Edie Sedgwick, tell us Eldergays, was she all that ? Was she even famous in her lifetime ?

This is a question for the over 70 crowd.

Which are many on DL, therefore my asking

I do not think that is her at OP's photo

[italic]Edie: American Girl[/italic] is one of the all-time great celebrity biographies.

OP's pic might be from the biopic done a few years ago.

She was Andy's 'IT' girl for almost exactly one year. There's a great article in recent Vanity Fair about their relationship. She bleached her hair and was kind of the 'female' version of Andy. Apparently Andy found a new girl every year - Jane Holzer was his girl from 64-65. Edie was his girl from 65-66.

Then Andy turned on her and became really cruel. She was like an extension of him and everything he wanted to be - thin, beautiful, old money, but fragile.

Long, long ago (before most of you were born), I read Jean Stein's book, "Edie." Long story, short: Andy Warhol used Edie, her / her family's social connections, made her his artistic muse, and had copied her 'look' for his personal gain. In the book, Stein alludes to Edie's introduction/addiction to drugs, which had eventually killed her at the age of 28, to her association with Warhol.

She was born the same year as my grandmother and died the same year my mother was born. I was found that creepy.

*always

Blaming Sedgwick's drug addiction/downward spiral on Warhol is beyond stupid, & I'm not a fan of Andy Warhol. I guess the late Ms. Stein's book had to have a villain. Edie was just another poor little rich girl (boo- fucking-hoo) who blamed everyone but herself.

That biopic was pretty lousy if I remember correctly. Filmed on the cheap with Shreveport, Alabama pretending to be 1960s Manhattan. I’m insulted for Little Edie. Anyway I read the Jean Stein book when I was in high school and don’t remember that much about it. Her dad was a piece of work as I recall. A martinet body Nazi who would lift weights and strut around the house in a Speedo.

Also Winona Ryder really wanted to play Edie when she first became a hot commodity. But that ship obviously sailed by.

Watch Ciao Manhattan.

Ciao Manhattan is depressing. It is more interesting with the commentary.

r14 you're entitled to your opinion.

Amazing that's she's become such a cult figure considering that she accomplished practically nothing in her life. She was in some of Warhol's dopey movies. She modeled a little. And that was it.

She probably would have died young even if she'd never met Warhol. Ever before she became a speed freak she was anorexic and bulimic and and done time in a mental hospital. Her blue blood family was totally crazy. She had two brothers who committed suicide; her father Frances "Fuzzy" Sedgewick was so severely mentally ill that he was told by doctors never to have children; he went on to have eight.

That movie "Ciao! Manhattan" is excruciating to watch. You're basically watching the total self destruction of a very disturbed young woman. Seeing that it's amazing that she even made it to 28.

[quote]R4 Edie: American Girl is one of the all-time great celebrity biographies.

SUCH a great book!

Did you know the author, Jean Stein, leapt from the 15th floor of her Manhattan apartment building last year? She was 83.

Sad [bold]: (

Oooooh, gee, that's awful.

Her friends said she had been depressed. But she seemingly had a very good life...married twice (one an assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the other a Nobel prize winner), grew up very rich and connected in Beverly Hills, attended the Sorbonne, had two kids, wrote bestsellers, knew and was respected by everybody...

Maybe she just felt the years between 85 and 100 weren't worth it, if her body was starting to break down? Or (I'm just guessing), she could have been losing her memory...which would be terrifying for a writer.

Edie supported Andy with her money and connections and he turned his back on her, as though she were a sack of garbage. Glad he got shot.

Pffft, Andy was an alien from another planet and didn't need Edie's money.

Nico was the most talented of all the ‘superstars’ (though Sedgwick was a haunting and evocative presence in”Ciao! Manhattan”.) Nico’s “The Marble Index” from 1968, is superior to anything the Velvet Undergeound ever did, b.t.w.

Nico was a filthy, Nazi-sympathizing junkie. She introduced her son to heroin, as well.

Don't bother with Ciao Manhattan, watch Factory Girl instead! I had Oscar buzz!

Andy worked his whole life. He put some distance between himself and a Edie, who was a drug addict who routinely set her apartments on fire.

That's not why he distanced himself, R25. And he still used her and her resources, no innocence there.

To answer your question, OP: not really. She was known, but her celebrity grew well after she was dead. Had she been just another rich drug addict hanger-on who didn't die, she would not have nearly the notoriety she has now. It was the tragic end that propelled her. And, back then, NO ONE was as famous as, say, Paris Hilton. Social media did not exist, and most papers did not report much on celebrities; that is a fairly recent development.

Edie and Andy on Merv Griffin

I don't think she was super well known outside of the New York hipster scene...it's not like she had movies or albums or anything the masses bought. She was in gossip columns, occassionally a blurb in Vogue or Life magazines...but she was part of a fleeting "scene," and not even there for the whole thing.

She burned out VERY quickly.

Love her voice here and would love to find the rest of this interview...

Bob Dylan's "Just Like A Woman" is supposedly about Edie.

She wasn't world famous or nationally famous, she was briefly famous in NY art circles and was the It Girl of NY café society for a year or two. She did try for more mainstream fame after the break with Warhol, doing some modelling and making "C,M", but by that time her drug use was out of control and it didn't happen.

I don't think many people outside of New York knew who she was.

She was a g-damn, rambling drug addict, pure and simple.

Buh-bye.

Fuck Edie Sedgwick. We're the only Edies who mattered.

Most of the above is true but she was always more stylish and interesting than Paris Hilton. However, so is my kitchen table.

Edie-schmedie.

Apparently Sally Can't Dance is about her.

Not true only 70 & older know of her. I'm 50, and had several younger friends at school enamoured with her. I would say yes she was famous in her time by very virtue of her birth. Edie was born into a socially prominent (Social Register) family, and had many notable New England ancestors. While at Radcliffe, every Harvard lad wanted a date with Edie. Despite the drugs, and louche lifestyle, I would say out of six stars for fame she racked up 5 1/4 even before Ciao Manhattan. Artsy students and punk kids in the 80's were obsessed with Edie, Andy, The Factory, and The Velvet Underground.

She’s a famous 12th House person, like Liv Tyler, Hugh Grant & Virginia Woolf.

Her one time boyfriend Paul America in “My Hustler” (he’s the blonde one).

