and she says, "your debutante just knows what you need, but i know what you want"

Edie Sedgwick, Part Four
POST FACTORY CAREER
A lot of people believe that just as Warhol had ‘used’ Sedgwick, that Dylan had done the same, that he never had any intention of making a film with her, and that he was just leading her on for the sake of it. Though it is evident that Edie perhaps believed she would be offered a contract with Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman, it has never been proven that Dylan offered her a role in a feature film. What he had apparently offered her was a part in what would become the documentary “Don’t Look Back,” where director DA Pennebaker had filmed footage of Sedgwick for.
Of her relationship with Neuwirth, Edie said (in the autobiographical “Ciao! Manhattan” tapes), “It was really said – Bobby’s and my affair. The only true, passionate, and lasting love scene, and I practically ended up in the psychopathic ward. I had really learned about sex from him, making love, loving, giving. It just completely blew my mind – it drove me insane…But the minute he left me alone, I felt so empty and lost that I would start popping pills.” Edie admitted she was ‘addicted’ to being with Neuwirth and was essentially dependent upon him after she left the Factory. After she announced her departure from the Factory, she tried modeling and appeared in “Vogue” in March 1966. Though everyone at Vogue was really passionate about her, she narrowly missed becoming a part of “the family at Vogue...because she was identified in the gossip columns with the drug scene, and back then there was a certain apprehension about being involved in that scene…people were really terrified by it…drugs had done so much damage to young, creative, brilliant people that we just were anti that scene as a policy,” said former senior editor Gloria Schiff. Most of the fashion industry had taken that stance, shunning most everyone with a known drug problem. She also tried her hand at acting, auditioning for Norman Mailer’s “The Deer Park,” though she didn’t get the part because Mailer thought “she used so much of herself with every line that we knew she’d be immolated after three performances.”
At the end of 1966 Edie left her residence at the Chelsea Hotel (she had burned down her Sutton Place apartment that October) to go home to Santa Barbara for the holidays. Her brother Jonathan described her as “really weird when she arrived at the ranch. She was an alien. She’d pick up what you were about to say before you’d say it. It made everyone uncomfortable. She wanted to sing and so she would sing, but it was a drag because it wasn’t in tune.” To the family, Edie had become “a painted doll, wobbly, languishing around on chairs, trying to look like a vamp.” Edie, in the “Ciao! Manhattan” tapes, admitted to being caught by her mother trying to buy Eskatrol (a form of speed) and was tricked by her parents (after giving her Nembutal, they claimed she held a dangerously high fever and needed to go to the hospital) into being checked into the psych ward at the county hospital.
After Edie was released from the hospital, she went back to the Chelsea and continued her drug habit. She had spent over $80,000 in drugs over six months and to fill her need, she would steal art and antiques from her grandmother and sell them. By early 1967, Sedgwick was so dependent upon drugs that Neuwirth, unable to cope with Sedgwick’s heavy drug use and violent mood swings, broke off the relationship.

well, you must tell me, baby, how your head feels under somethin' like that, under your brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat

