Candy Darling by Candy Darling
Memoirs of an Andy Warhol Superstar
Open Road Media
Candy Darling, Warhol superstar and one of the subjects of
Lou Reed’s 1973 hit Walk on the Wild Side,
fulfilled her dream of becoming a “movie star”, but in quite a different way
than the Hollywood stars she idolized as a child. Along with Warhol’s other “chicks with
dicks”, Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis, Candy brought the drag/trans
underworld out of the shadows and into the gossip columns. Candy
Darling: Memoirs of an Andy Warhol Superstar traces Candy’s journey from Massapequa
Park to Manhattan
and Warhol’s Factory in her own words. This short book is a collection of
journal entries and stream of consciousness tidbits compiled from Candy’s
notebooks.
Born in Long Island as James L.
Slattery, to Theresa and Jim Slattery, young Jimmy was an outsider in
cookie-cutter suburbia as a child. His mother Theresa worked for the phone
company and divorced his father, an abusive alcoholic, when Jimmy
was in grade school. Young Jimmy poured over movie magazines and idolized the
female stars of the time, especially Kim Novak. There are a few journal entries
from his school days,(“I am in homeroom now. There’s a bunch of chicks in here
but they all hate me. Someday I’ll be a movie star and that’s it! I’ll be rich
and famous and have all the friends I want.”) He studied cosmetology and
eventually made his way to Manhattan, where he underwent hormone therapy.
Now recreated as Candy Darling, she frequented gay bars and eventually
met Andy Warhol. Warhol cast her in Flesh
and later Women in Revolt aka Sex. After a few theater credits
(Tennessee Williams wrote a part in one of his plays for her), bit parts in the
mainstream films Klute and Lady Liberty followed. Candy never got
the film role she wanted most of all
though – Myra Breckenridge. She passed away at 30
from lymphoma, as a result of the estrogen injections she received.
Candy Darling’s
preface, written by documentary filmmaker James Rasin (Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol
Superstar) and a introduction/setup by Candy’s friend Jeremiah Newton,
familiarizes us with the subject. The entries from Candy’s journals include
make-up tips, shopping lists, recipes, and letters to friends. Candy writes
about her struggles with identity, ambition to become a movie star, and the
heartbreak and loneliness of being a transsexual. (She appears not to have any
great love of her life). Despite her status as a Warhol superstar and fixture
in the backroom of Max’s Kansas City,
she had no money and slept on friends’ couches. Being a New
York cult figure in the ‘60s and ‘70s made you
famous; it didn’t necessarily make you rich.
“They don’t show love
in movies anymore, just sex and violence. A man and woman are no longer
idealized in pictures but they are shown as a couple of dogs in heat. ” – Candy Darling
Unpublished photo of Candy on the cover of Cosmo
Candy channeled her childhood idol Kim Novak and added a bit
of Marilyn Monroe’s vulnerability to her persona. She exuded femininity and
charm;when she was fully made-up and “on” strangers had no idea she had been
born a man.
Did anybody really
know what a transgender person was in the early ‘70s? That’s probably one of
the reasons Walk on the Wild Side became
a hit. The public at large didn’t know (or didn’t care) what the lyrics meant.
Well, maybe some people did. My Mom took me aside and asked
me if I knew what Walk on the Wild Side
was about. At 13 years old, my girlfriends and I knew the song’s meaning even without
the media telling us – and we didn’t even know any gay people. Maybe all those underground
zines we got through mail order enlightened us.
It was quite a different world 50 years ago. Now we have Bruce
Jenner, Chaz Bono and transgendered teens constantly profiled on
Yahoo news next to baseball scores. Back in the day it was a different story, as Candy Darling’s colorful but tragic tale
attests.