There is a story that Bob Dylan provoked the falling out with Warhol, promised her a part in his overboring movie, if she bought herself out of Chelsea girls, got her pregnant and then dropped her like a hot potatoe, same time as he dated Joan Baez, only to get married secretely to yet another woman . He wanted revenge on Warhol for some reason and used Edie for that. Her family comitted her to a mental instititution and forced her to have an abortion. It's confirmed by her surviving brother but Dylan sues right and left. She is the inspiration for most of 'blonde on blonde'. " Leopard skin pillow box hat " is about her. So is " like a rolling stone" which is pretty shocking. It's a really mean song. Velvet underground 's " femme fatale" is of course about her too. Ironically, 'Chelsea girls' is the only Warhol film that made some money, and the footage of her was cut from it at her demand. She certainly was a muse of magnitude. Apparently, Warhol was virtually unknown before she introduced him to wealthy patrons, she supported the factory financially, investing all her assets in it, and when she died penniless, someone told Warhol. His answer was ' Edie who ? "..

Edie didn't HAVE any assets. She spent them all on clothes and drugs. And Andy didn't need Edie to introduce him to the big money in New York. First of all, she didn't know any. She was from California by way of Massachusetts. What did she know from New York finance money?

But it's hilarious to me that you idiots think that Andy was the only human being in the history of the world who could force a junky to stop being one. How was he supposed to do that? If someones a junky they'll only stop if they want to. And she didn't want to.

What the F. did Edie do to Dylan to deserve this ? It's so CRUEL !

Bob was (and is) a petty, vengeful asshole.

Dear R42, DL is not a anonymous outlet for you to insult people. Edie's family was extremely well connected in NYC. She lived there in her grandmother 's appartment, and had been given a huge sack of money for her New-York debut, that she entirely smoked that year, splashing on Warhol and the factory, taking the bill for everybody, everywhere. And she DID introduce him to the New York high end patrons who made his name. Please educate yourself

I think you need to educate yourself on how to spell "apartment."

I agree with you R45 Edie had much more money than many realised at the time.

Oh really R46 ? And how is your french sir? You must be the toast of the party really. What a charming person.

Edie was seriously messed-up before she ever met Warhol, as some posters upthread have noted. Her father was a real piece of work, and the Stein book suggests (without actually saying it) that he sexually abused his children, including Edie. Another poor little rich girl desperate for a father figure, and she thought she found that in Warhol. This was the tragedy of so many of Warhol's hangers on: They wanted him to parent them, and he just wanted to watch them.

Warhol was not a good person (I'm not sure, honestly, if you could really call him a person in the conventional sense). He didn't do these kids any good by making them famous, but most of them would have met tragic ends with or without the fame. Edie certainly fell into that category. Which is a shame, because she had real charisma on camera. With the right breaks and coaching, she could have been a movie star.

She reminds me a lot of Gia Carangi, another broken bird who got famous and whose fame is often blamed for her demise. But the truth was, she wouldn't have made it to 30 no matter what she did. The same is true of Edie Sedgwick.

Scary, but all probably true R49. R45 I have read that Warhol's wardrobe improved markedly after his friendship with Edie began. It was written about many places that she took him on shopping trips. Andy was manipulative and I believed he used everyone he could.

While she may have been his entre into New York society, Andy Warhol didn’t need Edie to pay his bills. He was one of, if not THE, most successful commercial artists in New York and was making over $100,000 a year in the early Sixties. The I. Miller account alone would have been more money than Edie had to blow.

I would say that Edie is probably only semi famous because she died. If she had lived, no one would have ever heard of her.

Not so R51. Before Edie he was an obscure underground figure

"Not to diminish her legacy in art and fashion, but sometimes 1) you wonder if she was really a celeb like Paris Hilton in her Warhol superstar days. 2) Nico was mainstream famous, but Edie ?"

1 - Boy, you need a grammar lesson on antecedent. Hilton did not have Warhol superstar days. Yes you mean Edie but your grammar means Hilton. Now to answer this stupid question, which you could have figure out with any cursory look at all the documentation. Edie was an underground figure during her life. Fashion, art and film people knew her, just a bit. Paris Hilton was once a "household name" in American culture and famous all around the world. DUH

2 - You first declaration is arguably false. Nico mainstream? Barely. Edie - of course not.

Bye bye

R51 Andy may not have been poor at the time, but he was notoriously cheap all the same. Not surprising as he grew up quite poor with immigrant parents. People wrote about him reusing tea bags and coffee grounds, even though he didn't need too. Just because he may have had the wherewithal to purchase better clothes, he didn't apparently. He ate many frugal meals at home long after he had begun making decent money. Does not surprise me one bit she bought him threads. She was very carefree with her money and generous to a fault.

You're rather elderly and single R54 am I guessing ?

No, his wardrobe didn’t improve during the Silver factory years. He’d been wearing Brooks Brothers suits since the mid-Fifties when he was hanging out with mostly gay men, having plastic surgery, and taking months-long world tours. The 47th Street Silver factory years saw him adopt the jeans and black leather jacket look of the mid to late Sixties and his group moved toward junkies who would appear on camera.

You should really read Victor Bockris’s biography if you want to know more about Warhol and the first Factory era.

I find her completely unremarkably in looks, intelligence and achievements. If she’d born into a less privileged life, no one would have paid the slightest attention.

R57 I know what I have spoken of here from stories in the Independent and many books on Edie. The first shopping trip Edie took him on was before she had invited him to dinner to meet her father at his home. She told him his clothes simply wouldn't do. Even with finer clothes, "The Duke" still didn't care much for him, and pronounced him a "screaming fag". I've read enough about them all. Brooks Bros back then offered very cheao off the rack poly-blend suits and blazers, in addition to pricier lines. They all were NOT top drawer.

We’ll have to agree to disagree then. I’ve read all the Warhol biographies and read the Stein/Plimpton book and I got a different impression. I think she spent her money on drugs and while she may have spent some money in Warhol, she didn’t fund his lifestyle at that time. He’d already had the success of the soup can show, the Brillo box show and had begun to do the Marilyn and Death and Disaster paintings before he met her. The great painting had mostly already been done before he seriously got into the film making that marked his mid-Sixties reinvention.

Edie had a beautiful smile.

