Has anyone here read Edie, by Jean Stein? If so, can we dish?

One brother hung himself and the other one died in a motorcycle accident while drunk. Were there more?

I read it many years ago, just after it was published. Her entire story was sad and strange. Very illustrious heritage iirc though.

There was a third brother, plus several sisters.

A well-constructed biography and a great read. It also serves as a remarkable timeline of the Warhol scene. I've read it twice and it's always tough to put down.

I love that style of biography that strings together bits of interviews from persons that knew the person to form a loose timeline.

I always wondered what happened to "Saucie" Sedgwick. I think she was the oldest of the tribe of Sedgwick children. Her comments in the book were intelligent and insightful. She got her nickname because she supposedly looked like a sausage at birth.

Didn't they already make two movies about her and her mother living in filth with rodents in the Hamptons?

Skip the dreary film version, based mostly on the book, called FACTORY GIRL and released in 2006. It's really disappointing (although I found Sienna Miller's portrayal of Edie rather on point).

See instead the dazzling and weird CIAO! MANHATTAN! from 1972, starring Edie herself, playing herself (most of the film). She died before it was released and it's oddly a better summation of her life than FACTORY GIRL was.

A sad Warhol girl

illustrious heritage ends up a drugged up piece of trash just like the rest of us, and dies in the gutter just like any other person can do.

whoinhell buys this ubermensch bullshit?

I always thought that Edie and Mia were two faces of the same coin. Rich Cali 'it' girls. Edie got Warhol and Dylan, Mia got Dalí and Sinatra. Both were ditched by the singer, but Mia had a successful career and Edie sunk into hard drugs. But both families were dysfunctional, with rampant abuse and suicides. And I guess Edie was crazier than Mia, and obviously less talented.

I enjoyed the book very much, but not at all because Edie had an interesting personality: I found her really empty. What was interesting was where she came from and what happened to her.

"This fish is not fresh"

Not as sad as Jean Stein herself - she died by jumping out of her NYC apartment.

R6 That was Edie Beale and her mother also named Edie, Jackie Kennedy’s cousin and Aunt. This Edie is related to Kyra Sedgwick.

Watching Ciao! Manhattan is extremely sad. She’s burnt out and almost like a zombie. It’s an interesting watch for sure, but just sad. You can find clips of her from other Warhol shorts that have been bootlegged online. The Jean Stein book is wonderful and one of the few books about her.

Edie was sadly just a socialite with mental illness and a narcissistic father. She had presence, and still to this day inspired fashion photography and fashion designers. But truly, she just didn’t do very much. She burned through her money and was addicted to drugs. Warhol didn’t help her mindset, they used each other I believe. But Warhol used everyone. During the Factory days before he sold out, (to me) I always found the eccentric characters that surrounded him to be more interesting. I wouldn’t say Edie was empty, Warhol was the one who was empty, and the psychic vampire everyone adored.

Now Joe Dallesandro on the other hand...he was my first male crush.

Bob Dylan really pushed her over the edge.

R16 Bob Dylan and his shitty music pushes anyone with taste over the edge.

Anyone want to play armchair psychologist and diagnose her "mental illness"?

Honestly, her biggest problem by far seemed to be the drugs. The drugs took over her life, and killed her, was there actual mental illness on top of that? I know she was hospitalized as a teen, before she met Warhol or took her first hit of speed, but in those days a troublesome kid could be hospitalized just because the parents wanted them out of the house.

R18 she was hospitalized at Bellevue, and Silver Lake in CT. several times in her life. Her siblings too suffered from mental illness as well. All documented. I don’t think I have read clearly exactly what her diagnosis was. Probably bi-polar.

She was just a very sensitive, and mentally ill young woman. She struggled her whole life, sadly. The drugs probably held her together for awhile and then she snapped. Vogue loved her, Diana Vreeland loved her, Betsey Johnson adored her and she was photographed wearing an early Betsey label called Paraphernalia a lot. She was different than Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, she had an edge and a name behind her. Her fashion sense was fun too. But she was a tragic girl, there’s no other way to describe her.

It ran in the family, it wasn’t just the drugs. Her cousin wrote a book about it.

I read it years ago and enjoyed it, although it was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

My apologies for sounding obvious and pedantic. We read about Edie going through her money. What she did was to spend the capital sum of her trust fund. That's not what trust funds are for. You invest the capital sum and receive an interest payment quarterly or whenever. You NEVER spend the capital. And after she spent her trust fund, all the friends dried up and she was left with nothing. I was thinking of her last line in "Ciao! Manhattan," something like, "Oh, God. That's what I hate about California. They roll up the fucking sidewalks at midnight." And she kept fucking it up. She wouldn't recite the line. Because she knew that after she recited her final line in that film, that her life was over.

For years I thought "Chelsea Hotel" by Leonard Cohen was about Edie. But it was about Janis Joplin.

I still have the hardcover edition of the Jean Stein book I bought on closeout at B. Dalton in 1984. If you can get a copy via abebooks.com I'd suggest going for it. The title is: Edie An American Biography by Jean Stein edited with George Plimpton. If you can plump for a hardcover edition, do. You run through the paper faster than you can say knife.

You know, I read the book about 200 million times back in the eighties, and I never got the sense that she was seriously, definably mentally ill. Yes, she made a lot of bad choices, especially getting into drugs, but I don't think she was bipolar and I don't remember the impression of raging personality disorder (with Edie - Warhol is another story).

Certainly she was fucked-up and lived like there was no tomorrow, and took enough drugs to ensure there wasn't. But that's not the same thing as being mentally ill.

R13. I think Jean Stein jumped from the same apartment as Gloria Vanderbilt’s son. I can’t imagine buying that apartment afterwards. It’s a stunning space though.

R23 Well having read “In My Blood: Six Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family” by her cousin John Sedgwick as he is going through a history of his family and mental illness, I think I’m inclined to believe him over someone else’s opinion. Mental illness manifests itself in MANY forms, it’s not just a case of the blues and the highs of being happy, a lot goes into it and it’s not a black and white area. Kyra Sedgwick herself has also dealt with it (depression) and spoken about it, so it’s not like it’s a fraction of people in that family, the book by John delves into generations. Also drug use can make mental illness worse. One of the most legendary families on the East Coast, old money...and a line of family secrets dating back a few hundred years. The family had issues, plain and simple.

I owned the book in the late 80s and will buy a newer copy. Great book, sad story, very dishy if you obsess over the Warhol factory scene. In my teen years I thought it all very glamorous, now I see the fallout.

The strapping hyper masculine dad was molesting Saucie and Edie right? It was implied but never stated outright.

Are Sedgwick men handsome and hung? The Biddle boys can be. And the Peabodys and Whitneys, but that's newer money.

Bobby Sedgwick from the pix in the book was a hunk! RIP he was a tortured soul.

It was my bible as a teen in suburbia hell, and my ticket to get out and coming to New York. I was heart broken the year I got my internship at the Metropolitan Museum as Warhol died that February and I would never have the chance to meet him. I’ve visited her grave in Santa Barbra county, simple peaceful, and hopefully a place she’ll finally find some rest.

Great thread. I thought I knew her story inside and out having read the book twice in the past. I realize with everyone's comments about John and Mia here, I need a refresher.

I have my original hard cover edition too R22 Also bought in the 80's at B. Dalton (or possibly Waldenbooks). I was 13. My mother saw me leafing through it after picking it up off a display table. I think the semi-"new wave" graphics on the dust jacket caught my attention and the Warhol pictures inside kept me looking. My mother looked at "American" in the title and that it was about a pretty girl. My parents wanted me to read more (and probably show more interest in girls). So she bought it for me, making me promise I'd read it. Boy did I!

It's a great book. The fascinating thing about it to me is that Edie remains undefined and mysterious throughout. For all the photos of her, you don't even get a clear picture of what she looked like, because it was all about the hair and makeup and clothes and pose, not the real woman. One person describes her has having a little girl voice, another says she has a deep campy voice. The book really made me want to see "Ciao! Manhattan," but it's a stupid, despicable movie that takes an inexplicably hateful attitude towards her. The guy who made it needs to die in a grease fire if he hasn't already.

She had a raspy voice. You can hear it on film clips on YouTube before Ciao! Manhattan was made. Sienna replicated it well.

She is one of those people that are meant to die young. She didn’t have to do anything else, if she had then her life wouldn’t still be so compelling. Can you imagine her being an octogenarian doyenne serving on various boards and wearing little suits?

Whitney Houston, Joan Kennedy, Michael Jackson and Carries Fisher all did stints, along with Edie, at Silver Hill, CT. Not exactly a "results" kind of place.

Has anyone here ever been at Silver Hill? I’ve always wondered what it’s like. I’ve only been in a cheap mental hospital, which was a nightmare. Maybe they all are though.

Apologies if someone else has already mentioned this, but Jean Stein also wrote a wonderful, dishy book about Hollywood called "West of Eden". She came from Hollywood royalty and wasn't afraid to dish.

Kyra Sedgwick, wife of DL fave Kevin Bacon, is related to Edie, and there is some physical resemblance.

R37 wow thank's for that insider scoop, R37. Who knew!

Hello Mariah was at Silver Hill too after her Glitter breakdown. It’s a nice looking from the outside facility on the Silvermine/New Canaan border in CT. It caters to those with means.

Not to derail, but. There’s a fantastic documentary about Brigid Berlin, another of Andy’s crew. It’s called “Pie in the Sky”. Berlin was also a socialite from wealth, and she was apparently out to scandalize her family.

She survived, being of hardier constitution, and is quite a character still. It’s worth seeing.

I can recommend West of Eden by Jean Stein too. Good classic LA history of original families.

Jean was interesting in her own right. That she committed suicide in the same building (apartment?) as Anderson Coopers brother is weird and spooky. Almost like she wanted to be dramatic - she could have just done a pill OD less painfully.

God, I LOVED that book, which I read in my 20's. I found her life was so messed up and dazzling at the same time. I grew up in NYC and I used to fantasize how it must have been to be a swinging, rich socialite in that time, hanging with the rich and famous and acting and modelling. I envied all of the folks that got to live in that era. I guess I put blinders on on how much the drugs were ruining all of their lives - I just focused on the life of the rich and famous "youthquakers" of the time (wasn't that term used then?).

Obit for Saucie's husband, an academic:

My only brush with Hollywood was when I was a patient at Silver Hill with Carrie Fisher. We lived in one of the cottages, which in those days were not segregated by sex. Her mom visited several times and brought us all home-baked cookies.

I have a good job but am not wealthy - insurance paid for my stay.

R40 I've seen this doc about Berlin and it's great. Her personality is unstoppable!

I interviewed Berlin over the phone around 2008 for a Radar story (related to Warhol) that was never published. She wouldn't shut up! She was hilarious on the phone. True to form. I transcribed the interview but want to kick myself to this day for not recording it. I still have the transcription somewhere.

I love this book and have re-read it multiple times. Not for a few years, though. I loved all the little blurbs by the Factory denizens, which made for interesting slice of life commentary. Her family was super weird, I though, but I adored how Edie just stone cold spent her money in lavish fashion.

How much money did she blow through exactly?

R30 - I have my original '80s copy of the book too. It's falling apart from so many re-reads. I think I bought it at City Lights in San Francisco. I was fascinated by the Warhol and the Factory (and NYC back then in general).

R40 - oh my, I need to watch that, stat. Thank you!

R47 - I have no idea but from what I recall it was a lot. If I'd been in her shoes, I probably would have spent loosely in the same way (minus, maybe, the getting addicted to drugs part, but who can say?)

George Plimpton discusses Edie

"If I'd been in her shoes, I probably would have spent loosely in the same way"

R50, the books said that the family gave her money to go to New York and live in style, a lot of wealthy families did that in those days, maybe they still do. It was understood that it was temporary, and that if the girl didn't do the right thing and find herself a wealthy husband within a few years, the family would call her home in disgrace (like Edie Beale), or cut her off. Edie got cut off after a few years of drugs and underground films, and I presume that's when she started spending her inheritance on drugs.

Being a rich girl in those days does sounded like it sucked. The brothers got all the money, the places in the family business, and the attention. Girls were told that if they wanted money of their own, they could damn well go out and marry it.

Her father sexually abused her and you're wondering if she had a mental illness? really?

Psychotics almost always have addictions. Edie was a great persona. She's still everywhere. She didn't wear the fashion like other models. She created styles that are still en vogue today. She inspired Wharol, The velvet, bob Dylan, and more. Of course ' femme fatale ' is about her. ' leopard skin pillow box hat' too but I am 100% convinced that' ' like a rolling stone' 'is also about her and I HATE Dylan for it. It's cruel, vicious, revengeful and downright nasty. I lost any kind of admiration I had for him after hearing that it's about Edie. What a Cunt. When I think about the meaning of the word' ' muse' ' Edie comes to mind. She's the greatest muse of the 20's century because she's at the crossroad of several artforms, sculpting, painting, music, fashion, photography, cinema. Mia is a great muse too, but she's a perforer and an artist in her own right. Edie is purely a muse.

