Edie Sedgwick

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sedgwick's signature

Edith Minturn "Edie" Sedgwick Post (born April 20, 1943 as Edith Minturn Sedgwick in Santa Barbara , California , † November 16, 1971 there ) was an American model , actress and for a short time a star of New York high society . In the mid-1960s she worked as a trend-setting mannequin for American Vogue . She was Andy Warhol's muse and companion for about a year . He made her the “queen” of his factory , protected her in a kind of symbiotic relationship and helped her to achieve success through his experimental films, which made her an icon of pop and subculture . Sedgwick's rapid rise to the celebrated " It-Girl " of the glamorous New York party society and its demise was followed by a slow descent through the clinics, marked by alleged mental illness and drug abuse , into an early death.

Life

family

Edith Minturn Sedgwick came from a traditional, affluent and psychotic parental home with eight children. She was the seventh child of the ranch owner and sculptor Francis "Fuzzy" Minturn Sedgwick (1904-1967) and his wife Alice Delano De Forest (1908-1988). Her siblings were Alice (* 1931), Robert Minturn II. (1933–1965), Pamela (1935–2008), Francis Minturn Jr. (1937–1964), Jonathan de Forest Minturn (* 1939), Katherine (* 1941) and Susanna (* 1945).

The Santa Ynez Valley in California

The Sedgwicks have shaped the history of Massachusetts since the settlement of the Bay Colony and are considered an established family dynasty with an impressive pedigree. Well-known ancestors were the Senator Theodore Sedgwick and his daughter, the writer Catharine Maria Sedgwick. Edie's grandfather, Ellery Sedgwick, was the editor of the Atlantic Monthly from 1909 to 1938 . Actress Kyra Sedgwick is a cousin of Edie Sedgwick.

Edie Sedgwick's family lived on a 3,000- acre cattle ranch called the Laguna Ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley , a wine-growing region about 100 kilometers from Santa Barbara. In the 1950s, oil was found on the ranch, adding to the wealth of the already wealthy family. The Sedgwicks resided there in their own world. The parents also exercised their private influence at every opportunity, and so the children grew up for the most part without any real contact with the outside world and were raised by nannies.

Childhood and youth

Edie Sedgwick was born at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara. She was named after her father's favorite aunt, Edith Minturn Stokes (1867–1937), and was nicknamed "Edie" as a child. The little girl quickly developed a talent for "being able to wrap anyone around your finger," as her siblings remembered.

At the age of 13 Edie was sent to the Katherine Branson School in San Francisco . During this time, the pubescent girl developed anorexia with bulimic phases. "She stuffed everything in and then vomited," said Sister Susanna. Edie was taken out of school without further ado and went to the exclusive St. Timothy's boarding school for girls, where she joined the basketball team. After a while, however, she rebelled against the teachers, had tantrums, and was withdrawn from school. Meanwhile at a loss as to what to do with their “sick” daughter, the parents traveled with her to Austria in the early 1960s because “Europe is always a good solution.” But immediately after arrival there was a big argument, and Edie refused to "work". The Sedgwicks stopped the trip immediately. Back in the United States, Edie was admitted to the Silver Hill Mental Hospital in Connecticut in the fall of 1962 on her father's instructions.

At Silver Hill, Edie's anorexia became acute. When she was barely 45 pounds, she was moved from the relatively revealing Silver Hill to the closed psychiatric clinic Bloomingdale Hospital in New York. Towards the end of her stay in the hospital, Edie became pregnant, but due to her psychological history she was given the indication to have an abortion . The paternity remained unclear.

The extent to which Edie Sedgwick's disposition for mental disorders was hereditary has not been clearly established. Her father Francis Sedgwick suffered from asthma attacks and nervous symptoms. Before marrying Alice Delano De Forest, he had three nervous breakdowns and was intermittently under treatment for manic-depressive psychosis .

Cambridge, brother's suicide

After spending almost two years in clinics, Sedgwick, now 20, went to Cambridge in the fall of 1963 , where her brothers had already studied at Harvard University , to take art classes. She took private courses with her cousin, the sculptor Lilian Saarinen, the wife of Eero Saarinen , and passed the time on campus with cocktail parties. She met Harvard graduate Chuck Wein, who later posed as her mentor and manager. Wein was a supporter of the psychologist Timothy Leary and, like him, experimented with LSD .

In March of the following year, Edie's brother Francis Minturn, nicknamed "Minty", hanged himself on a bathroom door on the eve of his 26th birthday in Silver Hill. Minty Sedgwick had been suffering from alcohol problems since he was 15 and had been admitted to a mental hospital in October 1963 for giving speeches to a non-existent audience in front of a statue in Central Park . Edie was shaken and blamed her father, who condemned the son's homosexual tendencies as "psychological neuroses" and was obviously responsible for his stays in various mental hospitals.

new York

The Upper East Side

Edie Sedgwick left Cambridge after a year to move to Manhattan with Chuck Wein . There they first settled in Edie's maternal grandmother's apartment on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side . Chuck, meanwhile, devised an exact strategy for successfully introducing Edie (and himself) to the better society of New York. In a short time Edie became the exuberant party girl who was not missing on any dance floor in New York's hippest nightclubs. According to contemporary witnesses, she impressed with her witty humor, fascinated with a smoky voice and expressive facial expressions and seemed on the best way to become a promising young actress. She also underlined her attractiveness through her extremely generous nature. “She enjoyed when she could be wasteful and mostly paid all the bills. For most of her acquaintances, she was considered uncomplicated and personable, but there was also a dark side to her personality that would only come to light years later, ”says Warhol biographer David Bourdon .