Of all the stories I've ever read about her, she was a good gentle person. Just terribly hurt. A little girl with only pills for friends. RIP Edie 💐

R61 I never claimed she funded his lifestyle, merely she took him on shopping trips. Many young rich women bought clothes for men then, and today; especially when they possess better taste and want to "improve" them. You forget the lucrative coffee company contract in your enumeration of his commercial success. I proudly own one of the tins with the quite generic looking design.

The biography Edie: American Girl by Jean Stein and George Plimpton (written in the 80's, timelines compiled from interviews with people who were actually there) is an amazing read, so richly detailed. CIAO! MANHATTAN (made in 1972 right around the time she died) is psychedelic and kooky and a far better film about Edie (in an abstract way) than FACTORY GIRL (made in 2006) is, which is bad. Although I always thought Sienna Miller's mimicry of Sedgwick in that film was the one remarkable quality about that film.

For those unaware, Kyra Sedgwick's dad is Edie Sedgwick's cousin.

And, for six degrees, both Edie Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon's dad (the Robert Moses of Philadelphia), were enmeshed with the family of architect/designer Eero Saarinen.

Edie was named for her aunt, Edith Minturn Stokes, who was model for sculptor Daniel Chester French's six-story 1893 World's Fair statue "The Republic"--a replica of which (smaller) stands in Chicago's Jackson Park, where Kevin Bacon filmed "Flatliners."

I’m in love with everyone I’ve ever met in one way or another. I’m just a crazy, unhinged disaster of a human being.

A quote from Edie about her experiences with men prior to meeting Warhol. It gives good insight into her general fragility:

[quote]I'd been two years locked up in hospitals. I was twenty when I got out from Bloomingdale and I met a young man from Harvard who was very attractive in a sort of Ivy League way. And we made love in my grandmother's apartment and it was terrific, it was just fabulous. That was the first time I ever made love, and I had no inhibitions or anything. It was just beautiful. I didn't get my period and so I had to tell my doctor. The hospital pass was given to see if you could handle yourself outside. I was terrified to tell him that I thought I was pregnant, but I finally did. I was pregnant. I could get an abortion without any hassle at all, just on the grounds of a psychiatric case. So that wasn't too good a first experience with lovemaking. I mean it kind of screwed up my head, for one thing. This fellow found out. I was upset . . . and he asked me, and I said, "I'm pregnant. I'm not going to ask you for anything, so don't get uptight, but it's just kind of making me uncomfortable. I don't know exactly what I'm going to do about it." He split, and I didn't see him again until the summer had passed and I went to Cambridge for my first free year.

Just watched an episode of Merv griffin on amazon prime. Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol were guests. Andy didn't speak and it really irritated Merv. Edie was fascinating.

Edie on using drugs:

[quote] Which is better, coke or speed? It's hard to choose. The purest speed, the purest coke, and sex is a deadlock. Speeding and booze. That gets funny. You get chattering at about fifty miles an hour over the downdraft, and booze kind of cools it. It can get very funny. Utterly ridiculous. It's a good combination for a party. Not for an orgy, though. Speedball! Speed and heroin. That was the first time I had a shot in each arm. Closed my eyes. Opened my arms. Closed my fists, and jab, jab. A shot of cocaine and speed, and a shot of heroin. Stripped off all my clothes, leapt downstairs, and ran out on Park Avenue and two blocks down it before my friends caught me. Naked. Naked as a lima bean. A speedball is from another world. It's a little bit dangerous. Pure coke, pure speed, and pure sex. Wow! The ultimate in climax. Once I went over to Dr. Roberts for a shot of cocaine. It was very strange because he wouldn't tell me what it was and I was playing it cool. It was my first intravenous shot, and I said, "Well, I don't feel it." And so he gave me another one, and all of a sudden I went blind. Just flipped out of my skull! I ended up wildly balling him. And flipping him out of his skull. He was probably shot up . . . he was always shooting up around the corner anyway.

And one last one. Fairly long, but I think it tells you a lot about how lost she was:

[quote] I was left alone with a substantial supply of speed. I started having strange, convulsive behavior. I was shooting up every half-hour . . . thinking that with each fresh shot I'd knock this nonsense out of my system. I'd entertain myself hanging on to the bathroom sink with my hind feet stopped up against the door, trying to hold myself steady enough so I wouldn't crack my stupid skull open. I entertained myself by making a tape . . . a really fabulous tape in which I made up five different personalities. I realized that I had to get barbiturates in order to stop the convulsions, which lasted either hours. Something was spinning in my head.

[quote]. . . I just kept thinking that if I could pop enough speed I'd knock the daylights out of my system and none of this nonsense would go on. None of this flailing around and moaning, sweating like a pig, and whew! It was a heavy scene. When I finally cooled down to what I thought was pretty good shape, I slipped on a little muumuu, ran down the stairs of the Warwick, barefoot to the lobby. My eye caught a mailman's jacket and a sack of mail hanging across the back of a chair in the hall way entrance, and before I knew what I was doing, I whipped on the jacket, flipped the bag over my shoulder, and flew out the door, whistling a happy tune. Suddenly I thought: "My God! This is a federal offense. Fooling around with the mail."

[quote] So I turned around and rushed back and BAM! the manager was waiting for me. He ordered me into the back office. They telephoned an ambulance from Bellevue and packed me into it. Five policemen. I was back into convulsions again, which was really a drag, and I tried to tell the doctors and the nurses and the student interns that I'd run out of barbiturates and overshot speed. . . . I could speak sanely, but all my motor nerves were going crazy wild. It looked like I was out of my mind. If you had seen me, you wouldn't have bothered to listen, and none of them did. Oh, God, it was a nightmare.

[quote] Finally six big spade attendants came and held me down on a stretcher. They terrified me . . . their force against mine. I got twice as bad. I just flipped. I told them if they'd just let go of me, I would calm down and stop kicking and fighting. But they wouldn't listen and they started to tell each other what stages of hallucinations I was in . . . how I imagined myself an animal. All these things totally unreal to my mind and just guessed on their part. Oh, it was insane. Then they plunged a great needle into my butt and BAM! out I went for two whole days.

[quote] When I woke up, wow! Rats all over the floor, wailing and screaming. We ate potatoes with spoons. The doctors at Bellevue finally contacted my private physician, and after five days he came and got me out. They sent me back to Gracie Square, a private mental hospital that cost a thousand dollars a week. I was there for five months. Then I ran away with a patient and we went to an apartment in the Seventies somewhere which belonged to another patient in the hospital, who gave us the keys.

