Unsung: Edie Sedgwick’s fame lasted longer than 15 minutes

Fame lasted longer than 15 minutes for Edie Sedgwick, a “superstar” from Andy Warhol’s… Fame lasted longer than 15 minutes for Edie Sedgwick, a “superstar” from Andy Warhol’s early independent filmmaking in the silver ’60s. Edie got about a year – 1965 – of a pure, unadulterated, fun, fab, look of the moment, color of the month, in your face fresh, hot, new, now kind of fame. She even earned a title: “1965 Girl of the Year.” But inner demons – her relationship with her control-freak father, patriarch of a wealthy family on the Social Register, and her institutionalized adolescence – as well as her increasing pressure to impress her public, and a growing dependency on drugs started to spoil the fun.

Her roles in Warhol’s avant-garde films – often without plots and filled with ambient noise and arbitrary camera movement – weren’t the source for New York society’s fascination and applause. Her breakthrough role in “Vinyl” required her to do little more than to smoke and fling her ashes around. Rather, her social prestige, beauty and irreverent demeanor at theatre performances and discotheques, where she was escorted by Warhol, gained her the praise and – perhaps – curiosity from New York society that she craved.

One interviewer asked, “Where is the real Edie Sedgwick? At home with a book?”

“The real Edie is where the action is. Fast cars. Fast horses, and people doing things!” she retorted.

Her eccentric sense of fashion gained the attention of Vogue, where she landed a photo spread at the height of her popularity. Unfortunately, no modeling career materialized. Vogue’s editors – a couple years before the Summer of Love – were afraid to associate the magazine with Edie’s early counter-culture image.

Warhol’s painting had already earned him recognition as a leading artist in the Pop Art movement prior to his filmmaking, and Edie’s association with him completed her image as a Youthquaker at a time when American culture was beginning to change.

As Warhol’s cinema became more cryptic, Edie became ambivalent about working with Warhol and his screenwriter, Ronald Tavel, a poet who had impressed Warhol with his reading at an East Village coffeehouse. For Edie, Tavel wrote “Kitchen,” a 70-minute, black and white film in which characterization was eliminated by giving all the characters the same name. Although many writers and critics began to imbue the spacey films with sophisticated, subterranean meaning, Edie became concerned that she appeared foolish and was damaging her image. She wondered if she should try to bank in on her current status and make opportunities for herself with the Hollywood establishment – becoming a “legitimate actress.”

After tantrums on the set ended with her tearing up her script and insulting Warhol about the artistic content of his filmmaking, Edie was not given more work at the Factory. Her departure became difficult for her since she didn’t have any other vehicles for her Edieness – or neediness – to be filmed or photographed. Besides that, this granddaughter of an East Coast railroad magnate needed a job. She had emptied her trust fund on spending sprees, limousine rentals (after her friend she hired as her amateur chauffer crashed her prized gray Mercedes into a taxi), picking up the tab and thousands of dollars of makeup. Reportedly, she spent hours on her makeup each day before finally heading out into the night to attend party after party until returning to her East Side apartment.

She moved to the Chelsea Hotel where she could afford the lower rent. There, she accidentally set fires in her room twice. She escaped both times, but the second time, her cat, Smoke, wasn’t so lucky.

She eventually married a nice young man she met in a mental ward where they both were sent to dry out. He tried to make her happy until she died in her sleep in 1971 from a decade of “Speed, Madness, and Flying Saucers,” as someone wrote for a poster advertising her last film, “Ciao! Manhattan.” The work reflected on her experience as a New York “superstar” of Warhol’s underground cinema of the ’60s.

Edie appears this week in “Outer and Inner Space,” in which she discusses outer space, her drugs and her family problems. Directed by Andy Warhol, “Outer and Inner Space” plays at The Warhol’s Screening Room Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at 12:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 p.m.