Andy Warhol was scared of this book and of Jean Stein. He put her down for years-he talks about it in the diaries. When it was published he was bothered by it, and it definitely impacted his relationships with longtime collaborators and the society people he chased for portraits. Ronnie Cutrone and Bob Colacello both left his employment shortly after Edie came out, and in the diaries it’s clear that his relationships with Brigid Berlin and Chris Makos also deteriorated too.

Having sex with your daddy does NOT make you mentally ill. Look at me! Successful businesswoman, presidential adviser, with a loving husband and three fabulous kids!

Andy had one great comment about the book in the Diaries. "Edie" was heavily promoted in New York City; there were even huge advertisements for the book on the sides of city buses. Andy remembered that Edie wouldn't even stoop to taking a taxi - she always had to have a limo. And now they had her on the bus!

R57 Is that what inspired the weird opening for Sex and the City?

I think Penelope Tree might be a better candidate, r10. She came from a socially prominent family, modeled, is remembered for fashion statements and is heavily associated with 60s culture. She married a musician. I'm not sure whether he dumped her. She had drug problems. And she survived.

Penelope Tree was connected but imo one of the worst looking models ever. Sorry, just my op. Anyway, funny she's mentioned here, because she's a close cousin of Edie's via her mother, American socialite Marietta Peabody.

R34 James Taylor is another Silver Hill alum, iirc.

R61 Edie saw lots of fire, but no rain.

I also remember Diana Vreeland’s comment in the book about Edie’s luminous complexion and that she never met a drug addict who didn’t have beautiful skin.

As is Catherine Zeta-Jones r61, whose time there was just discussed in the Kirk Douglas thread here.

It was a horrible smear of Warhol. She made it seem he was responsible for her problems. Far from it. Cheap shots on a soft target. Loathsome exploitation.

I read this when it came out in my late teens and loved it. I actually still have it and might reread it now!

"Edie was a great persona. She's still everywhere. "

I don't see her "everywhere." She's really a rather minor cult figure. There was talk about a movie about her for years and years but when it was finally made it was mediocre. She was just a rich girl from a very fucked up family. She could have probably fashioned a career for herself as some kind of artist (she had a talent for drawing) but was more interested in partying and having a good time blowing through her inheritance. Even before she hooked up with Warhol and his crowd she'd spent time in a mental hospital due to her anorexia. She did some modeling, was in a few of Warhol's awful movies, accompanied him to a lot of parties (she bizarrely dyed her hair silver to match his) and became a harcore drug addict, a speed freak. She wasn't what you'd call "a great persona." She wasn't really very intelligent of interesting. George Plimpton, who knew her, and co-authored the biography"Edie", said of her "there was not really much there...there was charm and beauty, and child's simplicity about her, but I don't think she had a serious though in her head. She sort of wafted through this world." I think that was true. After becoming a physical and mental wreck due to her drug use she went to a mental institution in California, met a young man there, and married him. They weren't married long before she died of a barbiturate overdose when she was 28 years old. Just another drug casualty from that era.

Edie was absolutely mesmerizing on film, even though she really didn’t do much other than be. Although her look epitomizes the 60s; I think if she’d been born 45 years earlier she could have become a huge silent film star.

Today she would be an influencer with a billion dollar cosmetics and fashion accessories company.

[quote] I am 100% convinced that' ' like a rolling stone' 'is also about her

I always thought so, too.

Dylan said it was about Edie, Warhol and himself. The reference to jugglers and clowns was supposed to be all the people in the factory who amused Edie and Warhol. The Mystery Man refers to Dylan himself.

R67 "everywhere " means in fashion. FI she basically invented the leggings/leotard look. Anytime you see a woman wearing tight yoga pants, leggings etc and a coat, somewhere Edie is smiling.

Just Like A Woman by Dylan is about her. I think Venus in Furs is too.

Leopard skin-pill box hat is also about Segwick.

Well, I do see Edie everywhere here in Portland. Record shops, cafes, specialty gift shops, Powell’s book stores...same with Bettie Page. Maybe it’s because I’m not wasting my time in a mass produced store like Pottery Barn. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Penelope Tree was definitely a unique face. I don’t think she was beautiful, nor was Peggy Moffitt, but sometimes their photographs were stunning. Pretty much the girls from that time who I adore are Veruschka, Jean Shrimpton, Twiggy, Jill Kennington, and Celia Hammond. Their work with Helmut Newton was beautiful. Contemporary model Mariacarla Boscano reminds me of a prettier Penelope, but has similar facial structure. Mariacarla may not be known to the public like Kendall Jenner or Gisele, but if you know fashion and foreign editions of magazines, she’s constantly used and a runway regular still after all these years.

I too see Edie everywhere, especially in fashion trends. She is constantly referenced, like Little Edie Beale, Louise Brooks, and the above mentioned Bettie Page.

"I too see Edie everywhere, especially in fashion trends. She is constantly referenced, like Little Edie Beale, Louise Brooks, and the above mentioned Bettie Page."

Who "references" her? And all those people mentioned, Edie Beale, Louise Brooks, Bettie Page...I don't see their faces and images everywhere. They're all cult figures. The average person would never have' heard of them.

I doubt Edie Sedgwick invented leggings. She wore them, but I don't think she made them popular. As for her look...well, it consisted of that short, silver hair (you don't see that too often), very heavy dark eye makeup, very heavy batwing fake eyelashes ( don't see those too much, either) and huge, dangling earrings. It was a very sixties look, that went on its way. I don't think she's really imitated today. She was a product of the sixties, a skinny, druggie girl, like Marianne Faithfull.

She was an original. Probably couldn't be copied.

R77 Jesus you’re fucking clinical. So let’s do a rundown since you’re focusing on something so myopic and cant seem to actually use google.

Bettie, Edie Sedgwick and Edie Beale have featured in collections by John Galliano, Christian Dior, and Marc Jacobs. Galliano designed a dress that was inspired by Edie Beale’s “costume for today” where the dress, and especially the skirt, looked like a shirt repurposed as a dress, something Beale would do. Bettie’s particular hairstyle has been referenced over and over and over again in fashion layouts, Janice Dickinson and Ukrainian model Dasha Astafieva both we’re featured in layouts, wearing fashion and heels inspired by Bettie. Edie’s Rudy Geinreich dresses, Betsey Johnson shirts and kitten heels, paired with a leotard and leggings have been used in layouts where down to the large earrings cascading from ears with that signature makeup, has been used in fashion layouts and as a reference for whimsical fashion on many a list and magazines and one of the earliest from my youth featured waifish models Beri Smither and Trish Goff in an Italian Vogue. Lots of times it is paid in direct homage. Just because you’re not seeing it in the OMGBlog or Queerty, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Edie showing up on Andy’s arm, in her tights, her earrings, her silvery hair caught notice back then. No one was dressing like that for a night out. Gia Carangi wowed the fashion world because she dressed rather butch, not to say there hadn’t been other butch lesbians dressing mannish, but here was a woman with a very sexy and provocative look (and killer body) bringing “downtown” into high fashion. The photographer Christ Von Wangenheim was extremely drawn to her because of her flexibility as both feminine and masculine. Editors were always interested in how she put herself together, of course this was before her addiction.

Just because it’s not something you’re not seeing in front of you, doesn’t make it a false statement. One only has to keep their eyes open and see reference and inspiration.

I’m a HS teacher and the artsy kids all know about Edie, Betty and Edie B. The extreme sixties makeup came back ten years ago and is now fading, but it was undoubtedly influenced by EdieS. Betty’s dark pageboy is still everywhere. Going through a Warhol Factory stage is practically a right of passage.

"I’m a HS teacher and the artsy kids all know about Edie, Betty and Edie B."

You'd have to be "artsy" to know about people like Edie Sedgwick, Betty Paige and LIttle Edie Beale. I'm sure "artsy" kids (and "artsy" adults for that matter) who are familiar with them think they're SO edgy and cool and smart. But they're not. Knowing who Sedgwick, Paige and Beale were is no harbinger of taste, intelligence or artistic sensibility.

R1 Pictures are hung, people are hanged.

R1 Pictures are hung, people are hanged.

Maybe so, 81, but the point is that they are still known . Everyone has to start somewhere.

R81 why are you acting so butthurt and being an asshole?

R81 Yeah what’s your damage Heather? People providing evidence of influence and you’re just being a prick. You asked aloud, people gave reference and you’re being an asshole. It’s seriously not that big of a deal.

Flirting with death has always been popular with the cool kids. But as someone from Warhol's circle once said, eventually you have to be hip enough to be square if you want to survive.

R85, if anyone is "acting butthurt" and being an asshole it's the likes of you, you sad little Edie Sedgwick groupie.

"Yeah what’s your damage Heather? People providing evidence of influence and you’re just being a prick. You asked aloud, people gave reference and you’re being an asshole. It’s seriously not that big of a deal."

"What's your damage, Heather?" Now THAT is truly clever. You most definitely are not very bright. Also a cunt.

Junkies are not without their charm.

She was no Jane Forth....

Girls, girls, you're both cunts!

Whatever....

High School made me loathe reading; Edie taught me love reading again, like I did as a kid when my sister used to take me to the library.

I have no idea how I found it. Maybe I bought it at the mall.

I remember my mom picking up the book and asking, "Who IS that?".

I named my first cat Edie.

Reading it now, on the internet archive. Very enjoyable.

Even Jane Forth’s look has shown up in fashion. Here model and musician (ex wife of Jack White) Karen Elson is made up with Jane’s signature “bug” like eyebrows, wearing clothing Jane and model (and Warhol muse) Donna Jordan would have worn. Be it Edie or someone else (Edie also inspired Madonna’s ‘Deeper and Deeper’ look and she has said so herself) those Warhol peeps continue to inspire and resonate today.

OMG! Yessss! But I have to go to sleep. Dish later. So much to discuss. Fucking insane and sad life.

R81 has anger issues.

[quote]It was a horrible smear of Warhol.

Maybe, maybe not. Warhold was a narcissist and used people. I think he enjoyed watching the people around him be destroyed for his amusement and maybe he felt a bit like a puppetmaster. He used Edie for her connections and threw her away when she was on no use. Did he ever talk about her? From what I heard, he pretty much ignored her existence after her usefulness ended.

I don't think it was Warhol's fault that Edie Sedgwick self destructed. Somebody said that the doomed model Gia Carangi was not destroyed by the modeling industry; "she would have been a casualty in any life." The same is true of Sedgwick. She would have imploded had she never met Andy Warhol. And no, Warhol never talked about her. She meant nothing o him. He was amused by her for a while, but the fascination wore off.

I too still have my battered paperback from the 80s. I find Jean Stein’s books mesmerizing, people say the format is lazy but there’s something about letting people tell the story in their own voices. I’m reading “west of Eden” now, and it’s great.

WHET to Michael Post? What was his story?

Jean died of a guilty conscience. Somebody should've been there to film it.

She fell with a flip.

It was real acrobatic.

I was so bummed out.

Cause I didn't have my Instamatic.

Just finished it. Fantastic. Thank you, OP.

I feel so normal.

Dylan emotionaly blackmailed Edie to leave Warhol and forbids him to included her segment in "chelsea girls" and then he dumped her. She was pregnant. Both Edie and Baez, who was Dylan 's official gf at the time, discovered his marriage through the press. Dylan is a twisted fuck and is 100% responsable for Edie' s downfall. And the he wrote ' like a rolling stone'. He's a piece of shit. A Nobel prize for being the ultimate scum

"Dylan is a twisted fuck and is 100% responsable for Edie' s downfall. "

Uh, no. Her "downfall" would have happened if she'd never met Dylan. By the way, her relationship with Dylan, whatever the hell it was, has been blown way out of proportion. It's like some people want to believe he was the love of her life but Sedgwick is actually quoted in "Edie" as saying Bobby Neuwirth (buddy to many musicians of the era including Janis Joplin) was the big love experience of her life.

What was she supposed to say ? She was forced by her family to have an abortion. Neuwirth was next stop after Dylan. By the time Dylan passed her around to Bob Newirth she was so emotionaly destroyed that she could barely function. Dylan was supposed to cast her in his stupid cow boy movie. Instead she was dumped in Neuwirth room at the Chelsea Hotel. Do you also think that If Natalie Wood hadn't been left in the open sea by Wagber to ' learn her lesson ' she would have died anyway ?

R106 seems definitely loony.

She never seemed to complain or blame anyone for her travails. That would certainly never be the case today.

