Andy Warhol elevated her to the altars of his Factory. She became the flag of the ‘underground’ movement, cover of ‘Life’, actress, model and artists’ muse. Edie Sedgwick lived fast and died young, devoured by drugs. Hollywood, which never opened its doors to her, dedicates her now a movie, ‘Factory Girl’.
Edith Minturn Sedgwick
Edith Minturn Sedgwick came from a rich family in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.The Sedgwicks had been triumphing socially for generations: they were not only rich, but also refined and influential. A great-aunt of Edie’s had her portrait painted by John Singer Sargent, the American aristocracy’s painter, and for years the family mansions were the setting of gatherings where the foremost members of the country’s society. Edie celebrated her coming of age in a full regalia party and was inscribed as a debutant in the Social Register. Pretty, elegant, educated in exclusive schools, a good marriage and a resounding success were expected of her. The problem was that Edie Sedgwick wished for something completely different.
In 1964, right after turning 21, Edie moved out of the family home in Palm Springs and went to New York. Her parents must have told themselves that New York wasn’t a bad place to find a husband, so they gave her a portion of her inheritance and left her in her grandmother’s house, who lived in a fourteen-roomed apartment in Park Avenue.
Edie didn’t have the slightest intention of wasting her time in the hunt of a good husband. She wanted to shine in Manhattan, but not as the twee debutante, typical of Waldorf Astoria’s galas: she wanted to immerse herself in modernity’s terrain, to reign in the temples of the New Wave. And so every night, after kissing her grandmother goodnight, she dived into New York’s night, where she became a reference. She was pretty, funny, classy and went around in a chauffeured Mercedes. In just a few weeks trendy Manhattan clubs –the Online, the Arthur or the Shepheard’s- fought for her presence. Everybody thought of her as the party girl of the time.
Andy Warhol met Edie Sedgwick at a party in Lester Persky’s penthouse, an advertising producer whose privileged apartment in 59th St. was the meeting point for New York’s social and intellectual elite of the 60s. Edie, who was an exceptional dancer, was on top of a platform, moving to the rhythm of music. A friend of Andy’s, Isabelle Collin Dufresne, Ultra Violette, said the minute she spotted her that she inhaled and exhaled glamour, that the word “glamour” had been coined for her. According to Victor Bockris, Warhol’s biographer, another friend of the artist’s was less complacent when stating that Edie was like a loony Holly Golightly [Breakfast with Diamonds’ main character]. In any case, Andy Warhol was fascinated by the young slim girl, tall and extremely thin, long-legged and whose dark eyes somebody compared to being the colour of a Hershkey chocolate bar put in the freezer. Had he not been gay, Warhol would’ve asked her to marry him that very same night. Before leaving, he made Sedgwick the closest thing to declaring his love: he said he wanted to do a movie with her.
Edie wasn’t aware of it at the time, but that sentence had the magic words in it that gave free entrance to The Factory’s universe. In 1965, the space created by Warhol at 231 in 47th St. had become the promised land of the New Wave. Completely covered in silver, like a gigantic mirror, The Factory was a film set, a place for orgies and photographic sessions and, especially, the reference point for anybody who wanted to become somebody: you could meet there Rudolph Nureyev, Tennessee Williams, Jackson Pollock, Jane Fonda, William Burroughs, Judy Garland, Roy Liechtenstein or Jim Morrison. Naturally, also policemen were regular visitors to the place when, alerted by the neighbours, they became guests artists and witnessed Andy’s and his friends’ mayhem. In The Factory one could listen to Puccini’s music while inhaling laughing gas, inject drugs, have a piece of marihuana cake for an afternoon snack or participate in an S&M number, everything in the same afternoon. Anything was posible.
Edie entered Warhol’s world through the main door. Of all the girls who made up his legion of fans –pushing each other whenever Warhol decided so-, Edie was the most dotted on, and also the most loved. Truman Capote used to justify the painter’s sudden affection for young Edie stating that Andy had always wanted being somebody like Miss Sedgwick, an adorable Bostonian girl whose parents put her in a long dress. That was, precisely, the Warhol’s biggest fascination: the privileged background, the exclusive origins. He, who came from an Slovak immigrant family badly located in Pittsburg’s outskirts, who had spent his childhood being fed –coincidence?- watered Campbell’s soup, who had had a life dominated by financial difficulties, used to fall head over heels for private school girls, who traveled Europe, spoke French and wore haute couture.
The majority of the genius’ muses were young girls who belonged to swanky families. Isabelle, Ultra Violette, was a French girl with aristocratic pedigree who used to go on vacation with the Rostchilds and the Dukes of Windsor. Brigid Berlin, nicknamed Polk, was the Hearst Corporation’s president’s daughter. Andy used to idolize those young exquisite-mannered damsels, victims of noteworthy class boredom and who were avid for new experiences, and he also got an additional kick in perverting them, tearing them away from their Uptown universe and dragging them to a damp basement covered in tin foil. The heart of The Factory.