Model career

With their individual style, the society great soon shaped the New York fashion scene of the 1960s. At times she worked as a model for the aspiring fashion designer Betsey Johnson . In 1964, Edie was hired as the cover model by Diana Vreeland , then editor-in-chief of Vogue . Vreeland: “She had such a little dance step in her walk. She was so happy with the world. She was charming. It suggested spring and freshness. Like Alice in Wonderland […] She was after life, and sometimes life just didn't come fast enough. ”Sedgwick's trademarks were big brown doe eyes, boyish figure, nifty short hairstyles, black ballet tights, striped T-shirts and short fur coats, trimmed with oversized earrings. She also cultivated the “ little black dress ”.

“Everything I did was really wrong, I suppose, motivated by mental disorders. I made a mask of my face because I didn't realize I was pretty. Heaven, I kind of destroyed it. I had to wear heavy black eyelashes, like bat wings, and dark lines under my eyes, and cut my hair, my long dark hair. Cut off and dye silver and blonde [...] and all those things that got me confused. Outwardly I was downright freaking out, and then they turned it into a fashion trend. "

- Edie Sedgwick

Andy Warhol and the "Factory"

At the beginning of January 1965, Edie's oldest brother Robert "Bobby" died in a motorcycle accident at the age of 31. Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol first met in the same month. The film producer Lester Persky proposed her to Warhol in January of that year as a female star for his "Factory". “At that time, Andy was looking for a female star that he could shape into his alter ego ,” wrote the author and contemporary witness Victor Bockris in his Warhol biography, adding: “Warhol was spontaneously fascinated by the young beauty and said : 'I saw immediately that she was having more problems than anyone I knew.' ”From March 1965, Sedgwick and her companion Chuck Wein were regular visitors to the Factory.

The spring of 1965 was the rise of Edie Sedgwick: Warhol sponsored her, adorned herself with her as a companion and promoted her career. He did his part to get her nominated for the coveted title "Girl of the Year 1965" and made her big in his underground films . Edie's first appearance in a Warhol film was probably vinyl , a crude parody of Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange with Warhol's right-hand man Gerard Malanga in the lead role. Edie was simply placed decoratively on a large trunk, where she sat in silence and smoked cigarettes. Malanga said she was "the personification of the poor, little, rich girl," and in fact that was the title of the subsequent Warhol film in which Edie first played the lead role: Poor Little Rich Girl . The film was completely scriptless, because Warhol said that someone like Edie didn't need a script, that she should just portray herself squandering her entire legacy within six months.

Immediately after the premiere at the New York Film Makers' Cinemathèque , Edie was hailed as the new star of underground films . Edie and Andy were now considered "the coolest and weirdest birds on the New York scene" and together they secured the front pages of the tabloids. In May 1965, Warhol presented a series of flower pictures and traveled to Europe at the invitation of his gallery owner Ileana Sonnabend . Edie, Chuck Wein and Gerard Malanga accompanied the pop art artist. For Warhol and Sedgwick, the European tour was a complete success. Edie posed for Paris Match and Vogue , and Warhol announced that he would make Edie the "Queen of the Factory" and from now on only make films with her. Back in New York, Warhol immediately set about producing another film with Sedgwick. Thus, in June 1965, the film Kitchen was created in the kitchen of a New York apartment . The script was written by Ronald Tavel . The black and white sound film was completely illogical and without a specific plot: The actors - Edie, Electrah, Donald Lyons, René Ricard and Roger Trudeau sit or stand at a kitchen table or walk around the room and talk incoherent, sometimes incomprehensible stuff. According to Ronald Tavel, the film was sabotaged by Chuck Wein because he actually wanted to write and direct the script himself: “Wein regularly made sure that Edie was so full of alcohol and drugs during filming that she was unable to read the script implement. " Kitchen received numerous reviews, including one by Norman Mailer , who, in view of the last one hundred years, the movie" judged to be better than any other work of art this time. "

Beauty # 2

"I didn't like his exploitation of human material."

- Ronald Tavel : about Andy Warhol

After the successful premiere of Kitchen , Chuck Wein, who continued to see himself as Edie's manager, wanted to get the upper hand on the next film, and Warhol let him act as assistant director and scriptwriter. That was how Beauty # 2 came about , a seventy-minute black and white film shot in Edie's apartment on East 63rd Street in 1965. The film shows Edie, who is sitting on the bed with a man in underpants named Gino (Gino Piserchio), smoking and drinking vodka, while she is questioned off- screen by Chuck Wein . Wein's questions and instructions to Edie become more and more direct and tormenting as the film progresses, while Gino physically harasses her and tries to sleep with her. Finally Edie throws an ashtray in Wein's direction; the film ends with this scene. Warhol's camera captures every movement of her face the whole time. "Towards the end of the film Edie had become the sacrificial lamb she always saw herself as," recalled Victor Bockris. The film was presented on July 17, 1965 in the New York Film Makers' Cinemathèque as an "unorthodox love affair (without love)".

Beauty # 2 was a success, and Edie Sedgwick, already compared to Marilyn Monroe by exuberant critics , was hailed as a newcomer and marketed accordingly. The actress, who was as capricious as she was vulnerable, became the new idol of the youth of her time; Film and fashion magazines chose the "Edie Sedgwick look", and in the summer of 1965 the now silver-haired beauty was one of the party animals in New York. She associated with rock stars such as Mick Jagger , Brian Jones , Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan .

Bob Neuwirth and Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan at a concert in November 1963

Andy Warhol tried to get as much publicity as possible for "his" star and above all for himself. He was already planning an "Edie Sedgwick retrospective" with Jonas Mekas . Despite all the success, Edie was getting annoyed that she wasn't getting any money from Warhol for her work. In addition, numerous people advised her against further collaboration with Warhol, above all Bob Neuwirth, assistant and friend of Bob Dylan, who promised her record deals and roles in Bob Dylan films. “I knew Bob Dylan was interested in doing a movie with Edie. A non-Warhol film, ”Neuwirth later recalled. Edie finally entered into a relationship with Neuwirth and turned to the "Dylan clique", which rivaled the factory scene.

The glamor seemed to wear down the petite, sensitive woman continuously. "At the age of 22 it was already broken, but slowly it got completely off track," said contemporary witness Bockris. Ondine , a Factory member, provided her with drugs for a while: “I played her ' maid ' and got her stimulants , tranquilizers , something in between, or whatever else I should stuff her throat at the pharmacy .” Ondine Warhol once warned that Edie was consuming too much Nembutal and that one day it might overdose himself .

Sedgwick became increasingly dependent on Neuwirth and the Dylan scene, in which, in contrast to the Factory's amphetamine junkies, mainly heroin and marijuana were consumed. Meanwhile, she spent tons of money on alcohol, medicine, parties, makeup, and clothing. She is said to have spent $ 80,000 on cloakroom, cosmetics, limousines and restaurants within six months. Henry Geldzahler found Sedgwick's development terrifying; he described her as increasingly hysterical, constantly "high" and very nervous: "[...] you could hear her screaming even if she wasn't screaming at all - a kind of ultrasound scream."

In July, Bob Dylan, accompanied by his gang, made his attendance at the Factory to sit down with Warhol for a screen test . Dylan and Warhol had a marked antipathy, and so inevitably tensions between Warhol and Sedgwick escalated in August 1965. Warhol now thought his actress was a notorious liar; she in turn complained at every opportunity about the wasted time with him and accused him of making her look ridiculous: “All of New York is laughing at me. Your films make me a complete idiot. ”Finally, she gave him to understand that she was broke and finally wanted money from him, otherwise she wouldn’t allow the films with her to be shown.

Warhol was disappointed and punished the renegade star in his own way, producing the next film, My Hustler, with Chuck Wein but without Edie Sedgwick. In this case, she felt betrayed twice, by Chuck and Andy. Gerard Malanga found this way of dealing with Edie cruel: "Chuck treated her like a pig, even though they were close." Warhol was silent on the whole matter. Ironically, Warhol and Sedgwick enjoyed the most publicity as a pop couple during this period of separation. The highlight was the opening of the exhibition for Warhol's first American retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia in October 1965 . This led to a tumultuous crowd, as a result of which Edie, with a microphone in hand, proved to be an extremely eloquent moderator of the audience: She chatted with people, responded to calls and was visibly delighted with the celebrity. The incident made Warhol and Sedgwick well known. Roy Lichtenstein , who had dressed up as "Andy & Edie" for fun with his wife for Halloween 1965, later summed up: "Andy was his own art, and Edie was part of his art."

Now at the height of her life, Sedgwick continued to engage in excessive physical abuse and fell into disrepair. She now wore long-sleeved clothes to hide injuries on her arms and legs and acted more and more awkwardly. That is why it was sometimes conducted by Warhol on public occasions. On "better" days, she again increased herself into uncontrollable outbursts of anger. Despised by Warhol employees because of her diva-like behavior, she was quickly replaced by the new discovery Ingrid von Schefflen (later the “ Ingrid Superstar ”), who had been recruited by a Factory member in a bar on 42nd Street and - accordingly trimmed - was disparagingly passed around as an "ugly Edie copy". René Ricard: "[...] everything just to make Edie feel pathetic."

The Death of Lupe Velez

Edie Sedgwick's last "official" film with Andy Warhol was the color film The Death of Lupe Velez , which was based on a four-page script by off-Broadway author Robert Heide and loosely deals with the inglorious death of Mexican film actress Lupe Vélez . The film ends with Edie sticking her head in a toilet bowl and pretending to be suffocating in her vomit. The filming took place on a December afternoon in 1965 in an apartment in the Dakota Building in New York. During the recording, Edie berated the crew, tore up the thin script because she couldn't remember the text, and went into a fit of rage . Finally, Bob Neuwirth unexpectedly appeared in the apartment and disappeared with Edie into an adjoining room, where both were going on an LSD trip. In the evening Warhol, Robert Heide and the actors met in a pub. Edie and Bob Dylan were also there and soon disappeared into Dylan's limousine. Warhol showed no reaction and only remarked: "Edie is on the decline, I'm curious who the next girl will be." On the way home he asked Robert Heide: "Is Edie committing suicide?" And finally added: " I hope she will let us know beforehand so that we can film it. "

“Whatever anyone may have thought, the truth is I never gave Edie a drug, ever. Not even one diet pill. Nothing. She certainly was taking a lot of amphetamine and downs, but she certainly wasn't getting them from me. She was getting them from that doctor who was shooting up every Society lady in town. ”