There was no fondness between Warhol and Dylan. Dylan was openly hostile. He was probably jealous of Warhol on some level. Probably a homophobe as well. He famously traded a Warhol "Elvis" for a sofa, a painting bullied for free from Warhol in the first place. It's now worth tens of millions of dollars. Not very shrewd of Bobby Zimmerman.

That Warhol Elvis is a really arresting image, I finally got to see one in the museum a few years ago. Stupid Dylan. But at least he was “cool,” man

Warhol Dylan Elvis

""Dylan is a twisted fuck and is 100% responsable for Edie' s downfall. " "

Yeah, right. The drugs had nothing to do with it.

She was molested.

I know there are mixed feelings about Ciao Manhattan, it is definitely exploitative, as it is fascinating. Watching it is almost a voyeuristic experience because it is a sensationalized/somewhat fictionalized story but it was largely her story of her undoing which makes it fascinating and tragic. The pain, confusion, the anger from her impotence is all palpable, and it was a story cobbled out of old Warhol footage and the later west coast stage of Edies life. Also knowing that she had free silicone injections before it, adds to the palpably painful feeling watching it. The film manages to be more than the exploits of a broken child, which doesn't feel intentional, kind of a fascinating film in a few ways.

Bad timing. Mental illness meets the unleashing of the drugs and psychedelia age. There was a lot of collateral damage from the naïveté of the 60s. Lots of kids got lost in drugs who wouldn’t have 10 years before or after.

Edie Sedgwick didn't invent black leggings.

Here's Audrey Hepburn wearing black leggings in the 1957 film "Funny Face", made when Edie was 14 years old.

R116 She could have been a precocious 12 year old knitter who landed a big deal with the National Stocking Company?

Edie pranced around in thick black stockings and chic tops, she invented that look. Audrey hepburn wore a slim tailored pant like other women wore. Very few women in the early 60s would walk around publicly just wearing tights and a top.

This is my favorite bio of all time.

Her relative wrote a history of the family's madness, and it is really good.

(sorry, I missed the John Sedgwick book linked above, but it is that good.)

R114 "Also knowing that she had free silicone injections before it, adds to the palpably painful feeling watching it."

There may be something I don't know or missed, but I seem to remember in Stein's book it being talked about several times how she "filled out" so much on the west coast because she basically starved herself in her infamous NYC years, always on drugs. When she moved to California and sort of got cleaned and started eating, she naturally filled out, especially her breasts. She was 28 at the time.

R5, she was a speed and barbiturates addict, and died of ramifications, thereof.

What I loved about her was her childlike innocence and her insistence of cloaking it around and over herself, even when the reality was just so fucking cruel. She was really fucked over by people (particularly men), before she eventually returned to Santa Barbara.

Did y’all know that she created a living space for herself, in her family’s estate, swimming pool? Yep. The pool was empty of water, obvs., and in some disrepair. She furnished it and decorated it, and made it her spot. I love that. Who does that? A child who dreams.

Sweet girl. She wasn’t long for this world, even back then.

R122, in Jean Stein’s book, it’s claimed that Edie got silicone implants.

What Hepburn is wearing upthread, is not the look made iconic, by Sedgwick.

She literally wore black undergarments, sometimes paired with a mock or complete turtleneck, and extra large hoops, or chandelier earrings, and short hair.

R123, if I recall correctly, she died of systemic organ failure/sepsis due to: silicone breast augmentation procedures, which at that time, were not introduced via surgical installment, but via subdermal injections, directly into the breast tissue. So straight silicone, shot into her boobs. She also was rumored to have malnutrition, and she still struggled with the pills and booze, though not to the degree of her previous timeline in NY and the Factory days.

Not sure, however, because I read the book I’m 10th grade, and can be misremembering lots.

She did get implants, and shows them off in CIAO, MANHATTAN!

They don't grow spontaneously on an anorexic speed freak in her twenties.

Excuse me, I didn't realize, R125, they were injections and not implants. They got bigger is all I know- I am not really into tits!

At least it wasn't paraffin, which used to be injected for the purpose.

[quote] Dylan said it was about Edie, Warhol and himself. The reference to jugglers and clowns was supposed to be all the people in the factory who amused Edie and Warhol. The Mystery Man refers to Dylan himself.

Dylan said no such a thing.

[quote] Joan Baez, Marianne Faithfull and Bob Neuwirth have also been suggested as possible targets of Dylan's scorn.[34][55][56] Dylan's biographer Howard Sounes warned against reducing the song to the biography of one person, and suggested "it is more likely that the song was aimed generally at those [Dylan] perceived as being 'phony'". Sounes adds, "There is some irony in the fact that one of the most famous songs of the folk-rock era—an era associated primarily with ideals of peace and harmony—is one of vengeance."[57] Mike Marqusee has written at length on the conflicts in Dylan's life during this time, with its deepening alienation from his old folk-revival audience and clear-cut leftist causes. He suggests that the song is probably self-referential: "The song only attains full poignancy when one realises it is sung, at least in part, to the singer himself: he's the one 'with no direction home.'"[58] Dylan himself has noted that, after his motorcycle accident in 1966, he realized that "when I used words like 'he' and 'it' and 'they,' and talking about other people, I was really talking about nobody but me."[55]

The book was very interesting, but it didn’t give me any more insight into Edie’s character than I already had. While I find her story sad, I didn’t like who she was. She’s the kind of person I studiously avoid in real life. They’re vampires.

Btw, I’ve always strongly disliked Warhol. I appreciate his work, his prices, his place in art history, and his accessibility to artists that came to the fore, such as Nico, and that whole scene, but Warhol was a piece of shit, and one would think he could have been a better man, being that he understood what it meant to be in physical pain constantly. But even that unfortunate and violent reckoning, did not give Andy proper perspective not made him “right” sized amongst his peers. He was a total user, and representative of all of those cliches about gay men and their affectations and “muses”, now known as fag hags.

I mean, good, because the time period and all we have from it is totally immersive and not some ages old, archaeological study, but still. Warhol was not a nice man.

R119, thank you for that. It reminds me of Edie’s parents being advised to not have any children. I’ll have to go back and read it again. But I went through the book with that notion in my mind. The mental illness was inevitable.

Meh, R128. Dylan wasn’t about peace and harmony. Dylan was about resistance, non-conformity, and anti-establishment, along with the apt self awareness to understand that in order to rail against it, he had to join it, whether he liked it or not.

Say whatever about him, and I have seen him in play in small settings, as well as larger ones, Dylan knew that is was just impossible to beat the same system that made him rich.

He was an intellectual and had trouble communicating other than through his music, as most weirdos like him often experienced. But his interest and focus on Edie always perplexed me, because he understood that the system was so poisoned, it even took someone like her under, and she was like a piece of gauze it cheesecloth, sewn into Warhol’s coat of arms that he wore as a shield, yet also as a chain, that bound him to the utter foolishness and inauthenticity of it all.

God, Dylan must have despised these people. He identified with Edie, however, and identification without solutions is painful for a dude like Dylan, hence his painted face, as not protest, but protection, when he performed for a while, there.

Here’s something made and performed before I was born. I only say that to highlight how fucking fortunate I am, to have been born at this time, with this already underfoot. This era shaped my life in ways I had no way of recognizing in utero, and it shows the trajectory of speed and force in which modern day events kept pace with the average American child, from birth to now. Like a movie, in real time. Like documenting, before documentaries were a thing.

R129, I don’t agree. Edie hung out with vampires and attempted to mimic them, but Edie was way too fucked up to have any self awareness or crafted agenda or intentionally malicious intent. She was a fucked up addict, living in a dollhouse, with tea sets and shit.

R127, paraffin is made from the same base used to create all waxes and plastics for commercial distribution: petroleum.

Unfortunately, we are immersed in it, no matter what. The world would not exist today without the advantages and technological advances made possible by mass production of petroleum. It is in and of itself, what has set us on the course of climate imbalance and change.

Isn’t interesting that Edie’s body was representative of that? A body, an organism, filled with autonomic and independent functions, yet unable to stop the reckoning of polymers introduced into her blood system, which eventually destroyed her autoimmune system, and hastened an untimely death. She was a creation of exploitation, and we only know of her as we do, because another artist exploited her soul, and claimed it as his creation, when it was he, who took from her “everything he could feel”. Bob Dylan’s lyrics, obvs.

Sorry to rant. I can discuss this era for hours. And am obviously a little excited, since no one I have met in the state of Georgia, knows who the fuck Edie Sedgwick even was, or that she existed, and that about rounds it out about making friends who share common interests with a lib (me) in confederate cotton candy land. Lol.

[quote] Warhol was a piece of shit, and one would think he could have been a better man, being that he understood what it meant to be in physical pain constantly. But even that unfortunate and violent reckoning, did not give Andy proper perspective not made him “right” sized amongst his peers. He was a total user, and representative of all of those cliches about gay men and their affectations and “muses”, now known as fag hags.

Warhol was no different that most people. Generally speaking people are selfish and self centered. He attracted and he was attracted to some troubled people. Trouble people whose lives would have been much the same with or without him. The difference being their proximity to Andy gave them a taste of notoriety or fame. Therefore we know their stories or at least some of it. And of course some of them resented Andy. Because he was the only genuine superstar and he made all of the money. He did what he did to mainly benefit him, like most people. The people around him did the same thing. All though many made very poor decisions regarding their own best interests and their hunger for fame and fortune.

Warhol would have loved this era with its empty celebrity and shit art.

Although many made very poor decisions regarding their own best interests and their hunger for fame and fortune.

“Positively 4th Street” is the most vicious song ever. I love it!

I mean, with lyrics like:

“When you know as well as me You'd rather see me paralyzed Why don't you just come out once And scream it?”

R133, I agree she hung out with vampires. And I don’t think she consciously did it with any malicious intent. But I do think she was an abyss of neediness. There are several examples of her generosity, and people DID use her, terribly.

R139, I love that song. And that’s why I love Dylan, even though there’s also plenty to dislike. But that’s called being human.

But I love that Dylan basically took all of the best after-thoughts or quips, comebacks, and set them to the simplicity of his guitar.

Some of his songs are basically a series of “Burns” , but really, really fucking good ones. And what I love, is that he opened a door that made it ok for white people to say FUCK YOU to establishment, along with blacks who had been singing the blues forever, in an emerging age of modernity, technological advancements never before seen, and ways of communicating with one another, that would eventually make us all stand up and take notice of each other, our environment, our safety, and needs.

Warhol’s art serves as the very thin veneer for what were some of the bloodiest injustices ever brought upon a group of people, in the name of making arms, selling those arms, creating juntas, teaching guerilla warfare tactics, trafficking dope, all so that we could go do it again on Central America, South America, and so on, and so on.

We had some catching up to do with the British, I suppose.

R136, nah. He did it better. Kim K just makes more money at it. Both had bodies that literally suffered for their “Art”. I hope Kim makes karmic amends to us. I mean, people who fell for her shit are fools, but still. It has become very gross and unnatural. We do not look like that, nor were we born to look like that. I know Barbie did it first, but Kim has fucked up young girls and men in ways that are actually very real and visceral 10 plus years on.

I've never seen any of these films. Are they on Youtube.

"Edie pranced around in thick black stockings and chic tops, she invented that look."

Edie went to New York and started becoming famous in 1964. Here's Ann-Margaret wearing black tights and a top in a 1961 screen test.

Beatnik girls had been wearing tight black for some years before then, and BTW Ann-Margaret made black tights under a sweater or top that barely covered her groin a signature look.

And here's Ann-Margaret in "Bye Bye Birdie", 1963.

Yeah Ann Margaret in Bye Bye Birdie deserves the credit for leggings. She popularized /legitimized them. So we can blame her for all the bulging camel toes walking around in “yoga” pants.

here is another clip of Ann popularizing her look

"The pool was empty of water, obvs., and in some disrepair. She furnished it and decorated it, and made it her spot. I love that. Who does that? A child who dreams."

No, "a child who dreams" doesn't do stuff like that. A burned out drug addict does.

Such a frau statement, I thought, too, R147.

Here's part one of an article about Sedgewick. Very interesting.:

Everyone, we are assured at birth, is guaranteed their 15 minutes of fame. It’s the 11th Commandment, the 28th Amendment, and the Fifth Law of Physics. Naturally, the Bible, the Constitution, and even Sir Isaac Newton are stony on such matters. Instead, it would be left to Andy Warhol ​— ​smirking artist, sneering prophet, and high-glam flim-flam man ​— ​to deliver this revelation as if he were the second coming of Moses.

And maybe he was.

