initially found Warhol and his coterie during the heyday of the Factory, fascinating. I did a complete 180 after he died and I read the various biographies, autobiographies, and his diaries. He truly did come across as a nasty, bigoted, paranoid, unhappy user. I continue to find his hangers on to be much more interesting than him and I enjoy reading about that world.