“Whatever anyone might have thought, the truth is, I never gave Edie any drug. Not even a diet pill. Nothing. She must have been on a lot of amphetamines and tranquilizers, but I definitely didn't give them them. She got it from that doctor who shot every society lady in town. "

- Andy Warhol

Femme Fatale

At the turn of 1965/66 Edie is said to have had a brief affair with Bob Dylan, where she allegedly inspired him to the two songs Just Like a Woman and Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat , which appeared on Dylan's 1966 double album Blonde on Blonde . However, there is only speculation about an actual love affair between Dylan and Sedgwick from contemporary witnesses, such as the singer Nico : “Edie was very in love with Patrick Tilden [an actor from the Warhol film Imitation of Christ ]. He was Bob Dylan's best friend. Bob's song Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat is about Edie. Everyone thought it was Edie because she sometimes wore leopard. Dylan's a sarcastic person [...] it's a very ugly song, whoever the person in it is. "

In early 1966 Andy Warhol devoted himself to numerous new projects, such as the multimedia spectacle Exploding Plastic Inevitable and promoting the music group The Velvet Underground . On this occasion, he was looking for a successor to the renegade Edie Sedgwick, who has rarely seen the Factory since filming in December. The elegant, blonde Nico seemed to have all the qualities the pop artist imagined. The German-born mannequin, who had already made her debut as an actress in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita and now tried her hand at singing, was mysterious, introverted and a welcome contrast to the lively “American” Edie. Lou Reed : “Andy wanted us to have Nico perform with us and we did him that favor back then. We didn't really need a singer, but Andy asked me to write a song about Edie Sedgwick. I called him femme fatale and we let Nico sing him. "

Edie, meanwhile, continued to hope for a joint film with Dylan and began to jostle until he finally let her sign a contract with his manager Albert Grossman. Grossman is said to have advised Edie to avoid Warhol and its infamous Factory in the future. Warhol found out about this and was extremely annoyed: “[...] that was strange. I thought we'd do it together and she was about to push me off the stage. She took Dylan's agent. He paid the bills for her. She just wanted someone to pay her the bills. "

Break with Warhol

Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey and Tennessee Williams , 1967

In February 1966 there was a heated argument between Sedgwick and Warhol, which both fought in front of the assembled factory crew in the restaurant "Gingerman", as a result of which Sedgwick declared that she would leave Warhol forever. Sedgwick announced without further ado that she did not want Warhol to show her films any more because she would play a leading role in a film with Dylan. Knowing that Sedgewick was in love with Dylan, Warhol disaffected her by asking her if she knew that Bob Dylan was now married. In fact, in late 1965, Dylan married model Sara Lowndes in a secret ceremony. Sedgewick was visibly shocked and refused to believe that Dylan had married without telling her about it. "She just couldn't get that right," Warhol recalled.

Warhol seemed to have hit the break with his "beloved star" particularly deep. "Since then he has cultivated the belief that love is only an illusion," says Victor Bockris. Warhol later wrote, “I admit that I was fascinated by certain people. Edie Sedgwick fascinated me more than anyone before. And this fascination bordered on a certain kind of love. "

In late July 1966, Bob Dylan had a serious motorcycle accident in which Sedgwick is said to have been involved. The exact circumstances are unknown. Dylan then withdrew from the public eye. After the accident, Sedgwick was sent away by Dylan's staff. From then on, she would appear occasionally at the factory to ask for money or drugs. Sometimes Warhol gave her some money.

Chelsea girl

The Chelsea Hotel in August 1996.

In October 1966, Sedgwick set her apartment on fire. Although she claimed that the curtains caught fire when the candles were lit, it was rather suspected that, how often to fall asleep, she had swallowed drugs and then fell asleep in bed with a lit cigarette in hand. She came to the hospital with burns on her hands and back. She then moved into a room at the Chelsea Hotel . The hotel residents welcomed Edie as a "real Chelsea girl," in reference to Warhol's latest film, The Chelsea Girls , even though she did not appear in it. Warhol had a film sequence cut out because of the differences with her - possibly at her own request.

In November 1966 Andy Warhol agreed to do one last film with Sedgwick because, as he said, he "wanted to try to help her out." The film was titled The Andy Warhol Story . Paul Morrissey , now in charge of Warhol's film projects, recalled: “René Ricard was supposed to play Andy, and Edie got a role. She was in a bad shape and we wanted to help her, [...] but it was no good. ”Both actors were completely stoned and could hardly articulate. The film turned into a disaster and "was an excruciating documentation of Edie's downfall," Bockris said. The film was only shown once in a small group in the factory. During the performance, some Factory members asked that the projector be turned off.

For Christmas 1966, Edie Sedgwick traveled back to Santa Barbara on short notice to visit her parents. The visit turned out to be an unpleasant experience for the drug addict who urgently needed a prescription for her medicine supply in California. “I was on drugs in New York and I was trying to get a prescription in California [...] it was eskatrol, a kind of speed . I needed a lot of pills to get my balance back, ”Edie Sedgwick said in a tape recording to Ciao! Manhattan. Her mother noticed this and called the family doctor. Eventually her parents sent her to the Santa Barbara County Hospital. After her release, Edie fled back to New York immediately. There it finally came to the final separation from Bob Neuwirth: “It started with how she abused herself. I couldn't believe how a person with such intelligence could abuse himself to this extent, ”said Neuwirth.

