The transgender superstar and Andy Warhol factory regular Holly Woodlawn died this week at what The Guardian described as the “cheeky” age of 69. Woodlawn liked to say she was descended from the Woodlawn cemetery fortune, as if there were one. A member of the loosely associated artist and artist manque coterie that orbited Warhol in the ’60s, ’70s and early ’80s, Woodlawn turned her hardscrabble life into at least 15 minutes of fame — in downtown circles anyway. She wrote a book about her travails and triumphs called A Low Life in High Heels: The Holly Woodlawn Story.
Warhol called his coterie “superstars” half-tongue-in-cheek and half-reverently. Why shouldn’t they be superstars? was the question implicit in the category. Especially since most of them were film stars — even if starring in an Andy Warhol movie didn’t rate quite the same on the luminary scale as, say, starring in a Steven Spielberg film. Still Warhol himself shone brightly and his reflective glow was enough to anoint the farrago of characters he kept near him. Wikipedia lists 34 Warhol superstars in all. With Holly Woodlawn gone, just 15 are still among the living. Warhol died in 1987 at the age of 58.
Here’s the list, the living in bold:
- Paul America (died 1982, car accident)
- Penny Arcade
- Benedetta Barzini
- Richard Bernstein (died 2002)
- Susan Bottomly (later known as International Velvet)
- Jayne County (rock’s first transgender singer?)
- Jackie Curtis (died 1985, heroin overdose)
- Joe Dallesandro
- Candy Darling (died 1974, lymphoma)
- Isabelle Collin Dufresne (aka Ultra Violet, died 2014)
- Eric Emerson (died 1975)
- Andrea Feldman (died 1972, suicide)
- Cyrinda Foxe (died 2002)
- Bibbe Hansen (Hey, it’s Beck’s mom!)
- Fred Herko (died 1974)
- Jane Holzer
- Naomi Levine
- Elecktrah Lobel
- Gerard Malanga
- Taylor Mead (died 2013)
- Mario Montez (died 2013)
- Billy Name
- Nico (died 1988)
- Ondine (died 1989)
- Brigid Berlin
- Edie Sedgwick (died 1971)
- Jack Smith (died 1989)
- Ingrid Superstar (unknown)
- Cherry Vanilla
- Viva
- Louis Waldon (died 2013)
- Chuck Wein (died 2008)
- Holly Woodlawn (died 2015)
- Mary Woronov