Very much on Warhol’s mind at the time ​— ​the mid-1960s ​— ​was a dazzling vortex of doomed beauty named Edie Sedgwick, who nearly 50 years later remains the Santa Barbaran most famously famous for merely being famous. (By contrast, Martha Graham danced, Katy Perry sings, and Sam Cunningham integrated college football by running the pigskin for USC into the end zone of an all-white Alabama football team two times on 12 carries in an historic 1970 game in Birmingham.) Conventional wisdom holds that Warhol made Sedgwick ​— ​the scion of Boston Blue Bloods who would transform themselves into the landed gentry of Santa Barbara ​— ​into “Edie.” I think a good case could be made it was the other way around. Either way, long before there were Kardashians ​— ​and even before the invention of “branding” ​— ​ there was “Edie,” impossibly thin, ridiculously vibrant, and irresistibly outrageous.

She also happened to be seriously mentally ill. And a hard-core drug addict. I could say, “But that’s another story.” Except, of course, it’s not.

Edie Sedgwick would get her 15 minutes of fame. In fact, she’d get a whole lot more: a best-selling book in 1982 and a Hollywood movie starring Sienna Miller in 2007. But all that happened after November 16, 1971, when she was found dead ​— ​face in her pillow ​— ​killed by a barbiturate overdose in an apartment on the 2500 block of De la Vina Street. She was 28 years old.

I dredge all this up because Judge Donna Geck just issued a court ruling resolving a long-festering legal fight as to who can ​— ​and can’t ​— ​capitalize on Edie Sedgwick’s still smoldering publicity rights. At odds were Michael Brett Post, a Santa Barbara postal worker who met Sedgwick at the psych ward of Cottage Hospital and was married to her for just the last three months of her life. In 1989, Post filed legal papers asserting his rights to market his ex-wife’s likeness. Opposing Post was filmmaker David Weisman, to whom Sedgwick had signed away all publicity rights for the making of Ciao! Manhattan, a rambunctiously incoherent and inspired mess of a movie that makes sense only to viewers who take as many drugs watching it as the actors do playing their roles.

Geck’s ruling hinged on a narrow legal question: Was Edie famous before or after she died? Was she what’s known in the eyes of the law “a deceased personality”? Weisman ​— ​who would later make the critically acclaimed Kiss of the Spider Woman ​— ​argued via his attorney James Ballantine that Sedgwick’s commercially exploitable fame derived exclusively from her appearance in the film Ciao!, which first screened eight months after her death. Sedgwick appeared in no other films except for Andy Warhol’s home movies made during Factory heydays, along with other creative exhibitionists and pioneers of sexual “fluidity” long before the term existed. Geck would conclude Edie had not achieved the exalted status of being a “personality” at the time she became “deceased.” All Sedgwick’s publicity rights, she ruled, had been signed over to Weisman. Case closed. Slam dunk.

Edie article, part II. It's from the Santa Barbara Independent by Nick Welsh:

The Sedgwick saga always resonates with perverse morbidity, but especially now, as Santa Barbara gets ready to go crazy with Fiesta, Santa Barbara’s collective exaltation of drunken overindulgence and ranching culture. Francis “Duke” Sedgwick moved his family from back East to the Santa Ynez Valley in the late ’40s after he discovered he could not become the railroad tycoon he’d always dreamed of being. Instead he took up ranching, painting, sculpting, and chasing women. Doctors had warned Sedgwick not to have children; insanity ran in his veins. (He himself had been institutionalized several times, diagnosed as “manic depressive.”) He would defy the doctors and have eight, Edie being the seventh. One child would hang himself with a necktie; one would die in a motorcycle crash shortly after being released from a sanitarium. Edie’s death is a hybrid: part suicide, part accident waiting to happen. Duke, famously, would have affairs. He was not remotely discreet. His long-suffering wife, Alice Delano DeForrest Sedgwick ​— ​just as famously ​— ​had allergies. She sneezed an awful lot. She would, however, live longer. Before he died, Duke made the bigger-than-life-bronze California Cowboy statue in front of Earl Warren Showgrounds; he did the bronze of Earl Warren on a horse, too. More than that, he and his wife donated 6,000 acres ​— ​9.2 square miles ​— ​of prime ranchland, so big it encompassed two watersheds, to UCSB’s Reserve System for environmental preservation and education. About 20 years later, UCSB would try to weasel out of that deal so they could sell the land, but Ballantine ​— ​just coincidentally? ​— ​teamed up with Environmental Defense Center lawyers to thwart that effort. As legacies go, it doesn’t get more lasting than that.

As for Edie, history may remember her as just another muse with a short fuse, but that sells her short. Among other things, she inspired Bob Dylan ​— ​with whom she’d had an affair ​— ​to produce Blonde on Blonde, still the single best thing he ever produced. “Just Like a Woman” — “with your fog, your amphetamines and your pearls” — was clearly written directly to her; “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” — “You know it balances on your head just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine” ​— ​was written directly about her and ranks ​— ​in my book at least ​— ​as the single best song Dylan ever wrote.

In life, Edie got short-changed her allotted 15 minutes of fame. But life, as someone famously famous once said, isn’t fair. And it wasn’t that creep Andy Warhol, either.

Correction: Though Sam Cunningham did score a still-legendary four touchdowns in the 1973 Rose Bowl game for USC — he was on the team’s 1972 roster — his segregation-busting game was in 1970 against Alabama’s Crimson Tide in which he scored twice on 12 carries for 135 yards. This story further corrected the year of Sedgwick’s death, which was 1971, not 1970; Michael Post’s middle name was “Brett,” not “Scott”; and Ciao! Manhattan first debuted eight months, in Amsterdam, after Sedgwick died, and in the U.S. about a year after that.

The whole Superstar thing was created as an inside JOKE, a Warhol-Factory joke that got into the water supply and has taken on a life of its own. As satire, it was genius -- Warhol WAS a genius -- but people just don't get that he was making fun of popular culture and Hollywood vis-a-vis camp and tranny outrageousness.

As for Edie, add "junkie" to queer and tranny culture at R151 for the purposes of this discussion.

Warhol invented the persona of the "beautiful loser" -- which young people today can use to better understand the context of the 1960s and 70s.

Edie died of a barbiturate overdose—I think the book makes that clear. I've never heard before that the silicone injections had anything to do with it, although she did say that the silicone turned her breasts hard.

Re: implants vs. injections, implants were invented in the early '60s, but they weren't widely available at first. Silicone injections were the standard for breast augmentation until the early '70s, despite the complications associated with them. (Linda Lovelace got injections and had to undergo a double mastectomy years later.)

In "Ciao! Manhattan" she narrates that she got her first introduction to heroin at The Factory. Not saying she wouldn't have gotten into drugs anyway (her whole family was- as Andy might say- nutty). But if she hadn't got mixed-up with that crowd she might be alive today.

If Edie hadn't had a falling out with Andy resulting in her 'replacement' as a 'Superstar' in an embarrassing night out, or was not discarded when she was an addict whose connections had been exhausted she'd still wouldnt have been long for this world. She used to set herself on fire on a fairly regular basis, and her drug use is stated as having 'started ' at different times. Between the scathing lyrics of Dylan to the snide coolness of Andy she lost important but dysfunctional 'support systems'. That was not helpful to her mental state, plus I wouldn't doubt impropriety by her various psychiatrists who may not have had her best interests in mind given the substances she was shoveling into her body. I also think that if the silicone weren't a factor she'd have likely made it to the mid-seventies, or would have seen 30. I remember reading about her awhile ago, that on set she would ice her chest between shots for Ciao because of the pain caused by them.

And what she did that was different from Ann Margaret was use sheerer tights or small knit fishnets with a turtleneck or leotard , waist length fur coat and the kitten heel pumps. She was unique but its not unimaginable she had inspiration from Hollywood. Although there was only two years separating the two women so who knows.

There's so many interesting but slightly conflicting accounts of her life but thought this was an interesting read:

Ann-Margret did the look in movies, Edie did it in real life

Hard to believe she was introduced to H at the Factory, R154. Speed was the drug of the realm there, and I'm quite certain the queens would've raised the alarm otherwise. The Factory was a beehive by all accounts and it was work work work all the time; everyone was expected to contribute to Andy's fame through production, not laying around. One of the reasons Edie fizzled was she couldn't be counted on to put in a few hours work for anyone or anything. Nothing came before her high.

R158, there definitely was heroin around, though. See: the Velvet Underground. Andy is quoted in the Stein book (second-hand, it’s true) that any serious band took heroin.

Brigid Berlin, speed freak and nudist, ended up a Fox News devotee.

Jonathan Sedgwick, the surviving brother, with Sienna Miller

That Edie may have been introduced to heroin through someone, say, in the Velvet Underground I can believe, R159. But who knows. Andy denied using coke, but he did all the time, and I have that firsthand.

Brigid is true to her father (Hearst exec) and mother's conservative, society connections, which included Richard Nixon and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, et al.

R147, you’re kind of a dick. But I get it. I get her too, though.

Edie’s childhood was really fucked up. Surprised she lasted as long as she did. Seriously.

She had to live in a haze in order to cope and survive. If that wasn’t your experience, great. But being a burned out drug addict isn’t punitive. The people who contributed to making her a person who had to check out? They’re the ones who let the pool go asunder, just like they did, with their own daughter, who lived in that pool.

Brother Jonathan has that radiant Edie grin.

Another doomed member of Andy Warhol's factory was Andrea Feldman. There's a photograph of her in "Edie"; she's nearly naked and looks like she's out of her head on drugs (she no doubt was). She also looks like she's masturbating. Her gimmick was exhibitionism; she was always getting up on tabletops in clubs like Max's Kansas City and flashing her tits. Someone in "Edie" was quoted as saying "She took her shirt off so often to show her tits that the people sitting around Max's would say "Oh, not your tits, AGAIN!" She was in a few of Warhol's movies: "Imitation of Christ", "Heat", and "Trash." She was truly crazy; she would call herself "Andrea Warhol." Others called her "Crazy Andy." This was said about her: "A lot of people in the Warhol scene pretended to be crazy, but Andrea really was. She had endless money for everything but mental health. When she had nervous breakdowns, her parents would send her to state hospitals. Just before Heat came out and she knew—she was about to be a star, she had a nervous breakdown, and her physician told her parents that what she needed was a job. I remember her saying “What am I supposed to do? Be a waitress?!”

But I guess Viva had the final word. She was quoted in "Edie":

Like many of the people who hung out at Max's, Andrea Feldman had no money and no place to live, even when she had a leading role in a Warhol film. She finally demanded money and said that Andy gave her some cheap bracelets instead...when the threw them on the floor, somebody beat her up. Next thing I heard she was in a mental institution. Next thing I heard was that Andrea had jumped out the fourteenth floor window of her uncle's apartment, clutching a bible and a crucifix. She left behind a number of suicide notes, several addressed to Andy. The only phrase that escaped censoring was "Goodbye. I'm going for the Big Time."

Feldman was 24 when she died. Another casualty of "The Factory."

"The pool was empty of water, obvs., and in some disrepair. She furnished it and decorated it, and made it her spot. I love that. Who does that? A child who dreams. "

You know who really does that?

Someone who wants to get away from the family so much that they don't want to go in the house.

Sylvia and Andrea create cinema magic....

"Someone who wants to get away from the family so much that they don't want to go in the house."

Or maybe somebody whose family wants them to stay out of the house so they tell her to go live in the swimming pool.

That pool is sounding pretty damn good to me, right about now, and I’m stone cold sober.

they both (Ann-Margret and Edie ) wore the outfit for dancing. Nobody suggests that Edie "invented " black pantyhose. Some of you queens are so stupid. She took the look to the streets.That what makes a difference. She wouldn't bother changing between her dance lessons and the factory because everybody there was gay and she knew she wouldn't be harassed. And she is everywhere. Again for the stupid, we are not saying that there is a picture of her in every shop like Monroe, or that the Hoi Polloi know who she is, but she is referenced everywhere and every year in art and fashion in a way that the uneducated people obviously can't see. And before he used her connections, Warhol was very obscure. So there is that. Some of you people really need an education. You can't be gay and uneducated. God I hate the Hoi Polloi gays

wow R161 Brother Jonathan is HAWT

[quote]or that the Hoi Polloi know who she is, but she is referenced everywhere and every year in art and fashion in a way that the uneducated people obviously can't see. And before he used her connections, Warhol was very obscure. So there is that. Some of you people really need an education.

It is perfectly possible to have received a wonderful education and remain blissfully unaware of Edie Sedgwick and her perceived influence all your life--and be none the poorer for it. Or were you talking about *fashion* students?

Edie is known to certain people the way Sylvia Plath or Divine are. I don’t want to say “underground cult figure”, but not sure how else to put it. If you were more of an artsy type in high school, you’d heard of her. If you were a jock/cheerleader, you probably knew who Andy Warhol was (soup cans!) but not Edie. I think I could go to any place where people gather and predict who could pick Edie out of a lineup.