Ciao! Manhattan

In early 1967 Edie auditioned unsuccessfully for Norman Mailer's play The Deer Park . “She wasn't very good,” Mailer recalled, “she had no stage experience, that was obvious. She gave so much of herself with every line that we knew she would have sacrificed herself after three performances. "

Edie Sedgwick
in the movie Ciao! Manhattan
Published posthumously in 1972

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

It was around this time that directors John Palmer and David Weisman began preparing for Ciao! Manhattan . The film should be a kind of competition to the Warhol productions and document the young New York subculture . Dark-haired Susan Bottomly (International Velvet), a young model who had succeeded Edie's in the Factory Ensemble, was originally intended to play the lead role . But Bottomly was still underage, so Palmer and Weisman were forced to choose Edie, suggested as an alternative by Chuck Wein, who was also involved. Other actors were Genevieve Charbin, Bob Margouleff, Gino Piserchio and later also Viva , Warhol's latest discovery. Palmer and Weisman visited Edie Sedgwick in April 1967 at the Chelsea Hotel to persuade them to be filmed with their friend Gregory Corso at a big Be-In against the Vietnam War in Central Park . “When we got to Chelsea, Edie was completely stoned,” Weisman recalled, “I don't think she ever read our script .” On the very first day of shooting, the Sedgwick disappeared without a trace and the directors had to improvise. This was the prelude to a year-long “film odyssey” that only ended in 1971 as a case study by Edie Sedgwick. The already incoherent film project soon stalled due to financial difficulties, and Edie began to meet again with Andy Warhol, who was making small film takes with her.

Lulu

In August 1967, the British director Richard Leacock asked Edie whether she would like to play the role of "Lulu" in the film sequences to Alban Berg 's opera of the same name , which was staged by Sarah Caldwell and the Boston Opera Company. Leacock booked Edie a first class ticket to Boston . There she arrived completely deranged, “she was barefoot and one foot was bandaged and she only wore something like a nightgown. She was completely desperate because she was on some kind of drug and when she got off it she twitched. So everyone ran around like crazy trying to find out what it was they needed [...] finally I asked Bob Neuwirth if he was coming to the filming because I didn't want to be their 'nanny' ", Leacock recalled," Edie had neither read the script nor heard of 'Lulu', let alone any other idea what the whole thing is about. ”In the end, only a few seemingly unreal film recordings were made with her. One scene shows her head with a red wig on which a pool of blood slowly pours.

Death of the father, hospital stays

After working on Lulu , Edie Sedgwick returned to New York. At that point, the thought of going to California kept dominating her. Her father, "Fuzzy" Sedgwick, was terminally ill with cancer and she wanted to see him again before he died. She phoned her mother in California, but she refused. As a result, Edie got completely out of control. When the father died in October 1967, Edie was in New York's Gracie Square Hospital. “Everyone thought Fuzzy is dead [...] finally. Thank God. Now Edie can breathe a sigh of relief, "says René Ricard," but that had no effect on her. It was more serious. She continued to go in and out of the institutions. "

In the months that followed, Edie Sedgwick stayed in various New York clinics where she was subjected to withdrawal and electroshock therapy. In the tape recordings of Ciao! She described her experiences in Manhattan : "Oh God, it was a nightmare, finally six huge orderlies came and held me on the stretcher, they frightened me [...] their strength against mine. I felt twice as bad. I said if they let go of me I would be very calm and stop kicking and fighting. But they didn't listen to me and preferred to talk to each other about the stages of hallucinations I was going through […] I imagined I was an animal. It was all completely unreal to my mind [...] Then they put a big needle in my ass, and BAM! I was gone for two whole days. "

In May 1968, the New York Post published an article entitled "Edie Sedgwick: Where The Road Leads" which looked at what became of Edie Sedgwick.

“Whatever happened to Edie Sedgwick? Edie Sedgwick the 1965 girl. After Baby Jane Holzer and before Viva, Youthquaker! Superstar! The girl Andy Warhol was never without. The one with great brown liquid eyes who silvered her hair to match his and flickered through half his movies and went to all the good parties with him. It was Viva, this moment's Warhol superstar who mentioned that Edie was 'in the hospital,' and had been for a long time. Viva said that she had visited her there […] Viva identified 'there' as Gracie Square Hospital. "

- Helen Dudar : New York Post, May 2, 1968

Return to California

In the late fall of 1968, Edie was fetched from Manhattan State Hospital by her mother and taken to the family ranch in California. The Sedgwick was in very poor health and could not walk or speak at first. When she had recovered a little, she met her brother Jonathan in a café and told him about a motorcycle trip that she had taken with Bob Dylan and that they had an accident: “[…] they took me to Bellevue in New York Hospital and said that I had a baby inside of me and that they would have to have an abortion because I shouldn't have a baby in this condition [...] they made me give up my baby [...] it was the only thing I did really loved and what I lived for. ”Jonathan Sedgwick later said he didn't know if that was true, especially since it was high on speed. After that, Edie burst into tears, according to her brother, and suddenly she asked him "out of the blue" if he wanted to sleep with her. When the brother refused, she burst out: “Somebody always wanted me. My father wanted me. He tried to make love to me. All the people on the ranch wanted me. And you want me too , Jonathan. "

Arrest, briefing, last film recordings

"Welcome to Isla Vista"

In early 1969 Edie Sedgwick moved into a small, shabby apartment in Isla Vista , where she was arrested on the street for drug possession a short time later . A court sentenced her to 5 years suspended sentence . On the recommendation of her psychiatrist, she was admitted to Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara in August 1969. There she met her future husband, the 22-year-old Michael Brett Post.