The last one continued (it's a long story: must be all the speed she was taking):

[quote] The guy I ran away with was twenty, but he'd been a junkie since the age of nine, so he was pretty emotionally retarded and something of a drag. I didn't have any pills, so, kind of ravaging around, I went to see a gynecologist and a pretty well-off one. He asked me if I would like to shoot up some acid with him. I hadn't much experience with acid, but I wasn't afraid. He closed his office at five, and we took off in his Aston Martin and drove up the coast . . . no, what's the name of that river? The Hudson.

[quote] We stopped at a motel and he gave me three ampules of liquid Sandoz acid, intravenously, mainlining, and he gave himself the same amount and he completely flipped, I was hallucinating and trying to tell him what I was seeing. I'd say, "I see rich, embroidered curtains, and I see people moving in the background. It's the Middle Ages and I am a princess, " and I told him he was some sort of royalty. We made love from eight in the evening until seven in the morning with ecstatic climax after climax, just going insane with it, until he realized it was seven and he had to get back to his office to open it at eight-thirty. He gave me a shot to calm me down, and because I couldn't come down, I took about fourteen Placidyls.

[quote] On the way back something very strange happened. I didn't realize I was going to say it, but I said out loud, "I wish I was dead" . . . the love and the beauty and the ecstasy of the whole experience I'd just gone through were really so alien. I didn't even know the man . . . it had been a one-night jag . . . he was married and had children . . . and I just felt lost. It hardly seemed worth living any more because once again I was alone. He dropped me off at the apartment where I was staying with the runaway patient. I had a little Bloody Mary when I got there, and dropped a few more Placidyls.

[quote] With my tolerance, nothing should have happened, but I suddenly went into a coma. My eyes rolled back in my head. It was lucky . . . I had called an aide, Jimmy, at the hospital - he had been a good friend - I had called him anonymously and asked him to come and visit us. He happened to turn up just as I went into the coma. He and the heroin addict tried to wake me up. They slapped me and pumped my chest and they put me in a bathtub full of really cold water. Jimmy began to call hospitals - not psychiatric but medical - and one of them actually told them to let me sleep it off. But Jimmy just flipped. He knew I was dying, and he was right. He called Lenox Hill Hospital, and the police finally came. Jimmy and the heroin addict were taken into custody, and I was rushed to the hospital.

The last quote I swear, part 3 (of 3):

[quote] I was actually declared dead. My mother was called . . . and then BAM! I started breathing again. I was pretty shaken up by what happened because I didn't understand how I could have almost gone out on just fifteen Placidyls when I used to live on thirty-five three-grain Tunials a day, plus alcohol. They released Jimmy and the junkie, but of course I was still in the trap. I thought I was fine and that I could leave. But a psychiatrist came to interview me and I was put in the New York State Psychiatric Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital - committed on the grounds of unintentional, unconscious suicide.

[quote] It was a pretty devastating experience. They put me on eight hundred milligrams of Thorazine four times a day plus six hundred milligrams at bedtime - an ugly-tasting liquid, but it took quick effect and you couldn't hide the pills or spit them out later. I had all kinds of bad reactions from it - I'd get bad tremors and all itchy and wormy. I said I wasn't going to take the stuff any more, no matter what, so they finally took me off it one day. I had a seizure, vomited all over the floor, and I couldn't get tremendous dosages of Thorazine, but they accused me of importing drugs and taking them there in the hospital.

[quote] My doctor was young . . . a resident . . . and I just told him, "You think I've taken drugs. There's no point in even reasoning with you. I'll just go to some other hospital." I expected to go to some plush, tolerable hospital, but I was not accepted in any private hospital with the record they gave me. They committed me to Manhattan State on Ward's Island, in the middle of the East River, next to the prison. It was one of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever been through. Really terrifying.

[quote] I lived in a big dormitory on a ward with about sixty to eighty women. We did all the mopping, cleaning, making beds, scrubbing toilets. And the people there were just so awful. Really pathetic. Some of them were mean. The staff completely ignored you except to administer medication. I thought it was never going to end. In Manhattan State, even in there, there were pushers. One girl who lived in a smaller dormitory - there were two with about ten beds in them - was pushing speed and heroin. And because I'd been warned that if ever you were caught using drugs in a state hospital you'd be criminally punished, I didn't touch any drugs during the three months I was there.

Boy, at the Tsk-tsk Brigade is out in full force. Read Patti Smith's memoir to find out what Edie meant to kids who were stuck in nowheresville.

There was a high price to pay to be one of the cool kids in the Sixties.

That whole scene just seemed so dark and desperate to me

Edie knew she was doomed. A palm reader once told her that her lifeline was extremely short, and she said "I know. It's okay."

My favorite Edie Sedgwick song, written by another Edie:

Beautiful but clearly doomed.

Edith Minturn Stokes by John Singer Sargent

Edie was a Vogue Youthquaker!

R65 Mr. Stokes was an architect and I think designed the campus at American University of Beirut.

Okay, several people have said that Edie "invested her assets" in Warhol and the FActory, but I have a hard time believing that - rich girls of her era weren't given money of their own.

Rich girls of her era were frequently given a generous allowance so they could go live in the big city and find a rich husband, sometimes they had the income from a trust fund, but they were never given control over their own capital until they were older or married... even if their father wasn't a controlling psycho like Edie's. Edie Sedgwick was like "Little Edie" Beale, in that there was a limit on how long their families would fund the high life in NY, they both had their allowances stopped and got dragged home when they failed to marry a suitable rich bastard, although Edie didn't go the minute she got cut off. There were a few years of modelling, addiction, and nuthouse stays before she went back to California.

R82 is right. In Warhol's film Poor Little Rich Girl she talks about blowing her entire $80,000 trust fund within six months of moving to NYC. That was in early1964. She didn't meet Andy Warhol until March 1965. She wouldn't have had any money to spend on Andy at that point.

The Biography article linked below also frankly discusses her father's and brother's sexual abuse of Edie when she was a child. The source is her sister Suky.

Thinking of Nico as “mainstream” has caused me visions of her stealing Olivia Newton-John’s career, and now I hear Nico’s near monotone singing voice on Casey Kasem’s Top Forty broadcast with renditions of I Honestly Love You and Please Mister Please, complemented by that fucking harmonium she used to lug around.