Edie Sedgwick, Part Three
THE ENDING OF HER RELATIONSHIP WITH WARHOL, THE DYLAN CAMP
As a result of her growing popularity, Sedgwick was advised by many to break away from Warhol and go out to Hollywood to become a legitimate actress. One of these people was Bobby Neuwirth, who was associated with Bob Dylan at that time and whom Edie had first met briefly about a month before meeting Warhol. “Edie was fantastic,” Neuwirth said recalling their first meeting, “but she was always fantastic.” At the time that Bob and Bobby had met Edie, Dylan was living with his future wife Sara Lownds in the Chelsea Hotel, a fact that was apparently neglected to be passed on to Edie. As Sedgwick began to be drawn to the Dylan crowd, embarking on an affair with Neuwirth (not, as “Factory Girl” would have you think, with Bob Dylan) and being promised to be the leading lady alongside Dylan in a film they were supposedly planning, her relationship with Warhol began to flounder. As Paul Morrissey recounted that after Dylan and Neuwirth’s encouragement for her to leave the Factory, “suddenly it was Bobby this and Bobby that, and they [Warhol et al] realized that she had a crush on him. They thought he’d been leading her on, because just that day Andy had heard in his lawyer’s office that Dylan had been secretly married for a few months…” During an argument at the Gingerman Restaurant in February 1966 “Andy couldn’t resist asking, ‘did you know, Edie, that Bobby Dylan has gotten married?’ She was trembling. They realized that she really thought of herself as entering a relationship with Dylan, that maybe he hadn’t been truthful.” Whether Dylan had really led her on (intentionally or not) or if the idea that she hadn’t know about his marriage and she thought herself an inner part of his group from her relationship with Neuwirth, that issue will probably always remain clouded (it is reported that Sedgwick had feelings for Dylan, but it’s doubtful that they were requited, let alone reciprocated). What we do know is that after Warhol told her this at the Gingerman, Edie left to make a phone call before stating to Warhol and everyone that she was leaving the Factory for good. Gerard Malanga commented on the fight between Edie and Andy that “she left and everybody was kind of quiet. It was stormy and dramatic. Edie disappeared and that was the end of it – she never came back.”
In May 1966, Dylan’s critically and commercially successful “Blonde on Blonde” was released. Many of the songs are believed to be written about Edie and her relationship with Andy Warhol. While Patti Smith’s claim that without his relationship with Edie Dylan never could’ve recorded “Blonde on Blonde” can seem over-exaggerated to some, it is easy to see many allusions to her throughout the double album. Nico was one of the first to claim that “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” was about Edie, others believe the ‘debutante’ in “Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again” was referring to her, “Just Like a Woman” is believed in part to be inspired by Sedgwick (with ‘her amphetamines and her pearls’), and many believe that Dylan was addressing the Sedgwick-Warhol dynamic in “Like a Rolling Stone,” calling her ‘Miss Lonely’ and Warhol the ‘Napoleon in rags’ and the ‘diplomat on the chrome horse.’ Even Warhol was aware of the possible allusions to him on Dylan’s album. “I liked Dylan, the way he created a brilliant new style…I even gave him one of my silver Elvis paintings in the days when he was first around. Later on though, I got paranoid when I’d heard rumors that he’d used the Elvis as a dart board up in the country. When I'd ask, 'why did he do that?' I'd invariably get hearsay answers like 'I hear he feels you destroyed Edie,' or 'listen to “Like a Rolling Stone” - I think you're the 'diplomat on the chrome horse,' man.' I didn't know exactly what they meant by that - I never listened much to the words of songs - but I got the tenor of what people were saying – that Dylan didn't like me, that he blamed me for Edie's drugs.” A year after Edie made “Lupe,” she came back and filmed “The Andy Warhol Story” with Rene Ricard, an unreleased, drug-fueled film where the two of them pretend to be Warhol and satirize his aloof and ‘abusive’ ways. The film, only screened once at the Factory, is believed to be either lost of destroyed.

you've gone to the finest school all right, miss lonely, but you know you only used to get juiced in it