Outside the hospital grounds, Edie went on a search for drugs, briefly joining a motorcycle gang called The Vikings . In the summer of 1970 she was back in the Cottage Hospital. There she was visited in the autumn of that year by David Weisman, who persuaded her to finally Ciao! End Manhattan . Although clearly weakened by drug use and therapies, she consented with the consent of her treating doctor. Filming designed to be a nerve-consuming: The actress had become their larger breasts can and ran most of the time " topless " around, which collided with the archival footage of the more boyish Edie from the 1960s. Before each take, one of the nurses present had to give her consent, and Sedgwick was mostly under the influence of Pentothal and could only articulate herself incoherently, sometimes she said nothing at all or fell asleep on the set, an empty swimming pool. For the final sentence in the last film role of her life - “Oh, God. That's what I hate about California. They roll up the fucking sidewalks […] ”- it should have taken several hours.

“Between January and June 1971, she underwent shock treatment at least twenty times,” the Warhol biographer David Bourdon suspected, “in between, she received the attention of fellow patients about the abuse that Warhol - whom she called a 'sadistic wimp' - allegedly had inflicted her. "

Wedding and death

Edie Sedgwick and Michael Brett Post were married on July 24, 1971 at the Laguna Ranch. The two of them moved into an apartment in Santa Barbara, and Edie managed to stay clean. But luck did not last long: On the evening of November 15, 1971, Sedgwick was a guest at a fashion show at the Santa Barbara Museum that was filmed for the television series An American Family . After the show, she attended a party at which a guest called her a "heroin addict". She called Michael Post, who picked her up and brought her back to her apartment at around 1 a.m. On the drive home, Edie is said to have expressed doubts about the correctness of their marriage. According to Post, he then assigned her prescribed medication to her at home and brought her to the bedroom, whereupon she immediately fell asleep. "Her breathing sounds bad," said Post, "it sounded as if she had a big hole in her lungs." However, Post didn't worry about that, as Edie was a heavy smoker. In the morning Michael Post found his wife in the same position in which she had fallen asleep, lifeless next to him. According to the coroner, the cause of death was an "accident / suicide" caused by an overdose of barbiturates , the deadly effect of which was presumably increased by alcohol. Edie Sedgwick was 28 years old. She was buried in a simple grave as "Edith Sedgwick Post - Wife Of Michael Brett Post 1943–1971" at Oak Hill Cemetery in Ballard / California.

Andy Warhol didn't come to Sedgwick's funeral, especially since he hadn't seen her in almost five years. He recorded the news of her death in a way peculiar to him: Brigid Berlin called him and recorded the conversation on tape. She said that Edie did not die from a drug overdose, he suffocated, and Andy wondered "how she did it" and whether "he" [Michael Post] would inherit Edie's money. Brigid replied that Edie had run out of money. After a short pause, Warhol went back to business.

reception

“ She was someone you really loved right away. "

- Andy Warhol

In just one year, Edie Sedgwick, under the protection of influential people in New York's cultural world, managed to achieve a large media presence. She was the American "Girl of the year 1965" , the girl of the year, an early " It-Girl ", who received photo series in well-known glossy magazines such as Life Magazine or American Vogue and was not missing from any social spectacle. Sedgwick was stylized into a fashion icon who anticipated the chic of the super-thin models of the following period, such as Twiggy . As a stylistic trendsetter, her perception extends through pop and counterculture to the present day.

Observations from contemporary witnesses

Diana Vreeland , Vogue editor-in-chief and leading style critic for New York from 1962 to 1971, coined the term Youthquaker for a young, fashion-oriented audience that was supposed to convey a life-affirming lifestyle . Vreeland was a friend of the Sedgwicks and found in Edie a distinctive debutante from a good family, who perfectly embodied this young style and who, appropriately decorated, is “so beautiful” (Vreeland) for photo series in the fashion and celebrity columns of Glossy publications and brought a "breath of fresh air" to the upper-class party societies of the post- Kennedy era. Edie was not accepted into the so-called "Vogue family", however, because her proximity to the drug scene had a negative aspect. The fashion editor in charge at the time, Gloria Schiff, recalled: “Working with her at Vogue was problematic, she probably had enormous protection, but was soon identified by gossip columns with the drug scene and of course there was a certain reservation if someone was involved in this scene [...] people were really afraid of it. "

Edie Sedgwick soon served the social columns through her acquaintance with the media-effective, omnipresent Pop Art artist Andy Warhol, who introduced his new discovery through Chuck Wein, or "human material" as the author Ronald Tavel once disparagingly put it introduced the cultural half-world of underground filmmakers, drug addicts and hustlers and made Sedgwick his work or counterpart.

Shortly after Sedgwick's death, the rock poet Patti Smith dedicated the poem Edie Sedgwick to her , which was published in Smith's poetry collection Seventh Heaven in 1972 .

In 1982, the team of authors Jean Stein and George Plimpton presented Edie - American Girl, a profound life story of Sedgwick, based primarily on testimony from contemporary witnesses. The biography, which was praised by numerous critics, quickly became a bestseller in the United States.

Perception and utilization through pop culture

Edie Sedwick's attractiveness and her daring appearance at the time , coupled with the fast-paced glamor of the film, art and music scene and the early drug death , led in the course of the preparation of the 1960s to the successive stylization as a pop icon. She was portrayed by contemporary witnesses such as the factory photographer Nat Finkelstein , Billy Name or Stephen Shore , who captured her in numerous, more or less significant black and white photographs (there are some rare color photographs of Finkelstein from this time) and made her the "face" of the Warhols Factory charged. These numerous reproduced snapshots, which look like still images from Warhol films, with their black and white aesthetics transported the nocturnal attitude towards life of “Popism”, Warhol's answer to the “ Swinging Sixties ” with Sedgwick as a figure of identification, into the present.