Thank you, OP, for this gift.

I wasn't alive in the 60s, but I really don't think either Edie or Nico were close to mainstream figures at the time. The Velvet Underground and Nico's albums sold next to nothing at the time of release, and most of Nico's solo material is extremely non-commercial. Edie became a cult figure after Jean Stein's (great) biography - there were several songs written about her then, and several actresses were tipped to play her in a biopic (including Molly Ringwald, which seems like it would have been a disaster).

Our last look at Edie came from footage of a Santa Barbara fashion show taken the night before she died and aired in An American Family, a documentary about The Louds.

Miss Sedgwick was damaged goods from early on. She was institutionalized (I believe twice) in her youth with an eating disorder, and had been fucked up in general even before then.

Two of her brothers committed suicide while young. Their father had also been sent off to the nut bin repeatedly before they were even born.

Did anyone read Gary Indiana's book on Andy Warhol?

or Holy Terror by Bob Colacello?

Yeah, Nico was never mainstream.

I think the millennials can't understand underground figures or the idea of underground because everything is fed to them on the internet so they think everything was like that.

Songs inspired by Edie Sedgwick:

Bob Dylan, "Leopard-Skin Pillbox Hat" Bob Dylan, "Just Like a Woman" Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone" Velvet Underground, "Femme Fatale" Dramarama, "Anything, Anything (I'll Give You)" The Cult, "Edie (Ciao Baby)" Dream Academy, "Girl in a Million (for Edie Sedgwick)" Tal Cohen-Shaley, "Factory Girl (Song for Edie Sedgwick)" Alizee, [italic] Une Enfant Du Siecle [/italic] (whole album) Dean & Britta, "It Don't Rain in Beverly Hills" G-Eazy, "Downtown Love" Edie Brickell and New Bohemians, "Little Miss S." Shark Inferno, "Edie Superstar"

That's a lot of songs for a dead celebutante.

Were Warhol's "underground" films screened outside of NYC? If so, where?

Because if Edie was known outside of New York during the sixties, it'd be from those films. It was only after the book came out in the eighties that she became a cult figure.

R92 she would have been known by some outside NYC by features about her in Vogue, LIFE, Time, and appearances with Andy on Merv Griffin and a few other interviews. Not a household name, but definitely she had fairly widespread fame for a few years in the 60s... and then really became a cult figure to later generations when Jean Stein’s book came out in the mid 70s.

Paul America was a speed freak who, in urban legend, stayed awake for a year on speed.

Jean Stein's book on Edie came out in 1982

The public would not have known her in the 60s. Even with the hit book Edie in the 80s it only appealed to a certain segment.

Edie resembles equally doomed Brittany Murphy, but with a pixie hairdo (R78).

"Edie supported Andy with her money and connections and he turned his back on her, as though she were a sack of garbage. Glad he got shot."

Are you crazy? Sure seems like it. Edie Sedgewick never "supported" Andy Warhol in her life. And she had no "connections", just a fucked up family with a pedigree. You must be really insane.

At the end of the day, Edie & Andy were just people with virtues & flaws, like most of us. Here's the thing that bothers me: Edie was a pretty, young woman who came from old money, was almost entirely supported by her parents & squandered all the advantages she had in life. Andy was a gay man who came from a very humble background and he made himself into a huge success. Yet, Edie is beatified, Andy is demonized.

R17

The Stein & Plimpton book was a great book about Edie. I'd say the Vanderbilt apt is cursed. First Gloria's son, then Stein jumped out. Jean Stein's new book "West of Eden"about Hollywood families is supposed be good.

I grew up in CA. From magazine articles and Interview, the Stein and Plimpton's book, I knew about Edie, Ultra Violet, Viva, Brigid and Paul Morrisey. Nico came later for me and didn't make the impression on me that Edie did.

Edie's movie , "Ciao Manhattan" is pretty sad. I didn't want to see "Factory Girl" because I detest that director and it was rumored that Sienna Miller had to have sex w/ him in order to get the role.

2 of my NYC friends knew Warhol and visited the Factory. If only he hadn't hired a private nurse to watch over him at the hospital, he might still be alive.

R98, there's more to it than that. Edie only hurt herself. Andy . . . well, a lot of people who witnessed The Factory era thought that he was predatory and exploitive, that he preyed upon drug-addicted and unstable people to make his art. That is, of course, Stein's point of view, but many others shared it. Worth reading, if you can find it, is a damning article published by Esquire in 1974 titled "Andy's Children: They Die Young."

The Cult's tribute to her from 1989

I find it strange that Dylan had relationships with wayward and intense personalities like Nico and Edie, as he's a very low-key person in real life, who doesn't care about glamour. I love Nico's first three albums btw and I'm not even into experimental music.

Scroll down for Esquire article

R96 I see it, I love Brittany and she would've been great as Edie

Unlike many beautiful women, Edie had a terrrific speaking voice, similar to Judy Davis. Were it not for the drugs and the crazy, with that voice and face she had the potential to be star.

R102 I wouldn't call beating the mother of your kids almost til she died, low key.

Nico was very well known in France. I am french. She even had a child with Alain Delon, who is a superstar in my country, the most famous actor. I didn't mean she was mainstream in the US, I wouldn't know about that. there is a film about her, called 'Nico Icon' that played for over 20 yrs in Paris. She is quite famous here. Or was on the 60's/70's/80's.

R107 I think people who knew about hip music were aware of Nico at the time. And she was beautiful. For many others, it was Warhol's more flamboyant factory members that stood out -- the overweight Brigid and Viva because of her wild hair, colorful makeup and unusual name. Plus, Viva used to appear on the afternoon talk shows.

r99 Andy was never in great health even in the best of times, so to imagine he might still be alive today at 90 is kind of silly (though I think his two brothers did make it to their nineties). He more or less died in 1987 from his 1968 gunshot injuries.

Warhol died due to medical incompetence. Who knows how much longer he would have lived if he'd gotten proper medical care.

Edie was everything Warhol wanted to be and wasn't - beautiful, rich, well-born, and a cock magnet.

Nice paraphrase R111. Who really said it?

read about her family's burial plot: The Sedgwick Pie. It has its own Wikipedia article.