Apparently, “Friend of Edie” grants one entre to the arts world, weather you mean Sedgwick or Beale.

If you 'd ask your regular jock who Leonardo da Vinci is, he' d probably tell you that he was in Titanic. Does that make Da Vinci an underground cult figure ? Why are you morons so adamant that Edie is not well known ? What difffence does that make in your life ? She IS an Icon of the 60's and a major influence in fashion and indissociable from Warhol. Just admit it, bunch of cunts. You on the contrary will die unknown and unnoticed so fuck off.

I think I'll have to find a copy of Edie after reading this thread. I went through a major Factory phase (R80) in high school, but was never interested in Edie. I was more interested in The Velvet Underground, Nico, and Andy himself.

R174, I suspect that Edie S. is an "icon" to the sort of young people who think that wearing weird and wonderful clothes is hugely important. There are millions of them around, all madly trying to become social media fashion icons.

Of course, the young people who are actually studying art or design will know more about Warhol than his temporary muse.

R161 Jonathan is her first cousin, not her brother.

More on Warhol v. Dylan...

[quote] Like many of the people who hung out at Max's, Andrea Feldman had no money and no place to live, even when she had a leading role in a Warhol film. She finally demanded money and said that Andy gave her some cheap bracelets instead...when the threw them on the floor, somebody beat her up. Next thing I heard she was in a mental institution. Next thing I heard was that Andrea had jumped out the fourteenth floor window of her uncle's apartment, clutching a bible and a crucifix. She left behind a number of suicide notes, several addressed to Andy. The only phrase that escaped censoring was "Goodbye. I'm going for the Big Time." Feldman was 24 when she died. Another casualty of "The Factory."

Feldman was certifiably crazy before she ever stepped foot into the factory. She wasn’t poor or homeless. She had well off parents. She was a casualty of untreated mental illness.

I remember Warhol didn't come off well in Stein's book but after you learn more about the early life that shaped him, in "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)" (1975), it rounds out the picture.

R177, I borrowed a copy from archive.org. You have to register for an account, but it’s free and worth the five minutes it takes. I’ve read two old obscure books I loved that I can’t find anywhere else. That shit is a gold mine. If I ever get any money, I’m bequeathing some to archive.org.

Just returned my copy of Stein’s book. Go and get it.

It is just 'hoi polloi' no need for the the.

Andy Warhol had a hard life as a painfully shy, sickly, pimple-bedazzled poor gay boy in Pittsburgh. His mama loved him though and thought he was a genius from his baby days. That is a lot more emotional care than Edie ever got. I also get the impression the Warhol brothers were pretty nice. One wrote a delightful book “Dinner at Uncle Andy’s” (something like that) His whole extended family would come visit him in NYC once a year. For all his oddness, he had a warm and loving family that is probably better than many of us here on DL experienced.

He had love, R185, and that goes a long way in a life. It's the measure of everything, really.

R185 His nephew has actually written a couple children's books about Andy. It's kind of endearing.

"Feldman was certifiably crazy before she ever stepped foot into the factory. She wasn’t poor or homeless. She had well off parents. She was a casualty of untreated mental illness."

Well, getting involved with Warhol and his crowd certainly did nothing to improve her mental condition. Anyway, that's what Viva said about Feldman, that she had no money and no place to live. And that may well have been true. A lot of seriously mentally ill people are estranged from their well off family and lead squalid lives. Edie Sedgwick certainly did that. And after she blew through her inheritance SHE was indeed without money. I think in the "Factory Girl" movie Edie is seen begging for money from people. And when she finally did die, she was broke.

This is a quote from Bruce Williamson, from "Edie":

"I went to see Brigid Berlin about an article I was planning on Edie Sedgwick. Anyway, Bridget played a tape for me on which she phoned Andy Warhol to tell him about Edie's death. A rather strange, cryptic tape, vague, though it went something like this:

Brigid told Andy that Edie had suffocated, and Andy asked when?, not sounding particularly surprised or shaken. But then, that's Andy. Brigid pointed out to him that Edie hadn't died of drugs, she had suffocated in her sleep. The Andy asked HOW could she do such a thing like that. Brigid didn't know. Then Andy asked whether HE would inherit all the money? (I took "he" as reference to Edie's young husband at the time of her death. ) Brigid said that Edie didn't have any money. Then, after a pause, Andy continued with something like, Well, what have YOU been doing? Then Brigid started talking about going to the dentist. "

Andy was a cold hearted sociopath. Money and fame. It an artist - a capitalist. Perfect segue to Basquiat whose career was all about money to be made. Art died in the 80s.

Grim assessment, R189. I don't share it. Maybe your enthusiasm died in the 80s?

[quote] Andy was a cold hearted sociopath. Money and fame. It an artist - a capitalist. Perfect segue to Basquiat whose career was all about money to be made. Art died in the 80s.

Probably autistic, not a sociopath.

People with autism can have personality disorders too, R191.

Warhol used people and dropped them when they stopped being entertaining or useful, and when they suffered because of it he didn't give a rat's ass. the only thing that changed his behavior, was when one of his dropees shot him.

R192 The woman who shot Andy, wasn’t a “dropee”. She was a mentally unhinged and paranoid radical feminist who honestly believed he was out to ruin her life and had too much control over her. She was a delusional nutcase. He used her once in a film as she was always begging for money.

When I interviewed Brigid Berlin around 2007, she was very interested in talking abut the actresses portraying her in various films, and kept asking me my opinion about each. I had always thought the actress Coco McPherson who played her in I SHOT ANDY WARHOL nailed it the best, and when I kept bringing this up she would yell over me (on the phone) "Never seen it!" over and over. She wouldn't talk about the film.

I couldn't figure out why until it dawned on me (drr...) that she loathed Valerie Solanas and refused to talk about her in any way, even to trash her. She gladly trashed any other factory person (like Edie) because she secretly respected them. But Valerie she truly hated. I think (am guessing) the rest of the Warhol crowd loathed Solanis to begin with, watched her become famous for shooting Andy, then years later someone made a huge movie about her. It was just too much.

Coco McPherson! There is a name I have not thought about in years.

Now I have to google her.

What’s just dawned on me is how little I know about Andy’s assailant. I attempted to watch something on her years ago, and lost interest quickly.

What’s there to know, other than she was nuts?

R196 Valerie Solanis was a complicated weirdo who was ambitious like a lot of people who came to NYC, but definitely fell into the category of "bad." Someone who smart, perceptive people got red flags from and seriously avoided. She might have become known simply for her remarkable/weird/funny book, S.C.U.M. Manifesto, as it was published (before her famous crime). Bu it's hard to gauge if the book would have become an underground feminist outsider classic if she hadn't shot Andy. So who knows.

When she sot Andy it changed the course of Andy's life and work.

The Wiki page on her is a good starting point. I love the film I SHOT ANDY WARHOL and think it tells her story quite well.

You can read her entire S.C.U.M. Manifesto here:

Hey, thanks, R198.

Why’d she shoot him? Weren’t they friends?

Bad question. She was obviously mentally ill and a sociopath, but so were plenty of people around the Factory, so...

What I do remember of her was that she really didn’t fit in with the scene. I hate to say this, but she wasn’t fag hag material. LOL! Most of Andy’s girls were either very pretty and/or stylish and unique in their presentation. Solanis? Not so much.

So, why did she say she shot him? Just for the fuck of it, like nut jobs do, or was there beef between the two?

Warhol was a Sphinx without a riddle, said Truman Capote. People then (as now) projected anything on him. The truth is he often chose to see good in people, outcasts, and thought many of them brilliant or beautiful and gave them a chance to show the world what he saw. Sadly, many were unworthy. He died of the wounds received by one of these. Andy's a fucking martyr as well as a queer god.

Beautifully written, R200.

"He died of the wounds received by one of these. Andy's a fucking martyr as well as a queer god."

No, he died of medical malpractice. He went in the hospital for routine gallbladder surgery and died from heart arrhythmia. His family sued the hospital for inadequate care, saying that the arrhythmia was caused by improper care and water intoxication (they gave him too much fluid). The case was settled our of court. And Andy Warhol was no "fucking martyr" or "queer god." He was just a very disturbed man who found his niche by becoming an artist.

Chronic health issues caused by his shooting led to Andy's dying from a routine gallbladder surgery. I don't care what some shyster's report said. His Korean nurse may have prevented his dying at that moment but she was asleep in her chair next to Andy's bed.

Andy died partly if not entirely because he had a privately hired nurse who was negligent in monitoring him, due to his lack of trust in the hospital professionals which isnt to say Solanas didnt play a part (or his fear of hospitals post-shooting). But had he not hired a private nurse, unfamiliar with the hospitals protocols, he may have walked out of that surgery/post-OP recovery.

"When she sot Andy it changed the course of Andy's life and work. "

Yeah, he finally realized that surrounding himself with weirdos, druggies, and crazy people, and treating them like shit, might actually be a bad idea! I'm really surprised that it took that long for one of them to turn on him, but I suppose that was one advantage of the free-flowing drugs. When he dumped them and they were hurt and angry, they were too fucked-up to attack him in retaliation, or they died of overdoses before they could get the retaliation together.

He was a cold, cruel, man, and probably a sociopath. He used these people for his amusement, and if they died or were lost to addiction as a result, he just didn't care. He could always find a new weirdo.

Hey, nobody was forced to be part of Warhol's circle. In fact, the weirdos, druggies and crazies sought HIM out. If he used them it was their own fault. It was all their decision.

Ehhh... there's a good amount of conjecture being posted on this thread as facts

Many to this day are dining well off their association with Warhol, however brief, who otherwise might have had a harder time in life. Of course he used people, and they sure used him, too. How many of us today wouldn't trade a spell of donkey work with him, or shake our asses for his camera, run errands, score speed -- whatever -- to be able to drop the phrase, "Back when I was at the Factory..." and, "I'm writing a book about it," or, "I just sold the copyrights to the photos I took," or "Yeah, he gave me that small Hammer & Sickle painting at a Christmas party one year," etc, etc? Tell me you wouldn't like to have your name mentioned in his diary for having pretty eyes and a big cock, or big eyes and a pretty cock?

Holly & Joe

Tell ya what, R208, me.

I wouldn’t have done shit for Andy.

I love watching Andy on film. I love watching films on Andy. I’ve been reading or like right now, writing, or talking about Andy, for most of my adult life, here and there. I love some of his work. I love the era, the artists of the era, their work, blah, blah, blah.

But.

I wouldn’t have done shit. No scoring speed, errands, or donkey work.

It’s a little dude, with fried, bleached hair, and a fey voice, and a cold heart.

Umm. Nope.

Joe, if you're lurking, you sure were one beautiful man.

Can we please return to the subject of this thread?

I read this years ago. Thanks OP for bringing it up. I’d like to read it again.

"Many to this day are dining well off their association with Warhol, however brief, who otherwise might have had a harder time in life. Of course he used people, and they sure used him, too. "

Well that would be great, if a good number of Andy's "friends" hadn't died young, sometimes as a direct result of habits learned at the Factory.

And that includes Edie, I seem to remember reading that she became a speed freak and a druggie in Andy's circle of "friends", and I use the quote marks deliberately. The sad thing is that some of these people were using Andy while he used them and were quite okay with it, and some of them thought that they'd found a true friend in Andy and a real family of friends in the Factory crowd. Edie was one of them, she thought Andy was a real best friend and she could rely on him, she wasn't the only one to be heartbroken when she found out it wasn't true. Which was a big deal for her, because she'd basically sacrificed her relationship with her wealthy family to Andy and the Factory, which resulted in getting cut off and going broke. She didn't intend that, she wasn't using Andy, she thought they really loved each other, and was stunned to find it wasn't true.

[quote] Well that would be great, if a good number of Andy's "friends" hadn't died young, sometimes as a direct result of habits learned at the Factory. And that includes Edie, I seem to remember reading that she became a speed freak and a druggie in Andy's circle of "friends", and I use the quote marks deliberately. The sad thing is that some of these people were using Andy while he used them and were quite okay with it, and some of them thought that they'd found a true friend in Andy and a real family of friends in the Factory crowd. Edie was one of them, she thought Andy was a real best friend and she could rely on him, she wasn't the only one to be heartbroken when she found out it wasn't true. Which was a big deal for her, because she'd basically sacrificed her relationship with her wealthy family to Andy and the Factory, which resulted in getting cut off and going broke. She didn't intend that, she wasn't using Andy, she thought they really loved each other, and was stunned to find it wasn't true.