Sienna Miller at the premiere of Factory Girl (2007)

Although the photographs, like the Warhol films, only convey a fragmentary impression of the real Edie Sedgwick in their exaggeration of the real, a sympathetic turn to the “factory girl” emerged from the films and photos, which extends into modern web culture . It is mostly mentioned in connection with fashion, design and lifestyle-oriented retro trends . In numerous blogs and internet communities, such as Myspace , nostalgic followers remember them with pictures, texts or YouTube film clips.

Furthermore, target group magazines and fashion magazines took up the "Sedgwick look" under commercial aspects at the latest with the release of the movie Factory Girl and the perception of the main actress Sienna Miller or sometimes, as in the case of Vogue itself, reflected on the associated exploitation through fashion and cosmetics industry and in turn to provide their recipients with a marketable role model . In this respect, she still functions posthumously as an art figure in the sense of Warhol's Popism, "which actually ended in the 1960s."

Edie Sedgwick and the "Speed ​​Society"

The Hamburg author Hans Christian Dany deals in his culture-critical consideration of speed. A Society on Drug from 2008 with Amphetamine Influence on Pop Culture . In the Andy Warhol / Edie Sedgwick case study, he narrates the ambivalent effects of the drug, starting with the consumption of amphetamine derivatives , which were then in circulation as appetite suppressants , which corresponded to Sedgwick's anorexia, "the power over your own body, an exercise of power that otherwise only rarely allowed her to live ”in order to subsequently meet the requirements of a model career fixated on the body. After all, the art critic characterizes her as "the light as a feather in the Factory, which was probably a perfect addition to Andy Warhol until the amphetamine slowly burned her brain cells out."

In a review of the movie Factory Girl from 2006, the Berliner Morgenpost took up the actress' vita under the résumé "Warhol's Muse - Rise and Fall of Edie Sedgwick" and stated that "her tragic and excessive life path made her a reflection of the narcissistic art scene of the 60s and made 70s. Edie Sedgwick has been a legend ever since. Even if you can't say exactly what her merits actually were, she managed to connect all really interesting topics with her person: money, glamor, drugs, art, sex, madness and early death. "

Working up the life story

Edie Sedgwick's life continues to inspire various films and songs to this day.

In 1989 the band The Cult dedicated the single Edie (Ciao Baby) from their album Sonic Temple to the actress . The band The Adult Net released a song called Edie . James Ray and the Performance released the song dedicated to her Edie Sedgwick on their compilation album A New Kind of Assassin.

American television series occasionally refer to Sedgwick's life, such as the comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000 . In the series, the main character Joel Robinson and his two robots make fun of second-rate films . In one broadcast they look at a burning building and comment on the scene with "[...] looks as if Edie Sedgwick has fallen asleep again".

In 2006 director George Hickenlooper created a biopic about the life of the Warhol muse from 1965 until her death. In the 90-minute biopic Factory Girl embodied Sienna Miller Edie Sedgwick. Andy Warhol, played by Guy Pearce , is interpreted as a cynic who is jointly responsible for Edie's mental health problems and her death. The character of the musician "Billy Quinn", played by Hayden Christensen and allegedly portraying Bob Dylan, is based on various characters. Dylan filed a defamation lawsuit for finding himself responsible for the actress' alleged suicide in the film. Edie's husband Michael Post appears as a taxi driver in a final scene of the film.

The published in 2007 Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There by Todd Haynes contains a fictional character named "Coco Rivington", played by Michelle Williams , which should be based on Edie Sedgwick.

In March 2010, the French singer Alizée released the concept album Une Enfant Du Siècle , which thematically deals with the life and death of Edie Sedgwick. In April of the same year the album was also released in Germany.

Filmography

(Unless otherwise stated, the films are from Andy Warhol)

  • 1965: Screen Tests
  • 1965: vinyl
  • 1965: Poor Little Rich Girl
  • 1965: Space
  • 1965: Restaurant (short film)
  • 1965: Kitchen
  • 1965: Beauty # 2
  • 1965: Horse
  • 1965: Afternoon
  • 1966: The Death of Lupe Velez (Lupe)
  • 1966: Outer and Inner Space (short film)
  • 1966: Face
  • 1967: Color Me Shameless (short film)
  • 1967: The Andy Warhol Story
  • 1967: **** ( The Four Stars / The 24 Hours Movie )
  • 1968: The Queen (documentary) - Director: Frank Simon
  • 1969: Diaries Notes and Sketches (documentary) - Director: Jonas Mekas
  • 1972: Ciao! Manhattan - directed by John Palmer and David Weisman (published posthumously)