Edie Sedgwick, Part Two
WHEN ANDY MET EDIE
It was in early 1965 that Edie met Andy Warhol, at Lester Persky’s apartment. A few weeks later Sedgwick and Wein began frequenting the Factory at the apex of the romantic and still-new Warhol image. Her first film with Warhol was “Horse,” a quick cameo of sorts of her entering the Factory doors at the end. After that was “Vinyl,” an otherwise all-male imagining of “A Clockwork Orange” that Warhol stuck Edie into at the last minute (much to Gerard Malanga’s annoyance). In March they filmed “Poor Little Rich Girl,” a film that would become synonymous with Sedgwick’s persona. Part of the ‘saga’ including “Restaurant,” “Face,” and “Afternoon,” “Poor Little Rich Girl” featured Edie in her apartment as she’s waking up, applying her makeup, listening to albums, trying on clothes, making plans for the evening, smoking cigarettes, and talking about how she spent her entire inheritance in six months. In April, 1965, Edie (now “the queen of the Factory”) accompanied Warhol (and Gerard Malanga and Chuck Wein) to Paris for an exhibit of Warhol’s work. Following their return, Warhol requested from Factory screenwriter Ron Tavel a script for Edie, “something in a kitchen. White and clean and plastic.” Warhol got exactly what he asked for, “Kitchen” starring Edie with Rene Ricard and Roger Trudeau was the result. After “Kitchen,” Chuck Wein replaced Tavel as writer/assistant director for “Beauty No. 2,” a film with Gino Piserchio that some consider to be her finest work with Warhol. The film, featuring Sedgwick kissing Piserchio only to keep being interrupted by an ominous voice’s aggressive and prying string of questions (courtesy of Chuck Wein), earned the underground star comparisons to Marilyn Monroe. By now, Warhol had long dubbed her his ‘superstar’ and the pair were often seen together around New York, at both classy socialite events and dingy downtown clubs. With Edie on his arm, Warhol was introduced to a new level of publicity and fame, eventually being welcomed into the wealthy world of upper New York.
Sedgwick was now one of the most popular girls in New York, embodying the edgy “now” image associated with Warhol, but also combined with her refined, upper-class upbringing. Her appearances in Warhol’s films were earning her a following; her trademark shoulder-duster earrings, cropped platinum hair (done to resemble Warhol), and wardrobe of black tights, leotards, and mini dresses (worn to ‘defy’ her upbringing and her parents) were becoming quite fashionable among girls who were both lanky like Edie, and some that weren’t really but just liked to pretend they were. She appeared in the August 1965 issue of Vogue, where Editor Diane Vreeland dubbed her a ‘youthquaker,’ and in the September issue of Life magazine in a fashion spread. Warhol had requested for Lou Reed of the Factory band The Velvet Underground to write a song about Edie, saying ‘oh, don’t you think Edie’s a femme fatale, Lou?’ The result was the Nico-sung ballad “Femme Fatale.” Throughout the rest of 1965, Edie continued to make films with Warhol, including “Prison,” “Outer and Inner Space,” “Chelsea Girls,” and her last official film for Warhol, “Lupe.” But by late 1965, Sedgwick and Warhol’s relationship had grown distant, namely because of Edie’s growing connection with the Dylan camp and her dissatisfaction over Warhol not paying or rewarding her in any way for her work. While out, Edie had always customarily picked up the tab; after months of paying for the Factory gang without seeing any profit from the films she made and the celebrity she experienced, she felt taken advantage of, not believing when Andy would say that his films weren’t commercial and made no money. She requested that Warhol not show any of her films again and for the footage of her in “Chelsea Girls” to be edited out (it would be replaced with a trippy lights sequence of Nico with Velvet Underground music playing in the background).