Andy worked at the factory. He didn't introduce anyone to drugs. He employed people who used drugs, Billy Name, Bridget, Lou Reed Nico, Ondine, Paul America, Joe Dallesandro etc. . They used drugs and they associated with people who used drugs. Of course experimental drug use in the 1960's was not unusual, certainly not among young people and certainly not unusual within those types of circles. With or without the Factory Edie would have been moving in those same circles, where drug use was prevalent. These people were adults and they did what they wanted to do. They sought fame and good times. Warhol and the Factory gave them that. Warhol was cheep and stingy with some of the Factory crowd, but he grew up in extreme poverty. He worked his ass off to succeed. And he was very generous with his family. He couldn't save the damaged crowd from the Factory from themselves. They didn't want to be saved. And the Factory was not the only place where that crowd hung out. They also hung out at Max's Kansas City. It's ridiculous to continue to claim that from the moment they met Warhol; he was somehow responsible for them.

". It's ridiculous to continue to claim that from the moment they met Warhol; he was somehow responsible for them. "

A real friendship does include a bit of responsibility for the other person, an expectation of helping and being helped, a presumption that you will look out for your friend's best interests. The degree of trust needed to form a friendship definitely includes to obligation not to abuse that trust, to refrain from actively harming that friend, or to keep them from harm when possible. There isn't as much expectation as with a familial relationship, but yes, a friendship does imply a certain social obligation to one's friend.

So yes, some of Warhol's crowd were quite aware that they were using and being used instead of actually being friends, and Edie Sedgwick was not among their number. She thought she and Warhold were real friends, and she was devastated and went into quite the downward spiral when he dropped her.

You've got it completely backwards, toots. Edie dropped Andy.

[quote] She thought she and Warhold were real friends, and she was devastated and went into quite the downward spiral when he dropped her.

We don't really know what happened but we do know that Andy couldn't save Edie from her addiction. We also know that friendships run their course, most of them don't last a lifetime. Once you leave a job; work friendships usually last around 2 yrs. And speaking of work, Andy's main focus was always his work.

Edie exasperated by the demands of real work (filmmaking) and being put on any kind of schedule, and because she was being told Andy was misusing her talents, left him for the Dylan camp who promised greater glories. Warhol had in fact been after her about her drug use and recklessness, and was CRUSHED when she turned away from him. Andy was most likely in love with Edie.

"she thought Andy was a real best friend and she could rely on him."

Edie Sedgwick thought THAT about ANDY WARHOL? She must have been truly crazy then. Because as it's been mentioned many times Warhol was a vacuous, empty human being; he didn't give the impression of that he had a genuine emotion in his body. Anybody with the intelligence of a worm could see that. I heard Edie Sedgwick didn't have a whole lot upstairs but this takes the cake.

She did a real number on that dumb kid who married her.

Great Aunt Bessie, @ R220, is that you??

Yeah, Michael Post was a sweet, dumb 20-year-old virgin when Edie hooked up with him. She pretty much pushed him into the relationship and marriage. Before that, she was hanging out with a biker crowd.

Warhol didn't do her any good, but she was a mess well before and after her Factory days. She'd been institutionalized before she ever arrived in New York.

This thread inspired me to read a bit more about Edie. It's a bit surprising to see how blah she looked without her signature "look." I barely even recognized her in this photo!

Yes, she looked entirely different without the chopped off silver hair, heavy dark eye makeup, fake eyelashes, big black eyebrows, huge dangling earrings and leggings. Her "look" was really like a mask, a costume she wore. It was total fakeness.

Her smile, which was so radiant in the 60's looks so forced in those 70's photos.

I once saw the most fetching picture of Edie, but I can't find it. She was a teenager with dark hair in a schoolgirlish late 50s-early-60s style, wearing a shearling coat. She looked innocent and darling, like a young Natalie Wood.

R227 This one?

That's it, R228.! Thanks.

She looks to be in a camera store, ironically. Also, cigarette in hand, I hadn't noticed that before.

Same store, different coat.

R228, gorgeous, gorgeous. Could this have been taken while she was at Silver Hill?

Her parents should have listened to the advice to skip procreation. Sometimes I see people make comments online that they’ve chosen not to have children because they have some inherited illness (mental or otherwise). I think that’s commendable, and the opposite of selfish (which is what some call the childless-by-choice).

What was the deal with Edie's relationship with Monty Clift's BFF Kevin McCarthy?

R232 Can’t gauge how accurate this site is with the information, but it implies that the two photos were taken when she was 16 in Connecticut when she was at Silver Hill.

Not to de-rail the thread from Edie, but... R141 Oh man, I don't think I've ever seen such a perfect description of why I personally enjoy Dylan's music. I never thought about it before, but this is perfect: "Some of his songs are basically a series of “Burns” , but really, really fucking good ones." My favorite Dylan songs are his angry ones where he's ripping people up and down. None of that "Blowin' in the Wind" bullshit for me!

Thank you, r235. Gorgeous, and so young.

I love Natalie Wood to death R227, but one thing she never was is ' innocent '.

[quote]Andy was most likely in love with Edie.

Child, please.

Andy no doubt felt betrayed by Edie going over to the "other side" (Dylan) and Leos are all about loyalty.

Andy didn't "love" Edie. He wanted to BE her; a beautiful rich girl from a family with a pedigree. But his interest in her soon wore off. She was an idiot for getting involved with him.

R241, I agree.

Edie was in love with Andy? that's the sad truth. she was pathetic.

Warhol never loved another human being in his life, but Edie may have loved him, and I agree that he wanted to BE her. She was everything he could never be, and there had to be a dark worm of envy eating away at the core of their friendship.

I wonder if that was why her time at the Factory was so ruinous for her, Andy's secret envy. During her time with him she developed a deadly drug habit, alienated her wealthy family, and spent all her money, and she had nothing left when Warhol and Dylan were done with her. I wonder if Warhol's envy led him to encourage her to be self-destructive, if he was destroying everything he envied - her wealth, her privilege, her beauty.

of course R244

[quote] Warhol never loved another human being in his life, but Edie may have loved him, and I agree that he wanted to BE her. She was everything he could never be, and there had to be a dark worm of envy eating away at the core of their friendship. I wonder if that was why her time at the Factory was so ruinous for her, Andy's secret envy. During her time with him she developed a deadly drug habit, alienated her wealthy family, and spent all her money, and she had nothing left when Warhol and Dylan were done with her. I wonder if Warhol's envy led him to encourage her to be self-destructive, if he was destroying everything he envied - her wealth, her privilege, her beauty.

Warhol loved his mom and his family. He also had long term romantic relationships, including Billy Name ( who wrapped the factory in silver) and Jed Johnson.

As has already been mentioned over and over, Edie’s childhood and her family are what screwed her up, not her brief friendship with Andy. She had already been institutionalized, before she ever arrived in NY. She spent her all her money, partied and used drugs because that’s what people in their early 20s do. What else would you expect from a mentally and emotionally unstable 20 yr old, away from for the first time, living alone in New York, with unlimited access to a large trust fund. That’s a recipe for disaster. Her self destructive nature and the rest of her mental and emotional problems were not caused. by Warhol. None of that was Warhol’s fault. Why do some of you continue to claim Edie was in love with Warhol. Edie was an addict. She was in love with drugs. Which she chose over everything and everyone else. Which is typical of addicts. Warhol could not save her from herself.

Mental illness ran in the Sedgwick family. Edie's father was supposedly warned not to have children, because of the strain of mental instability that was in his blood. He would go on to have eight. His daughter Saucie said she had no idea why her parents had so many children. I think Francis "Fuzzy" Sedgwick thought having a slew of kids made him look like a real cocksman. He was pretty fucked up, himself. He would make passes at his own daughters. What a creep.

r246 is right. People always say Andy was a sociopath, but there are some touching, not-at-all-taciturn quotes in the books from him about Edie at some point.

It's been ages since I read Edie, but yes, there WAS a lot of dish. Three things that stood out in particular:

1) The incest stuff about Edie's father wasn't implied, it was explicit, and reappears throughout the entire book. Somebody says "he tried to make love to her when she was eight," or something to that effect. He also chases after her sister Saucie, who says she disliked [Edie] intensely.

2) Someone talks about going to a concert in the 1960s where Jim Morrison gets on stage when Jim Hendrix is performing, and blows him in front of everyone.

3) Edie takes up with a bike gang near the end, and becomes some biker's "old lady." One of the guys sharing his account of what it was like to have her in the gang talks about the biker tradition of "shooting tongue," i.e. french-kissing other male bikers. He says something like, "We're not fags, but if I haven't seen my boy in a long time, and he shows up, we go and shoot some tongue."

4) After Edie hangs up her motorcycle boots, and goes back home to California, she ends up fucking her older brother Jonathan (his account).

Sorry---ended up being 4.

I don't remember in the book "Edie" anything about Edie "fucking" her brother Jonathan. I DO remember one of her brothers (Jonathan?) saying that she suggested that they have sex. He said he liked her, thought she was attractive, but sex with his sister? No way! She insisted, saying stuff like she knew he wanted her, all the men in the family wanted her...just crazy talk. Her brain was pretty well fried by drugs at the time. I don't think there was any sex between Edie and her brothers. Maybe something went on with her and her father, though. He probably would have been up for something like that.

About Andy and Edie: Andy speaks in his own voice only two or three times in Stein’s book, but there is one great quote from him:

"She always wanted to leave. Even if a party was good she wanted to leave. It’s the way they work now in St. Moritz: I mean, people who spend fortunes to have parties can’t wait until they’re over so they can go somewhere else. I don’t understand that. Can’t wait to go . . . and there’s no place to go. These people in big, expensive cars can’t wait to get to the next party . . . and there’s no next party. They just get up and leave. It’s really funny. But Edie was like that. She just couldn’t wait to get to the next place.

"One night, when the parties were over, I guess she didn’t want to sleep with somebody, so she asked me to share a room with her. She always had to have her glass of hot milk and a cigarette in one hand. In her sleep her hands kept crawling; they couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t keep my eyes off them. She kept scratching with them. Perhaps she just had bad dreams . . . I don’t know, it was really sad."

He identified Edie with the idle rich he mocked, envied, and judged, and he had a weirdly close yet remote relationship with her.

Her brother didn't say he'd slept with her, but that she suggested it in her late druggie stage. Edie had three brothers--Jonathan was the youngest and the only one who survived early adulthood. The oldest and youngest, both daughters, also survived. One brother was a suicide, another brother might have been a suicide and then, of course, there's Edie who was basically a slow suicide.

Beautiful fucked-up family.

"Her brother didn't say he'd slept with her, but that she suggested it in her late druggie stage."

My bad...I guess my imagination got away from me at some point, probably when I was young and dumb and reading the book.

Here's what Jonathan Sedgwick said about the sex thing between him and Edie:

"One night Edie and I were sitting there. She was drinking coffee to speed herself up some more...God!...when out of the blue she said, Hey, Jonathan! I think you should make love with me!"

"I said "No, Edie, no. I'm not into that!"

"I really think you should do it, Jonathan. I'd like to. " She reminded me of the time when she went to London with Suky and my mother, and I came over from Germany, from the Army; Edie wanted to make love with me, and I didn't do it.

She said "Everybody always wanted me. My father wanted me. He tried to make love to me. All the men on the ranch wanted me. Even you wanted me, Jonathan."

I said, "Yeah, I did. For sure."

So in the coffee shop she kept saying, " I think it's something you should do, Jonathan, I...I really think you ought to make love with me now."

She was very high on speed. Her head was shaking up and down. "Jonathan, I think we ought to do it now." I felt maybe we should find out what our love was for each other. She was beautiful. I liked her. I knew she'd teach me something. But I didn't do it.

Yeah, I remember that passage well--that his reaction wasn't shock or anything, but only that he kind of thought it wasn't the best idea. Kind of made me wonder what was up with him as well. There's this sort of moral fecklessness with him and Edie--like they weren't sure why they should or shouldn't do things.

It was one of those sections that gave me a gut sense of just how off-kilter Edie and her family were.

I mean, by comparison, Andy Warhol sounds positively sane and grounded. And he kind of was--he was an artist and worked at being an artist. I don't get the sense that he was out to destroy people, per se, but that the Factory allowed people to be whatever--Warhol wasn't going to do anything if you were inclined to jump off the roof.

Except maybe film it.

Very slowly.

[quote]Warhol wasn't going to do anything if you were inclined to jump off the roof. Except maybe film it. Very slowly.

R255 Exactly. He was more about exploiting people for the sake of his art. The art came first. He was so driven to create that he couldn't be bothered with saving the people he filmed from themselves. A bit like what a war photographer does. All this death they have to stand there and film. Where does art end sociopathy begin?

She was a spoiled girl with genetic mental health issues. Also growing up in the middle of nowhere with minimal interaction with people who weren’t staff or invited guests limited her ability to actually deal with real life and real situations - basically no coping mechanisms. Little empathy for her. Absurdly idyllic childhood and adulthood compared to 99% of the population. She had charisma and was in the right place and right time for that to make her famous. No different Than Warhol - but Warhol actually Created something from it rather than just exist. Maybe if she was given real challenges in life she would have been healthier mentally - rather than making challenges for herself.