There are also numerous other undated and untitled Warhol projects, e.g. B. Film and photo recordings at Exploding Plastic Inevitable Happenings and at performances by the band The Velvet Underground . Since Warhol had many films re-edited over the years, it is sometimes not possible to give precise details about the year they were made.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Chuck Wein (1940-2008) worked in later years, among other things, as a nightclub manager and dealt with occultism . He was the director of the 1972 Jimi Hendrix concert film Rainbow Bridge . Wein died of heart failure on March 18, 2008; see: Chuck Wein biography in the Internet Movie Database (accessed December 17, 2008); see. also stone: Edie: American Girl. Pp. 126, 450
  2. ^ The Andy Warhol Story , long considered a lost film , is now part of the Andy Warhol Film Project collection under the auspices of the Whitney Museum of American Art . See The Andy Warhol Story directed by Andy Warhol at warholstars.org (accessed December 20, 2008); Bockris: Andy Warhol. P. 279 f.
  3. ↑ In the course of the genesis of the 2006 feature film Factory Girl , Edie Sedgwick's brother Jonathan gave an interview to the Weinstein Company in which he claimed that his sister was pregnant by Dylan and that the child had been aborted in an emergency clinic and his sister was in the Subsequently he was admitted to a rehab facility. Sources: My sister Edie loved Dylan. New York Post, January 2, 2007, accessed December 6, 2008 . , Olivia Cole: Warhol muse 'lost baby by Dylan'. The Sunday Times, January 7, 2007, accessed December 6, 2008 . ; see. also Jean Stein: Edie: American Girl. Pp. 370-371

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jean Stein: Edie: American Girl. Grove Press, 1982, Addenda
  2. ↑ Jean Stein: Edie: American Girl. P. 75
  3. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 63 ff.
  4. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. Pp. 104-110
  5. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. Pp. 115-117
  6. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. Pp. 49-50
  7. ^ Eero Saarinen ( Memento of February 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), nbm.org, accessed on February 1, 2013
  8. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 119 ff.
  9. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. Pp. 135-139
  10. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 176
  11. ^ David Bourdon: Warhol . DuMont, Cologne 1989, p. 202 f.
  12. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 301
  13. ↑ From the tape recordings of Ciao! Manhattan ; Stein: Edie: American Girl. P. 302
  14. ^ Victor Bockris: Andy Warhol. Claasen Verlag, Düsseldorf 1989, p. 220 f.
  15. ^ Bockris: Andy Warhol . Pp. 221-223
  16. ↑ Bourdon: Warhol. P. 206
  17. ↑ a b Bockris: Andy Warhol . Pp. 243-245
  18. ↑ a b Bockris: Andy Warhol . P. 245
  19. ↑ cf. Bourdon: Warhol. Pp. 210–211 and Bockris: Andy Warhol . P. 244
  20. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 283; Bockris: Andy Warhol . P. 244
  21. ^ Bockris: Andy Warhol . Pp. 246-247
  22. ↑ Bourdon: Warhol. P. 211
  23. ^ Bockris: Andy Warhol . P. 246
  24. ^ Bockris: Andy Warhol . Pp. 247-248
  25. ↑ a b c Bockris: Andy Warhol . Pp. 252-254
  26. ^ Andy Warhol, Pat Hackett: Popism: The Warhol Sixties . 1980, p. 108
  27. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 349
  28. ^ Bockris: Andy Warhol. P. 260
  29. ↑ a b Bourdon: Warhol. P. 222
  30. ^ Bockris: Andy Warhol. P. 263 f.
  31. ^ Bockris: Andy Warhol. P. 279 f.
  32. ↑ Bourdon: Warhol. P. 259; Stein: Edie: American Girl. P. 305
  33. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 310 f.
  34. ↑ a b Stein: Edie: American Girl. P. 314
  35. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 318 ff.
  36. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 347
  37. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 352 f.
  38. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. Pp. 354, 361
  39. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 365
  40. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 363
  41. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 372
  42. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 376
  43. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 396
  44. ↑ Bourdon: Warhol. P. 316; see. Stein: Edie: American Girl. P. 377
  45. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. P. 425
  46. ^ Edie Sedgwick in the Find a Grave database .
  47. ^ Bockris: Andy Warhol . P. 388
  48. ↑ Bourdon: Warhol. P. 316
  49. ↑ Stone: Edie: American Girl. Pp. 301, 449
  50. ↑ Alice in Wonderland: EDIE SEDGWICK (1943–1971) by Patti Smith. Retrieved January 23, 2009 .
  51. ↑ Rhoda Koenig: Girl on the Moment. Review “Edie - American Girl”. In: New York Magazine . June 21, 1982, accessed February 1, 2013 (Google Books).
  52. ^ Nat Finkelstein - official website . Retrieved May 9, 2009. (English)
  53. ^ Edie Sedgwick User Profile ( January 15, 2009 memento on the Internet Archive ) on MySpace.com. Retrieved January 24, 2009
  54. ↑ Sarah Stendel: Andy Warhol for the 80th - A fantastic summer. Süddeutsche Zeitung /sueddeutsche.de, August 6, 2008, archived from the original on February 1, 2009 ; Retrieved January 24, 2009 .
  55. ↑ quoted from Hans Christian Dany: Speed. A society on drugs . Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-89401-569-5 ; Extract as PDF file (accessed December 18, 2008)
  56. ↑ Harald Peters: The rise and fall of Edie Sedgwick. Berliner Morgenpost, August 7, 2008, accessed on January 6, 2009 .
  57. ^ Factory Girl in the Internet Movie Database . (English)
  58. ↑ I'm Not There - Synopsis in the Internet Movie Database . (English)
personal data
SURNAME Sedgwick, Edie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sedgwick, Edith; Sedgwick, Edith Minturn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American model and actress
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Santa Barbara , California , United States
DATE OF DEATH November 16, 1971
Place of death Santa Barbara , California , United States
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on February 7, 2016 .