They didn't want Edie in the pie LOL. They didn't want to look at Edie on resurrection day. I am surprised that nobody here mentioned the fact that Edie's craycray dad was SCORCHING hot.

r107 I once heard that the real deal with Nico and Delon was, that Nico met a man who looked exactly like Delon (he used that trait to pick up women.) They had a one night stand and she later became pregnant. He told her, after they had sex, that he wasn’t really Alain Delon, but she refused to believe him and he never saw her again. He later tried to contact her son Ari (after Nico’s death) and offered to do a paternity test, but Ari refused.

^^^ I mean r107

LOL R115, did you get that info from Delon himself ? It was not a one night stand, it was an affair. There is a song by Marianne Faithful about her friend Nico that has the lyrics ' will Delon always be a shit?" and Ari was raised by Delon's mother. She totally knew she was his grandmother. Delon is a horrible person. Like evil. He is involved in murders and mafia, there were massive scandals in the seventies. For real. He has been a total shit even to his legal children. Evil human being

r117 I read it years ago (probably more than ten) and can’t remember the source. Faithful never knew Nico personally. She said she was in the same plane as Nico once and that was it. Did Delon’s mother ever do a DNA test?

The only famous female friend Nico had was Jean Seberg as I recall. Nico seemed to be more interested in friendsips with men.

[quote]What a charming person

You've been insulting people left and right for days, to the point of trolling. You don't have any right to tell someone else off for being rude.

I imagine Nico was a better-known figure in Europe. Besides Delon, she was with the director Philippe Garrel (Louis Garrel's father) for most of the 1970s and starred in several of his films. He later made a pretty good one about their relationship (I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar).

Delon's mother was convinced that Ari was his:

[quote]"I said to myself, that's my son's child. We went to see her [Nico], her and the baby. The kid was about two years old. He came running into my husband's arms. We were so moved. I saw my own son in him. And I truly believed that my son would accept him... When he heard about it two years after we had taken the baby, he had his agent tell me that I had to choose between the baby and my son. My husband said, 'Your son can feed himself, but Ari can't raise himself.' So we kept him.

[quote]Think about it, he was so little. Before we took him, she [Nico] dragged him around everywhere. He ate nothing but french fries, in train stations, hotels, airports. They lived like bohemians. She came to see him once in three years. She brought him something from America. Guess what? An orange. My husband and I looked at each other, speechless. We took the orange and thought, she's really not like other people... but I still liked her. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen".

R120 I have changed. I have seen the light. I am a different person now, and I am disgusted and offended by your rudeness.

If you're sensitive to rudeness, you're on the wrong website.

And you, Miss R16, R97 and R110, must be one of those human train wrecks on this thread who gets off by trying to insult others and projecting his craziness onto them. Or are you Andy speaking from the grave, all a-twitter at being insulted? You obviously don't belong here, since you don't even know how to quote posts correctly, as you showed when you singled out mine. Get help, Projection Troll, and God bless you! Even though you are so unlovable, he still loves you.

Anyway, Edie was exhibit #1 for why girls with no body fat look weird with breast implants.

She was really beautiful, though. The original Manic Pixie Dream Girl

There were no breast implants in 1970 honey.

Are you serious, R128? That is one of the sad, depressing things about Ciao Manhattan.

Are you trolling or just a moron, R128? The first breast implant surgery was in 1962.

The implants caused continuity errors in Ciao Manhattan, which is why one character remarks to her character that 'your tits sure did get bigger since then.'

Those later color sequences in Ciao Manhattan are so seedy and depressing. I don't know how the filmmakers felt good about filming her in that state.

Yeah, they were exploitative pigs. It is quite obvious even in that clip posted upthread.

Considering they started filming in early March 1967 and didn't film the last scenes until January 1971, they were probably just desperate to get it finished, no matter what state she was in. Good call, too: She OD'd by the end of that year.

Ciao Manhattan was depressing and fascinating. To hear her speak about being molested by her dad and brother(s?) was an eye opener to how blue bloods are every bit as sick, twisted and trashy as the peasants they look down upon.

It was a bit of an exploitative movie and I felt sorry for her. Edie is topless pretty much throughout the whole picture and if I recall she seemed wasted through the whole thing too.

I knew very little about her before seeing CM and she was a beauty to be sure and like most bright flames she burned out fast.

I remember reading that she got silicone shots, not implants

Same thing. Poison in her body to conform to the porn model of female beauty

I believe her death was ruled an accidental overdose, but it must have been a suicide. She knew she was done. So sad, to have burned through that much money and beauty and charisma at 28.

There were no implants, faggots. It was injections. Besides I was mentally ill, and like this Philips gurl, I made up the abuse stuff. We mentally ill people do that kind of stuff, didn't you know ?

I don't think you are the Ghost of Edie.

Her sister Suky said that Edie was molested, but her brother Jonathan said he never saw anything like that. It's probably a testament to what an evil fucker their father was that Jonathan didn't say it COULDN'T have happened, though. And his other brothers were dead by then so who knows?

Edie sure acted like someone who had survived childhood abuse.

I was one of those late 80’s / early 90’s hipster art-school kids who was aware of Edie because of the Cult song & some stills - and there were girls who aped her look a bit at the time - but I really didn’t know much about her.

A few years ago I went to a screening of some of Warhol’s screen-tests at BAM - and goddamn did Edie just jump off the screen - I’m sure her looks took a beating with all her hard living but in those short early soundless clips she is gorgeous and captivating and certainly had “It” in abundance.

I have also seen some early 30’s film footage of her dad - he was indeed very well built and stupidly hot - he could have been a 70s porn star.

Yeah, she should have gone to Hollywood instead of NYC. She would have died just as young, but she might have made a few watchable films before she overdosed.

Even in the incoherent Ciao, Manhattan, she pops off the screen. And not just because she's constantly thrusting her augmented tits at us.

I saw a bunch of those screen tests when they were projecting them at a museum a few years ago. It was so weirdly hypnotic that I could have sat there all day watching them (and waiting to see who the next one would be) but I think the friend I was with was getting impatient.

She couldn't go to Hollywood to film there. They tried to get her to. She couldn't remember lines. She was a heroin addict. Heroin, cocaine, speed, LSD. She just couldn't work.

Not by the end, but if she'd gone to Hollywood in 1964 instead of to Manhattan, she might have had an entirely different career.