Edie was the perfect incarnation of Warholian fantasies: so delicate, so distinguished, so full of charm, so sweet and at the same time so eager to experience new situations. Her wardrobes were packed with designer clothes and fur coats, but she always preferred wearing black leggings and men’s shirts. Despite her apparent scruffiness, she always looked splendid. She used to combine her men’s shirts with sophisticated long earrings and stiletto heels. She used to enhance her helplessness look using thick kohl liner on her big dark eyes. Her broad smile illuminated that girlish face showing dark circles under her eyes. Her wispy waist, her non-existent hips, her flat chest could make one think of her as a boy, but Edie Sedgwick was full of femininity, pure eroticism.
There was something mysterious about that girl; perhaps because underneath her sophistication and good taste there was a terrible past which revealed itself little by little. She had a long family history of mental illness. One of her eight brothers had committed suicide, another one had died tragically. Her father had been diagnosed as a manic-depressive. Even she had been in several resting homes before she was twenty, and she was an anorexic and a bulimic. Later on Edie would say that her father and two of her brothers had tried to abuse her sexually, and that her parents had checked her into a clinic for saying that she had seen her father having sex with a maid. Perhaps her parents hadn’t sent her to New York in order to make her find a husband so much so as to get her out of their hair. By the time she arrived in The Factory she had practically no contact with her family, and that made her find a substitute family in that strange tribe.
Albeit in an asexual way, Warhol became mad about Edie, and she became mad about Andy. A special relationship was forged between the two of them, something similar to a symbiosis which looked sick to some but which ended up being utterly destructive. With the aim of looking like Andy, Edie died her hair silver, and he started wearing, like she did, large shirts over his leggings. Sometimes it was hard to tell one from the other. Andy was delighted to have found his alter ego: it was like having within his reach the image that was waiting for him on the other side of the mirror. The decided to mould Edie until turning her into the woman he would’ve wanted to be had he not been born a man.
The artistic collaboration between Edie and Warhol began with a short appearance of the young girl in the film “Vinyl”, to which a protagonist role “Poor Little Rich Girl” followed. After that other movies would come: “Beauty #2”, “Kitchen”, “Bitch”… Warhol’s movies didn’t have a script: he would simply focus the camera on his star and invited her to speak, move and express herself. It wasn’t about telling a story but rather about creating a new form of art. And Edie, with her photogenic face, her elegance and high-pitched voice, was perfect for Andy’s plans, who just used to scream; you’re ideal, marvelous, just speak. Those films, which weren’t shown in commercial theatres, were Edie’s spring board, who became the queen of New York’s avant-garde. Beside her, to share the throne, was Andy Warhol.
In The Factory Edie found something more than a stage where she could unleash her artistic aspirations. The space conceived by Warhol became her testing grounds where she could experiment with drugs. Although a while later Edie would blame Andy for her addiction to half a dozen of substances, the truth is that when she met the artist she was already a drug user. The Factory only contributed to keep her habit, for all types of concoctions were around. The most popular drug was crystal meth , which could be taken dissolved, sniffed or injected, but there was also acid, speed, hash, amphetamines…Edie took anything. With or without The Factory, she was a drug addict who was completely dependent on pills. Meanwhile, she kept on living her popularity dream beside Andy Warhol.
Women’s magazines also fell at The Factory’s princess’ feet. Edie Sedgwick represented the fashion canons of the 60s: she looked brittle and fragile, had thin bones and girlish traits, like Hane Shrimpton or Twiggy, who topped the covers at the time. In came illustrated reports for Life or Vogue. The result of the shooting sessions is there: Edie owned the camera, she could pose, had a face full of meanings and nuances and an elastic body, perfect to show clothes off. Anybody would’ve predicted she would have a dazzling fashion career. But Edie was unforeseeable, had a changing mood and a quick temper. And, in case that wasn’t bad enough, she was always surrounded by a strange entourage where there was always a second rate drug dealer looking for payment of her latest dose. And that was something which sent chills down the spine of anybody who was within Diana Vreeland or Carmel Snow’s distinguished orbit, the grand Dames of fashion magazines. Thus, after a couple of articles Edie was generously paid and she became one more number in the black list of conflictive cover girls with which it was better not to work. Again.
Edie had been in New York only a few months when she realized that she had squandered almost her entire inheritance: renting luxurious cars, inviting generously people she didn’t even know, her clothes and her drugs had eaten up her savings. It was around that time when she met Bob Dylan and his collaborators, Bobby Neuwirth and Albert Grossman. A silent war had been going on for a few months between them and Andy’s people; the Factory’s people against the Hotel Chelsea’s tribe. Starting a friendship with Edie was for Dylan a way of annoying Warhol. On her part, Edie found the musician and his friends very funny, and moreover, she was growing tired of being the vase of a gay man. Dylan and his friends were heterosexual, and Edie found in sex another excuse to unbalance the scales. The group welcomed her with open arms, and they took the opportunity to attack Warhol, asking Edie whether it was really true that he didn’t pay her for the movies, whether she was really working for free. They started telling her that he was taking her for a fool, and that she deserved better, for she could be a true movie star, or she could even make a record, which would make her earn millions.