*Stay tuned for more Edie-entries*

and she aches just like a woman, but she breaks just like a little girl

Edie Sedgwick, Part One In an anticipatory celebration of this Monday (April 20), which would have been her 66th birthday, I will be doing a series of posts about the life of Edie Sedgwick. I have had a long-held fascination with her -- her iconic style and troubled life, her famous relationship with Andy Warhol and her sensationalized one with Bob Dylan. She was the odd combination of a vulnerable innocent and someone who has seen the ugliest ends of the Earth. The fact that despite how many people have published books, blogs, articles, and films around her, Edie Sedgwick can still remain a mystery is astonishing. Her life has been plagued by ugly lies and, at times, uglier truths. I hope that my entries can help you understand (even if only a little bit) her life, and, even if it doesn't, I hope that it at least piques your curiosity in her.
There have been many (false) stories spread about Edie that are considered truths in her life. One is that Andy Warhol was responsible for her drug addiction, introducing her to drugs and then disposing of her once she had served her purpose to him. Another is that she had an affair with Bob Dylan, who convinced her to leave Warhol and the Factory behind to become a Hollywood star and then proceeded to toss her aside just as Warhol had, telling her he would put her in a film with him that he was never really planning to make.
As opposed to the oft-told story of Warhol using-and-abusing Sedgwick, it seems that Sedgwick’s choice to break away from the drug-addled reputation of the Warhol group was closer to the truth. The length of their friendship is also over-exaggerated at times; their relationship, though probably very intense and connected, lasted only eleven months (March 1965 to February 1966). The reason for Andy’s later dismissive treatment of a mention of Edie was probably because he felt something akin to a jilted lover, still bitter from a partner leaving him. He said in his autobiography that what he felt for Sedgwick was “probably close to a certain kind of love.” He used the name “Taxi” for Edie, a name he had used for her previously in his 1968 novel “a, A novel,” but despite the guise his love for Edie still shines through. He describes how magnetic and wonderful she was, saying she was the “one person in the 60s [who] fascinated me more than anybody I had ever known,” but describes how she “drifted away from us after she started seeing a singer-musician who can only be described as The Definitive Pop Star – possibly of all time – who was then fast gaining recognition on both sides of the Atlantic as the thinking man’s Elvis Presley.” To Warhol, Bob Dylan stole Edie, his Edie, away. In the chapter entitled ‘Love (Prime) – The rise and fall of my favorite sixties girl’ Warhol admitted a humble but ultimately unsuccessful truth: “I missed having her around, but I told myself that it was probably a good thing that he was taking care of her now, because maybe he knew how to do it better than we had.”

EARLY LIFE
The tragic story of Sedgwick’s short life has just compounded her “Poor Little Rich Girl” persona. Born the 7th of eight children into a mentally unstable, socially important family (her great-great-great grandfather was a signer of the Declaration of Independence) in Santa Barbara, Edith Minturn Sedgwick was born on April 20, 1943. Because of her father Francis’s history of mental breakdowns, a doctor advised Francis (Fuzzy) and his wife Alice that they shouldn’t have children. Edie admitted during the 60s that as a child both her father and two of her brothers had tried to sleep with her but she turned all of them away. Her first real encounter with drugs of any form came after she found her father cheating on her mother with a neighbor. After she tried to tell her mother what she witnessed, her father told her that she was crazy and called a doctor who “gave me so many tranquilizers I lost all my feelings.” Edie was first institutionalized during the fall of 1962. She suffered from anorexia while in school (a disease which would plague her until the end of her life) and, like her brother Minty, was placed in the Silver Hill mental hospital (Minty would live there until the end of his life when in 1964 he committed suicide; another brother Bobby was institutionalized in Manhattan and died early January 1965 after a motorcycle accident left him in a coma since New Years Eve, 1964). Her anorexia persisted while she was at Silver Hill, getting to the point where she weighed a dangerously low ninety pounds, and she was moved to the far stricter Bloomingdale hospital. Toward the end of her stay at Bloomingdale, Sedgwick became pregnant and had to have an abortion.
In the fall of 1963 Edie was released from Bloomingdale and moved to Cambridge to attend Radcliffe College, where she began hanging out with Ed Hennessy, “a kind of deliberately outrageous dandy,” and Chuck Wein, a recent graduate of Harvard who had “come back to bum around.” She left Cambridge soon after her twenty-first birthday, moving into her grandmother’s Park Avenue apartment in 1964, with Chuck Wein also moving to Manhattan as well. Edie’s friend at the time recalled that in their early New York days Wein “would be plotting out the next move of their strategy, whom he was going to introduce to Edie that night, what they could do for her. Chuck had a real promoter’s vision about her; he knew that she had this quality but that she was totally disorganized and wouldn’t be able to pull it off herself…so he took over her life.”

*Stay tuned for the continuing story of Edie Sedgwick*