I returned the book so I can’t check: didn’t Edie have electroshock therapy at some point?

I think she was just beyond all help and it’s best that her life ended when it did. I don’t mean to sound callous, but it didn’t sound like she had a happy day in her life.

Were all her siblings fucked up?

"Were all her siblings fucked up?"

I don't think so. The eldest Sedgwick sibling is Alice Sedgwick, now Alice Sedgwick Wohl. She's a literary translator and seems to have had a stable, productive life. Her comments in "Edie" are insightful and seems intelligent and well-adjusted, despite growing up in such bizarre circumstances (isolated on a ranch) and having insane parents and nutty siblings.

Thank you, r259. I did speed through the book instead of chewing it slowly.

It does seem that there were two groups/generations of siblings, and the older group were a bit more stable.

I don’t know. It’s a shame. I wonder if they did have children.

Yeah, the oldest daughter sounds the most together, but the youngest one also sounded reasonably together, but less information about her. (Looking it up) There's also Pamela and Kate. Pamela married a couple of times and died in her early 70s (Thanks DL of yore)

Alice said it was because she broke away that she was able to be normal. She also seemed to be stuck with all the grisly remnants of suicide and deaths in NYC. Her parents wouldn’t even come pick up the bodily of one son - and insisted sit be shipped General Delivery to the ranch so the regally mailman wouldn’t ave to deliver it.

The father seemed really narcissistic. But it’s left very unclear if there was any actual molestation of the kids. Sounded more like he got plenty of activity from adults and the mother turned a blind eye.

They were all spoiled and somewhat elitist.

Consensus = she was a spoiled and fucked up little rich girl. Consensus = Andy Warhol was a piece of shit as a human being.

Consensus = Edie was also beautiful, with a signature style. Consensus = Andy was also talented and prolific.

as someone else said, before Andy got shot, he had a relatively negative perception of wealth and the establishment. he most likely had no clue that she would flame out so spectacularly. he let people act up around him, because it was what you did back in the 1960s...that doesn't mean that he encouraged their descent into irreversible madness and degradation.

Please - the only reason Andy liked Edie because she was a rich WASP from old money. And yes, he used people. He wasn’t harmless.

But most of the damage people did was the result of the explosion of drugs in the 60s before people had a good sense of the long term addictive and destructive nature. There was still a certain naïveté in the 60s. There is a large section devoted to the doctor who was giving shots of speed (meth) legally in his office. There was a steady stream of “normal” people, who considered it ok to be shot up with meth on a daily basis. And it was all legal. People just weren’t aware of how horrible those drugs were. One good thing about growing up later is we knew heroin and meth were deadly addictive and psychedelics could cause schizophrenic breaks.

I don't really blame Warhol for the fates of some of his Factory members. People make their own choices, their own decisions. Nobody forced Edie Sedgwick to become a speed freak.

R68 oh yeah Edie would have been a big successful silent star lol yeah just like Louise brooks? Living out her final days with handouts from Bill Paley in a dingy Brooklyn studio apartment

OP, your opening question is mind-boggling: "Has anyone here read Edie?" Has anyone here NOT read Edie???? THIS IS DL, DARLING.

R268 interesting, this puts the apartment in Rochester and says they may have been lovers in the 1920s.

[quote] I don't really blame Warhol for the fates of some of his Factory members. People make their own choices, their own decisions. Nobody forced Edie Sedgwick to become a speed freak.

Andy wasn’t responsible for those people nor was he responsible for the tragic end met by many of them.

Read Bob Collacello’s book HOLY TERROR for some good insight into Andy’s personality and nature. By all accounts, even from many people who were fans and champions of both him and his work, Andy was a shit stirrer and an asshole.

If somebody like Bridget was trying to lose weight he would leave a cake on her desk, when Bob was trying to stop taking so much cocaine Andy would get some young twink to go over to him at parties with a bunch of blow.

Same thing in the 1960s but with heroin, speed, and psychedelics the stakes were higher. Andy didn’t make anybody take drugs, but he very often manipulated them by purposely creating situations where they would take more or their habit would really take off. He encouraged bad behavior and enjoyed watching it in a toxically voyeuristic way.

Funny, I've read and re-read that book R272 (great book!) and the impression I get is that Warhol was a gentle, funny, smart man -- emotionally stunted for sure -- and truly gifted. He was also a hard-nosed businessman, a bit of a slave driver, and cheap! These are the things that annoyed Bob Collacello. Plus Warhol turned him down flat when he asked him for one of the Hammer & Sickle paintings as payment for a sales commission (?) due him for portraits he lined up. He was also struggling with his drug and alcohol problems and the nightlife ("work," as Andy called it) were killing him. Collacello when speaking about Warhol these days often says he misses him a great deal. I'll bet he does. Old Drella was the best thing that ever happened to him.

Speaking of Drella...

Work is prayer according to my priest.

[quote] Same thing in the 1960s but with heroin, speed, and psychedelics the stakes were higher. Andy didn’t make anybody take drugs, but he very often manipulated them by purposely creating situations where they would take more or their habit would really take off. He encouraged bad behavior and enjoyed watching it in a toxically voyeuristic way.

Warhol was not responsible for anyone's drug use. Its ridiculous to claim that he purposely created "situations where they would take more. . . . "

Andy--chaotic neutral?

And, yeah, Louise Brooks ended up in Rochester near the film archive, which is how she ended up writing some rather interesting, off-beat essays about Hollywood, her life and film. Bill Paley was a former lover and did quietly financially support her--something that she really, really didn't want to come out when Kenneth Tynan wrote about her.

But Louise really deserves her own thread--beautiful, intelligent, self-destructive--but a better survivor than Edie. She pretty much fell out with anyone who ever cared about her--including Tynan.

R276 your arguments are disingenuous and made with the supposition all these things happened in a vacuum.

Nobody said he forced them to do drugs. But he was an enabler sweetheart. Doesn’t make him the devil, but he was no saint. You seem rather over invested in declaring his “innocence” when the truth is that he was culpable and of course so were those taking the drugs... they were all in it together in various degrees of a codependent and destructive relationship.

"But Louise really deserves her own thread--beautiful, intelligent, self-destructive--but a better survivor than Edie. She pretty much fell out with anyone who ever cared about her--including Tynan."

There's a very good biography of her: "Louise Brooks" by Barry Paris. It's quite thorough and well-written, quite a lengthy bio for someone who was really a very minor actress. Of course decades later she was swooned over and revered, but I came away thinking she didn't really deserve all the praise heaped on her. But hers was certainly an interesting story;before she was 20 she'd been a Denishawn dancer (she was fired due to her wildness), a Ziegfeld Follies girl and the lover of Charlie Chaplin (they had a two month affair). She got a movie contract and might have become a big star (although very limited as an actress she was stunning to look at) but she sabotaged her career due to her irresponsibility and love of drinking, partying and sex. She turned down and important role in order to take a trip to New York with her boyfriend.

The director G.W. Pabst gave her her greatest roles, the most famous being Lulu in "Pandora's Box." He wanted to make he into a serious actress but she would have none of it. Her career down the tubes she went back to her native Kansas, then to New York were she was a call girl and was "kept" by various men. Eventually she ended up in Rochester, New York and reinvented herself as a writer. She wrote interesting, if not entirely accurate, accounts of films stars and the film industry. She was lucky in that she always had people willing to take care of her. But she was a very unpleasant woman. A woman who helped care for her in her old age said this about her: "I always wondered why she never went into the talking movies. And then when I met her and saw her disposition I understood exactly. If she couldn't have it her way, forget it."

Warhol was 15-20 years older than most of The Factory crowd. He already had one career behind him as a commercial artist in the 50's and he was singularly focused on finding his own voice in the 60's. He was like a ravenous animal, consuming everything in sight for the sake of his vision. I don't admire his lack of compassion and "toxic voyeurism" but I've seen it in other artists. One of my family members is a painter, a loner and a bit of a misanthrope.

My impression of Edie, after reading Jean Stein's book, was that she probably had a borderline personality disorder. It's not surprising, considering the lack of boundaries in her family - her father's extensive extra-marital affairs and his own sexual abuse of her. I remember reading that when she walked in on her father having sex with one of his mistresses, he slapped her, gave her a tranquilizer, and basically gaslighted her. It's not surprising to me that she developed bulimia, and later anorexia. It's also not surprising that her father was the one who insisted on her being hospitalized. I'm sure there was concern for her health, but there might have been a desire to get her away - teens tend to tell the truth and upset the family apple cart, if you will.

I think her BPD caused her to struggle with her relationships, especially with men. Even Plimpton in the video shared earlier says something to the effect that everyone wanted to help her and take care of her. I imagine she did that quite often, especially to men - the save me/get away from me dynamic that will eventually drive everyone away from you, unless the other person is co-dependent.

I find it amazing that she had enough agency to attempt a life on her own in NYC. She was raised to be a future wife, a socialite, a girl with "no serious thought" in her pretty little head. I think instead, she was probably smarter than most people credited her, maybe had more talent as an artist than anyone care to know about, and definitely looking for love in all the wrong places, with all the wrong people. What is indisputable is that she was truly original and there has been no one like her since.

"I want to reach people and express myself. You have to put up with the risk of being misunderstood if you are going to try to communicate. You have to put up with people projecting their own ideas, attitudes, misunderstanding you. But it's worth being a public fool if that's all you can be in order to communicate yourself."—Edie Sedwick, Edie: Girl on Fire by Melissa Painter and David Weisman

Pat Hackett said Andy would bribe staff to vote Democrat on Election Day even as ingratiated himself with establishment Republicans. How much empathy would you be able to drum up for a little Republican troll like Colacello, especially when you didn't even indulge in the coke snorting festivities?

R279, I read most of the Parris biography of Brooks and had a similar reaction. She clearly had a charm and adventurousness when she was younger that, along with her beauty, attracted people, but she was reckless and clearly bitter later on.

Another poster suggests Edie might have had BPD. That's not my sense of her, but I do wonder a bit about Brooks--she was also a molestation victim and wasn't defended. When her beloved brother became terminally ill, she basically invented a feud and cut off contact with him. Maybe just a narcissist.

Edie's career is one of the few that makes Brooks' look good. Both of them were dancers, but Brooks actually performed professionally. In her writing, she refers to herself as a dancer more than as an actress--and its her physical presence that's so striking in her Pabst films.

Ironically, she did have a good speaking voice--there's a short with her in it on YouTube and she speaks in it.

As for Edie, she did have a flair for drawing, if you dig around the Internet, there are some lovely, interesting sketches. One of those things where one wonders what might have happened if she'd been taken more seriously as an art student and not just a pretty grugged-out socialite.

How sly what I took away for the Edie book is she was just hardcore drug addict - who had some fame because she was young and rich in NYC with good connections. But she had no perseverance or skills to succeed in life because she had a simplistic, spoiled childhood in the middle of nowhere with lots of servants.

Except for a brief 4-5 month period with Warhol, she was basically just a massive drug addict living off her 15 minutes of fame. Her last years - which were only in her 20s - were spent as a homeless addict on streets of Santa Barbara. She was the prototype of the homeless problem in CA today - mentally damaged drug addict who took no responsibility for her life. She really was a waste - but her 15 minutes of fame was extended.

She never lived on the streets R285. When she moved back to Santa Barbara she lived at her parents ranch, although it’s true she spent time trying to score drugs from people all over town.

After marrying Michael Post they lived in a rental apartment near downtown. By then she was no longer taking heroin, but probably still lots of pills.

The last night of her life was a few months after she had married Michael. She attended a fashion show at the Santa Barbara Museum which was also being filmed for the PBS series “An American Family”. Because of that, there are pictures from this night of Edie in the audience. Afterwards, she took too many barbiturates and overdosed.

Good article about Edie from Santa Barbara Magazine that’s almost like a Cliff’s Notes of the book “Edie”.

Although she wasn’t really homeless, the last part of the article does make it seem as though she spent a lot of time around the “street” drug scene in Santa Barbara even after she was married.

I wonder if she had lived today and had gotten help for her addiction with proper medical and psychiatric care, meds and monitoring, if she would have survived to finally tell the story of her 15 minutes, her fucked up family, her abuse at the hands of her father and ultimately "communicate herself."

Bob Collacello’s book really is the best one about Andy!

I doubt she'd have made it with modern medical care, R288. For one thing, treatment for addiction still doesn't have a great success rate, and for another...

Never at any point in the book did I get a sense that Edie had any common sense, or any interest in planning for the future. She did what she wanted regardless of whether it would do her harm in the short or long term. Hell, if at any point you told Edie that if she didn't quit drugs she'd end up broke by 25 and dead by 30, she wouldn't have given a rat's ass.