But she was an art student, not an aspiring actress. And she was talented. Being a movie star is so tacky anyway

R143 - watching those screentests crystilized for me one aspect of Warhol’s genius - at a very basic level movies simply let us to gawk at impossibly beautful in the dark - the story is the fig leaf of respectability that allows us not to just feel like cheap voyeurs, and gives us a “reason” for paying attention.

Warhol knowingly strips that all away and flings it in our faces. All you want is to look giant picture at pretty people - that is enough. And it is - we can’t stop watching.

God typing in your phone sucks

All you want is to look at giant pictures of pretty people - that is enough.

[quote]OP's pic might be from the biopic done a few years ago.

I have no idea who that is in OP's photo, a model made up to look like Edie? Sienna Miler portrayed Edie in the biopic, that pic isn't even her. Sienna was fantastic as Edie, she even got Edie's voice down perfectly, she sounded just like her.

For those saying Andy W didn't use the people around him, all I can say, you know next to nothing about Andy. He was a user, even if he didn't use their money, he gravitated towards people from old money, he was obsessed with them and their connections.

So many from Andy's Factory crowd came from wealth. Andy was obsessed with social climbing, the world of wealth and it was even better, if the wealthy people were from old money. Andy's avant-garde underground crowd was as obsessed with money and fame, as any other group of people in showbiz, Andy & Co just used a different presentation.

The camera really did love Edie.

Let's think of movies she could have been fabulous in, if she'd been coherent and sane. My votes:

The Sterile Cuckoo

Rosemary's Baby

Cactus Flower

Barefoot in the Park and Love Story

John and Mary

They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

The Boyfriend

Edie was slightly plump before she went to NYC to be fabulous, it was the drugs that got her weight down to a photogenic point.

And the drugs that kept her from being unable to remember lines.

She looked better with short hair, too.

That was also baby fat: She was only 21 when she moved to NYC. Drugs or no drugs, she might have slimmed up.

More potential Edie movies:

Butterflies are Free

What's Up, Doc?

I was a kid and not aware of her at all. The only reason I knew who Andy Warhol was, is that the adults in my family were tv news junkies and his Campbell's Soup Can art made national news.

Darling

Secret Ceremony

Rosemary's Baby, with Warhol at the end looking up at her from the crib.

Edie couldn't have done Rosemary's baby, or even John and Mary. This is ridiculous. They were leading parts in very difficult films. It took a major talent, and a lot of experience, to play these parts. Esp Rosemary Woodhouse. She is the center of the story, and in every shot. Only a great actress could play her. Ruth Gordon would have eaten Edie alive in every scene.

A palm reader once told Edie that she would have a short life. "I know," she replied. "It's OK."

This is just speculation, based on the possibility of an emotionally stable Edie who got some acting lessons and a decent agent. It's fun to think of what might have been, but the truth is she was never emotionally stable, even as a teenager. She never would have lasted in the competitive atmosphere of Hollywood. She'd have cracked up there even faster than she did in Manhattan.

Or she could have been a model.

Or maybe a TV host like Jane Pauley.

TV:

Room 222

Get Smart

I was a kid, my parents watched Merv every night. Think Merv was based in NYC at that point. I remember Merv had Nico on! Just Nico and her harmonium.

I remember my father, ever the comedian, turning to my mother and saying, "What the hell did I just watch, most depressing music I've ever heard! Definitely NOT a Top Ten hit!"

My mom bought the Jean Stein book sometime in the '80s and I read it in the early '90s just when I was starting college. Most of my college friends knew about Edie or at least pretended they did, as I think would have been expected of sort of arty, club-by Chicago college students at that time.

There have always been figureheads of vapidity throughout the history of popular culture.

I dunno...after watching the clip at R28, I think with the right combo of drugs and the right director, Edie might have been able to handle a part in a legit film. Would she really have been a lot more difficult to manage than Monroe was at times?

Monroe was selling tickets. And was a much better actor than she 's ever given credit for. Edie never even tried to play a part. She was only herself on cam. And not really half as beautiful as Monroe.

R125, you are an imbecile, a crazy as shit asshole who is "glad" that Andy Warhol got shot. You are obviously very mentally ill and when it comes to being "unlovable", well, it's pretty obvious you've never had a friend or lover in your life. You have my abject pity. It must be hard to live a life as lonely as yours is, you poor, poor thing.

R171 are you alright? You sound like Rosie O'Donnell on a bad day

Show me pics of sexy daddy Sedgwick right now!

Hot Francis ' Duke ' Sedgwick

Edie's parents, R173.

Edie's father, he was a looker.

I loved Edie.

I wouldn't mind being sexually abused by Duke. My dad was hot. When I was a teenager I used to wait until he was asleep to sniff his hairy chest and his privates. He was giving me stiffos all the time.

By the time Monroe started to have serious mental health issues, she was already an established actress. Edie had several breakdowns in her teens. Getting fucked by your daddy from the age of seven will do that.

If she'd had a stable childhood and gone to LA early, and if she'd had the right breaks, Edie might have been able to have a career in film before the family strain of mental illness came for her. But that's a lot of ifs.

A lot of mentally ill have big careers in film and politics

Agreed, but the mental illness gets them later in life. Edie was nuts even as a teen.

She looked much hetter with the short, dyed blonde hair, than with her natural black hair. She was almost unrecognizable in the color footage of “Ciao! ... “

I bet she got to fuck Joe Dallesandro at some point. Lucky girl!

Can someone start a thread about Joe?

R172, are you alright? You sound like Donald Trump. He had a thing about Rosie O'Donnell, too. He's also a clod. You both have that in common, too. You and Trump, birds of a feather.

[quote]r134 I recall she seemed wasted through the whole thing too.

Now THERE'S a shocker (!!)

[quote]R144 She couldn't remember lines. She was a heroin addict. Heroin, cocaine, speed, LSD. She just couldn't work.

And as for [italic]plays[/italic], well....Broadway don't go for boooooze an' dope.

Edie's life as a "superstar" had come to an end after Warhol and his factory. She didn't really have any talent as an actress. She didn't have the discipline or ambition to because a serious model. In her youth she had exhibited talent as an artist, but never tried to get an education in order to pursue that as a career. She moved back to California and a married a rather unattractive young man named Michael Post she'd met while in a mental institution. They were living in a modest apartment in California when he woke up one morning to find her stone cold dead lying next to him. Dead of a barbiturate overdose at age 28. Did she kill herself? Who knows? Anyway, she's buried not in the Sedgewick Pie, but in a cemetery in Santa Barbara. Her grave stone reads simply "Edith Sedgewick Post -- wife of Michael Brett Post -- 1943-1971.