Poisoned by the comments, tired of her red figures in her bank account, Edie spoke to Warhol and told him she wanted to be paid for her work. Andy tried to justify himself; his movies were works of art, not Hollywood mega productions. He went on to say that they were good as promotional items, but they didn’t bring him any revenue. In fact, they were quite expensive. Andy thought that everything had been cleared, but Edie castled herself: she wanted to be paid, she wanted to get something for everything she did in his stupid films, and if Andy wasn’t prepared to treat her like a professional actress, others would. Their relationship started to go cold.
Despite everything, for appearances’ sake the Andy-Edie tandem was still working. They were the best example of a pop couple, and their public appearances dragged hundreds of fans, who gave them ovations whenever they came out of a limousine together, and they let themselves be photographed wearing their impossible attires, their identical hairstyles and their uninterested look. One of such star-like entrees almost ended in tragically. It took place in Philadelphia, in autumn 1965, when the Institute of Contemporary Art organized a retrospective show of Warhol and the premises, which could hold 500 people, were packed with over 2,000. When Edie and Warhol showed up, the crowd pounced on them in a collective fascination fit. It was necessary for the security services of the building to intervene, and took both the artist and his muse out of the room. Both of them were delighted with the commotion they had caused, conscious that they had reached the peak of their popularity.
By that time, Edie’s problems with drugs increased. She used to start the day with a handful of pills, and she chained one dose with another until bed time. She started to go into a spin. She walked like an automat, she could stay days without bathing and had hysteric crises every so often. During this period Andy started to say that Edie would end up committing suicide, and that he hoped that when it actually happened she would call him so that he could film it. Their arguments were more and more frequent: she kept on insisting on Andy to pay her work, and gradually he stopped taking any measures in order to placate the infuriated Edie. She had gone from being his best friend to become an unbearable drug addict who had lost her self control.
In his next production, “My Hustler”, Andy decided not to count on his muse and recorded the film behind Edie’s back, who felt abandoned by him. A short time later she would sign a contract with Albert Grossman, Bob Dylan’s manager, and would make known her intention of not returning to The Factory. The evenings in Warhol’s lair were substituted by day and night parties at the Chelsea Hotel. Dylan was inspired by her and composed two songs of his “Blonde on Blond” record, and they all told her that her artistic career would definitely take off. In spring 1966 fifteen months after they first met, she lost all contact with Andy Warhol, and she devoted all her energies to her new group, in her new family, which was going to guide her towards the road of success.
It is difficult to know how aware was Edie Sedgwick of the fact that she had let herself be seduced by something that was only the siren’s song of people who only wanted her to be on their side. Hollywood wasn’t waiting for her. Commercial cinema didn’t await her, nor did record labels or producers. And one day, the Factory girl, the Warholian muse, the girl who was in Bob Dylan’s songs, took a look at herself and was horrified at what she saw. She wasn’t the charming debutante who had arrived in New York to live her dolce vita and spend indiscriminately her family’s fortune anymore, but her own remains, consumed by drugs and alcohol: a walking corpse who needed stimulants to wake up and sleeping pills before going to bed; a poor twenty-something who had wasted her life, who had no future nor present either.
Edie run away from Dylan, Warhol and New York. She spent some time with her family in a desperate attempt to find herself, but there wasn’t any room for her there either. She went back to New York and starred in a movie where her work went almost unnoticed. She was completely drug dependant. She started several de-tox programs and was at the brink of overdosing a few times. She was checked in half a dozen hospitals, turned a living skeleton. She admitted to her doctors that she spent days on end without eating at all, surviving through coffee and pills. Isabelle Collin Dufresne, who became Edie’s close friend, tells in her memoirs that the young girl was sentenced for drug trafficking and spent some time in jail. Prison, psychiatric centres and rehab clinics were the setting of Edie Sedgwick’s final years. Precisely in one of those institutions she would meet Michael Brett Post, whom she married a few months before her death.
The people who saw her during her final days state that Edie had become a monstrous caricature of the woman she had once been. Drugs had deformed her face, her body was all bloated and her mind was destroyed by confusion and delirium. Whenever she thought about The Factory it was only to blame Warhol and his friends of the hell her life had become.
Edie’s end was very similar to Marilyn’s: she was found in her house, dead by the effects of some drug. It was never clear whether she had overdone it with some trip or whether she had decided that it living wasn’t worth it anymore. She was 28. Andy Warhol found out about her death through a friend’s call. The news didn’t affect him too much. He only asked who was going to inherit all of Edie’s money. The person at the other end of the line answered that Edie Sedgwick was completely penniless. Warhol just went “ah, well” and proceeded to ask her what she had been doing. For Warhol, Eddie had stopped existing the very moment she left The Factory, with her black leggings and masculine shirt, to be in Bob Dylan’s songs and the cheap rooms of the Chelsea Hotel.
Translated from “El infierno de la musa”, by Marta Rivera de la Cruz, published in El País Semanal on the 19th November 2006 (available in http://www.elpais.es/solotexto/articulo.html?xref=20061119elpepspor_2&type=Tes&k=infierno_musa)