[quote] Nobody said he forced them to do drugs. But he was an enabler sweetheart. Doesn’t make him the devil, but he was no saint. You seem rather over invested in declaring his “innocence” when the truth is that he was culpable and of course so were those taking the drugs... they were all in it together in various degrees of a codependent and destructive relationship.

The truth is you have your opinion and I have mine.

The truth is that mental illness and drug addiction (self medicating) are a lot more complex, a lot more complicated than some here seem to understand. Edie’s mental illness didn’t start at the factory, nor did her tendency to self medicate. The drug culture of the 1960s was certainly a lot bigger than the Warhol’s studio.

R290, with modern medical care she might never have started to use drugs.

Self-medicating is how a lot of addicts start.

WEHT to her husband? He seemed like a poor sap who got in over his head.

People were less aware of the dangers of shooting up speed in the 60s. Imagine if “slamming” was seen as a legitimate medical regimen - every gay male would be a Tina addict.

"WEHT to her husband? He seemed like a poor sap who got in over his head."

He became a postal worker. He's been one for at least 24 years. He sued to get money, said he had ownership of her image because he'd been her husband, but lost. He sounded like a nice, if not bery bright, guy.

R295 Michael Post went postal? Lol!

Wonder what happened to the money. The father left 1/2 the ranch to U SB which was mean. Mother at least got them to pay for her half. Father was a freelancer narcissist. So was Edie.

R292, more people are using drugs than ever today, and self-medicating mental illnesses with alcohol and drugs is, if anything, more popular now than in Edie's day.

Why do you keep belaboring this point? Today's rich kids are still getting addicted and dying of overdoses, for all the supposed advancement in treatment.

Do you think Kaia Gerber fashions herself a modern day Edie?

R298, I do not think writing one post in a 299 post thread is belaboring anything. Are we all supposed to read without making any comment?

I never played the victim and I can't understand its popularity. You're all such squares.

She was an intriguing little pixie. She fascinated Diana Vreeland. She just did her drugs and blew through her money. A very fragile woman, but then again...her family has been plagued by mental illness.

Both Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol were vapid personalities, which may be one reason why they clicked. As human beings they were both a big nothing.

Warhol's increasingly being named the most important/influential artist of the 20th century but R303 knows better. Warhol is fake news.

You can be a vapid personality but also.an important/influential figure.

This is true.

I just watched the nonsensical Ciao Manhattan.

Edie is gorgeous in spite of being three months away from her death. And she very likely wasn't acting. It reminded me of that Anna Nicole Smith documentary that came out a few years ago showing how fucked up she was before she died: totally exploitive.

There's a lot of footage of Factory people "partying" (strung out on meth). Shots of the swimming pool orgy at the speed club. You can see Alan Ginsburg prancing around naked at some picnic.

More on Edie and Ciao Manhattan...

It’d sad to see her in Ciao! Manhattan because she was burnt out and messed up. She was charismatic.

CIAO! MANHATTAN seems very indicative of the era. Haven't we had a long thread on Edie before (or am I thinking of this one?) where it was determined she was more or less acting in it? She wasn't *that* burnt out? I can't remember what the consensus was.

And that yes she *did* have breast implants?

Is the wonderful worholstars.org still online? They were where you could usually find answers to these questions.

Edie Sedgwick was NOT "charismatic." She was wasn't particularly bright or interesting at all.

That’s ludicrous, R311. There is a reason she is still known. Many, many passed through the Factory, plenty of glamor and train wreck tragic stories, but she caught Warhol’s eye, and she remains famous.

R311 You could say the exact same thing about 99% of today's top female actresses, pop stars and models, and not only be correct, but too kind.

Edie was not charismatic, but she looked "edgy" while speaking like she came from some finishing school. The contrast is what sold her, not any inherent quality. If she had dressed like an Junior League member, she would have been completely unremarkable and unnoticed.

Edie had 15 minutes of style.

I think there is a big difference between "charismatic" which is more personality based; and having "it," "star quality," "sex appeal," or whatever term you use to describe the effects stunning looks have on the viewer. Edie was indeed stunning -- so perhaps "magnetic" as opposed to "charismatic."

"There is a reason she is still known."

The reason she is "still known" is because she was such a colossal train wreck. Nobody would ever have heard of her if she hadn't been Andy Warhol's toy for a while. She had a sixties look that was fashionable for a while, but she never really achieved anything in her life; she was uneducated, untalented and as George Plimpton once said of her "she never had a serious thought in her head."

R316, I cannot understand what bizarre distinction you are trying to make. Charismatic, magnetic, appealing, whatever......

The reason she is still "known" is that someone wrote a very readable best-selling book about her. Without "Edie", she'd have been long forgotten.

Charismatic is more personality based, non-beautiful people can still be charismatic. Edie’s appeal wasn’t base on her being charismatic.

In DV Diana Vreeland, she referred to Edie as charismatic. No one else ever had their pulse on what was happening back then like Diana Vreeland.

She's more famous than other Warhol stars because of that book, for sure. And she had a fashion-y look and socially-acceptable "pretty white girl" look, with an edge, so there's that appeal. Some of the Warhol people acted in other films, or were musicians in bands or artists or photographers doing their own work. But a lot were just around, and they themselves, their personality and/or style became what they were known for. Edie falls into the second category. The book and her attractive appeal kicked it all up a notch.

Otherwise she's just part of the weird roster of Factory-era weirdos famous just for being attached to a scene that people can't stop talking about, still. Overanalyzing it seems to come with the territory. Too much has been written and discussed over many years about the Warhol "stars," and why are they even famous, and how famous, and whats their rank, and who's boring and who's talented and what does it all mean. On and on...

I read the book - on the wonderful Internet Archive - and came away disliking Edie. For sure she was a damaged person, and I had some sympathy for her. But I’ve had enough of these people in my real life. Exhausting drama queens.

The seeds of her self-destruction were sown years before Warhol and The Factory. Two of her beloved brothers shared similar fates and never made it out of their 20s; one hanged himself, the other rode his motorcycle into a bus.

[quote]As a father, Francis Minturn "Duke" Sedgwick was larger than life and much more terrible. A career as a monumental sculptor and owner of a ranch that was his own little dukedom (the children were tutored at home, and seldom left it) did not exhaust his energies. He seduced, or at least made advances to, his wife's friends, his children's friends and, Edie said, to her.

I'd link the article but DL won't allow links to the Independent.

When I was growing up Viva was the most famous Warhol star.

Never heard of Edie till the book came out.

I knew someone interviewed in it. (Her mother was Jean Stein.)

Like James Dean, Marlyn Monroe & many others (although at a much, much lower level of fame and accomplishment) Edie wasn’t hurt by dying young, beautiful, and then still currently part of the culture.

Edie Sedgwick's story made interesting reading, but as a person she wasn't interesting or sympathetic. The book really did make her into more than that what she was. I think it's what made her a cult figure.

The book was a good read, though. I couldn’t put it down.

[quote]R13 Not as sad as Jean Stein herself - she died by jumping out of her NYC apartment.

But that was when she was over 80 or something. Prior to that she’d had a productive and fulfilling life.

Whereas Edie’s life the original grease fire.

The book celebrated her beauty as well as her charm. She was almost too trusting.

[quote]R23 Certainly she was fucked-up and lived like there was no tomorrow, and took enough drugs to ensure there wasn't. But that's not the same thing as being mentally ill.

Well, she was hospitalized for anorexia several times before even leaving home ... so there’s that.

Secreting food in closets, drawers, and under your bed is hardly the picture of mental health.

[quote]R39 Hello! Mariah was at Silver Hill too after her Glitter breakdown.

I thought this said GUTTER breakdown.

I suppose that if "Edie" hadn't been written, a few fashionistas might remember Edie Sedgwick, but nobody else.

Warhol's art is remembered but it's no longer the height of fashion, but the films that were Edie's main claim to fame have been totally forgotten. Seriously, has anyone in the world watched a Warhol film in the last 20-30 years?

[quote]R115 Here's Audrey Hepburn wearing black leggings in the 1957 film "Funny Face", made when Edie was 14 years old.

Those are [italic]capri pants,[italic] you animal.

[quote]R214 she thought Andy was a real best friend and she could rely on him, she wasn't the only one to be heartbroken when she found out it wasn't true.

I believe it was more that Edie moved on from Andy, purely in her own self interest, when she tied her wagon to fuck buddy Bob Dylan’s star. She thought he’d get her into Hollywood movies.

She was as much an opportunist as anyone. But it’s easier to see her as a victim - -

R333 Oh dear. Um, yes! I think many have.

In the age of Instagram, when pretty people can become “influencers” absent any other talent or skill other than self-commoditizing their own still image how the hell is Edie’s enduring “fame,” such as it is, such a fucking mystery?

She took a damn good picture; in our culture that has often been enough.

Nothing she was or did matters as much as her intoxicating surface. At this point she’s much like Louise Brooks — a beauty from a distant era who, while very much of the style of her moment, somehow still resonates and has managed to become not dared but timeless. Images of these women seem to continually speak to and inspire a certain type of artsy young woman as well as the usually gay men who hang with them. It’s a niche kind of fame, but an enduring one.

What ya want to dish about?

She was a rich girl in the right place at the right time.

Edie Sedgwick was such a pathetic person; mentally ill, anorexic, addicted to speed, Andy Warhol's temporary appendage, a loser who squandered her inheritance and did nothing in her life except a few Warhol movies and some modeling. She was no one to admire or emulate, despite her 'intoxicating surface."

Louise Brooks was much the same. She was nice to look (in fact, that was her greatest attribute) but a horror as a human being; wildly promiscuous, infuriatingly irresponsible, a hard core drunk.But hey, she photographed well, which I guess for some people is reason enough to worship her.

"...a pathetic person; mentally ill, anorexic, addicted to speed, Andy Warhol's temporary appendage, a loser who squandered her inheritance and did nothing in her life except a few Warhol movies and some modeling"

Louise Brooks lived to tell the tale and became a writer in her old age, thereby earning herself a bit of respect, which is more than Sedgwick ever did.

Sedgwick isn't a role model to anyone except the sort of idiot girl who considers herself a beautiful disaster, because some people don't really see themselves as worth more than looking good and hoovering up enough drugs to die young.

How did she get so fabulously rich?

Her family was wealthy and she came into her inheritance. Which she spent like water. Before long she was broke. At the time of her death she was living in a small apartment with her younger husband, who she'd met in a mental institution. He had a job as a postal worker. She was a "rich girl" no longer.

Why didn't her family help her?

I read this book, and I thought the Sedgwick history was much more interesting than the Edie history.

Her family seemed so tortured and her dad was an abuser, it appeared...

Sadly, she was a victim of abuse from a toxic family plagued by mental illness. Other siblings didn't fare well, either.

Mental Illness apparently ran in the Sedgwick family. Being rich didn't seem to help much.

R343, at first, her wealthy family funded her fabulous life in New York, they provided her with a nice apartment and very generous allowance. Rich families did that back then, maybe they still did for all I know, they'd send pretty daughters to the big city and give them enough money to crash society, on the understanding that the money wouldn't be provided for long because it was intended to give the girl a chance at landing a top-flight rich husband. If a girl didn't get married within a few years, the money was cut off and she was called back home, as happened to Little Edie Beale of "Grey Gardens".

So Edie's family cut her off after Edie got famous for being Warhol's coked-out underwear model instead of getting herself a rich husband, and Edie stayed in New York with less and less money after that. She didn't last long, she went back to Santa Barbara for a period of hopsitalizations and living with the family, before marrying some poor schmuck she met in the looney bin. And dying.

I wonder if she committed suicide. Her death seems to be considered an "accidental overdose" but I think maybe it wasn't accidental. One of her brothers committed suicide. Maybe she just wanted to be done with life. She was only 28 when she died.

Andy Warhol certainly wasn't all broken up about it when he heard the news. Someone named Bruce Williamson had this to say in "Edie":

I went to see Brigid Berlin about an article I was planning on Edie Sedgwick. Anyway, Brigid played a tape for me on which she phoned Andy Warhol to tell him about Edie's death. A rather strange, cryptic tape, vague, though it went something like this---

Brigid told Andy that Edie had suffocated, and Andy asked when?, not sounding particularly surprised or shaken. But then, that's Andy. Brigid pointed out to him that Edie hadn't died of drugs, she had suffocated in her sleep. And Andy asked HOW she could do a thing like that. Brigid didn't know. Then Andy asked whether HE would inherit all the money? (I took the HE as a reference to Edie's young husband at the time of Edie's death). Brigid said that Edie didn't have any money. Then, after a pause, Andy continued with something like, Well, what have YOU been doing? Then Brigid started talking about going to the dentist.