And yes, that picture the OP posted is not Edie. One of the many Edie imitators, it would seem.

In Ciao Manhattan without all the makeup she used to wear she looks a bit like Lana Del Rey only sickly and thinner.

Eddie's story is one of wasted talents and opportunities. With that childhood and genetic heritage, she never stood a chance. The raw material was there for many things-- artist, model, actress. But the drive and focus were missing. She is an icon of fragility and dysfunction. A muse of sorts, given all the songs and images she inspired during her life and after it. But she's more about what was projected onto her than what was ever inside of her.

Of all the artists who have been inspired by her, perhaps Warhol did understand her best. She is the perfect Pop Art icon, the ultimate Factory Superstar. A tragically gorgeous face, a childish body pumped up by speed and silicon, a diffuse air of possibility and mystery--with nothing behind it. Edie is an enticing ad for a product that was never made.

And yeah, I meant Edie not Eddie. Fucking autocorrect.

Edie Sedgewick's "style": short hair dyed "silver", very heavy eye make-up complete with bat wing eyelashes, and huge, dangling earrings.

But it worked well for her R191 - she was visually very captivating if ultimately not terribly talented.

Warhol once pointed out that drug addicts usually have the most beautiful skin..

Lovely post R189.

I was a kid in the late 60s/70s. I knew who Warhol was and I'd heard of Viva and Candy Darling, Lou Reed, of course, but had never heard of Edie Sedgwick until the bio came out. The biography was huge and put Edie kind of on the cultural map--a little way the Norman Mailer photo book on Marilyn Monroe (and Warhol's paintings) made Marilyn an even bigger icon dead than when she was alive. Kenneth Tynan's profile of Louise Brooks was another case of a long-ago beauty being brought back into the public eye, though Brooks was still alive at the time.

Anyway, I don't know that Edie had no talent as an actress--she was certainly charismatic and she had that ability to be unself-conscious in front of the camera. Somebody could have gotten a decent performance based on that and her looks--if she'd had an ounce of discipline. She also had dance training, so she moved fairly well. However, she was a mess early and often with the drugs. I don't think there was a period of time where she was healthy, drug-free and trying to be an actress/model. She was over before she began. One of the interviewees in Edie talks about her being at her healthiest and most beautiful when she was at Silver Hill--i.e. in a mental institution.

Even after she left Warhol and went back to California, she found some skeevy types to hang around with--she fell in with the biker crowd

I don't think she killed herself--like a lot of addicts who've semi-sobered up, she overestimated her tolerance. Her husband actually gave her the pills. He was younger than she was--inexperienced--a kid really. I looked him up once--he was working at a post office in central California. That said, I don't think she cared much whether she lived or died. She was pretty burnt out by 28.

I don't think she was [italic]organized[/italic] enough to kill herself. She just trashed her body with an eating disorder, and all the drugs.

I am another who had not heard of Edie until I saw her bio in a used bookstore. I was taken by the cover - that shot of her looking upwards from the CIAO! MANHATTAN poster - which became one of my favorite pop culture photos. It was also my intro to the Warhol crowd and scene of the 60s, about which I knew next to nothing.

[quote]Edie Sedgewick's "style": short hair dyed "silver", very heavy eye make-up complete with bat wing eyelashes, and huge, dangling earrings.

She was even more striking with short dark hair. The silver blonde was reportedly an effort for her to resemble Warhol (whom she emulated), and while eye-catching, it was not my favorite look of hers.

Why do drugs addicts have beautiful skin? That must have been before meth.

I loved her style and sense of fashion, she had an it factor for sure, and was very pretty in a gamine way ala Twiggy. It's very sad she ended like that. All the drugs and eating/mental illness. :(

Same old story. Poor little rich girl. Probably sexually abused by her father. Not very bright. Used up and spit out by the sociopathic opportunist Warhol. That sums it up.

I saw some interview with Brigid Berlin or whatever the hell her name is, another trust find asshole who wasted her life shooting up speed and hanging at The Factory. I don't remember where I saw the interview, maybe on OVATION a few years ago, it was likely part of a Warhol documentary. What a navel gazing asshole this woman is! I guess she was still living off family money because she didn't mention having a job. In the clip she was talking about getting healthy, her diet and her pets! Must be great never having to worry about money. What's sad, most of these trust fund poseurs possessed little actual talent. Warhol was definitely a vampire.

Unbelievable how brainless and vacuous most of the trust fund kids that Warhol surrounded himself with were. You do have to blame the parents for putting little to no demands on these individuals. Edie, unfortunately came from total dysfunction, but what about the rest of these rich kids parents? I find it hard to believe all these wealthy families had mental illness problems.

Now she is an old lady, tasteful friends

Edie’s dad was creepy-looking. Her brother Minty was hot, though.

Somebody actually made a whole documentary about Brigid Berlin called PIE IN THE SKY. A lot of it was about her addiction to key lime pie and her contentious relationship with her mother.

Wasn't Giovanni Ribisi's mother a regular at the factory? I 'll try to find link.....[research] My bad. It is actually Beck's mother, he is married to Marissa Ribisi. His mother, Bibbe Hansen, was a teen star at the early factory.

I saw that documentary r204 and I almost fell asleep. I remember she kept measuring food. What a fucking psycho.

Bibbe Hansen's dad was also part of the downtown Soho art scene before Soho actually took off as an arty neighborhood. Her dad was part of the Fluxus art movement. Yoko and even Laurie Anderson were also part of the Soho art scene.

Beck's mother

Another component of Edie's "look" was her big black eyebrows. With her huge caterpillar eyebrows, silver hair, smutty eye makeup, bat wing eyelashes and big earrings she looked almost as strange as Warhol.

I love her! so sad her ending.

[italic]R202 Now Brigid Berlin is an old lady, tasteful friends.

One guilty of [italic] Puggery Thuggery...!

Did Andy Warhol actually like any of these people?

Andy Warhol didn't even like himself.

I worked with Edie’s niece several years ago. She was early/mid twenties, very pretty and looked a lot like her aunt— tall, thin, busty, great figure. A nice girl. She was from Santa Barbara but her parents raised the kids partially in Idaho so they could have a more normal, less obviously privileged upbringing.