Andy and Candy

Interview, April, 1996 by Richard Pandiscio

Candy Darling, who lived from 1946 to 1974, was loved because she showed the world, in the most beautiful way, that beauty didn't just belong to those who were born with it. With Andy's belief in her, Candy Darling showed that she could be just as big a star as her movie heroines Lana Turner and Kim Novak. After all, it didn't matter that Lana Turner was born Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner, in Wallace, Idaho, or that Kim Novak was born Marilyn Pauline Novak, in Chicago, Illinois, and toured the country promoting refrigerators as Miss Deepfreeze. They had aspirations. They worked hard. They made it to the top. So why, then, would it matter that Candy Darling was born James Lawrence Slattery in Brooklyn, New York?

Rather than accepting the life that, at the time, was prescribed for boys who wanted to be girls or girls who wanted to be boys - which meant a life of utter outsiderness, a life of being called a freak, a weirdo, a sicko - Candy thought she could make her mark on the culture. When she met Andy, she found someone who understood her glamour in deep ways. Andy knew that she represented more of that old Hollywood screen magic than most of the stars of the '60s, many of whom didn't want to symbolize glamour anymore. Candy did. She knew from her own life of dreaming about glamour how much it meant to people, how much fantasizing about it could fill in the loneliness that one felt. Candy loved being seen as beautiful, partly because that was so different from how she'd been seen for most of her life. That's all part of why Warhol, who met her in 1967, was so attracted to her.

Warhol facilitated her fame. He cast her as the star of one of his films, Women in Revolt [1971], and she appeared in Flesh [1968]. Warhol was instrumental in turning the spotlight on Candy, but she had readied herself for it. By the time she died of cancer at age twenty-seven, Candy Darling was loved by both downtown and uptown society. And although she didn't always get the starring role, she was always the star she'd dreamed of being. She was a friend of Tennessee Williams, who cast her in the off-Broadway premiere of his play Small Craft Warnings. She made several films and television dramas with other directors. She did theater alongside Robert De Niro. She interviewed celebrities for this magazine. She was photographed by Richard Avedon and Cecil Beaton. And she was immortalized by Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground in the song "Candy Says."

In her published journal excerpts, Candy Darling (Hanuman Books, 1992), she wrote something that summarized her brilliant, romantic view of life: "I don't think the sunrise is as good as the moonlight." It was a life too brief.