Mary Woronov

The most famous was the epic CHELSEA GIRLS (66) which was two 16 mm films, shown side by side, running 210 mins. It even was partially in color and featured instrumental jamming by The Velvet Underground. Paul Morrissey was production assistant. The “Pope Ondine” segment featured Ingrid Superstar, Mary Might and International Velvet. “Hanoi Hanna (Queen Of China)” also featured Might, Velvet, and Superstar. Other segments included Brigid Polk, Mario Montez, Malanga, Edie Sedgwick, and Nico (and her son by Alain Delon, Ari). It opened in September and played around the country in various “art” theatres. Nobody was paid for being in these Warhol films, but CHELSEA GIRLS made news and money, so Mary’s mom sued. She eventually got $1000 in an out of court settlement. “I never saw any of it.”

    The next year (67), Warhol released THE 24 HOUR MOVIE, or ****, a feature guaranteed not to make money. It was, again, two separate 16mm reels. Two projected images were superimposed on a single screen. It was shown complete only once (in December). The “superstars” in it included International Velvet, Ultra Violet, Gerard Malanga and Ingrid Superstar. The “Imitation of Christ” segment features Nico, Ondine, Brigid Polk, Taylor Mead and Tom Baker. “I realized when I was writing, this is not going to happen again. It was good and it was special in its way and it will be lost. Just as much as something from the Edwardian period. I realized that I was tremendously fond of these people. I didn’t know how until I started writing. I would start writing, thinking, ‘I gotta write about so and so because I really hated them,’ and I would realize I didn’t really hate them at all. It’s interesting to write something now about the past. ”

    The next year Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanis (the day before the Robert Kennedy assassination!) “After Warhol was shot, he really did become a factory instead of what he was when he called himself a factory. He just did portraits of famous people and he stopped letting the people I knew, the crazy people, come around. When the silver factory was going on, these people were nuts.” Warhol became obsessed with celebrities. In 69 he and Morrissey started Interview, which is still being published. “I think it was a consequence of being shot. But what was around Andy he made art of. If he was shot, he would go on about it, make art of it. I mean he just made art out of what came close to him. When we were around him, he made us art. When he started sectioning himself off and giving over to other people, I mean Morrissey started making his movies. Other people started running the factory. I don’t really know what he was like then because I wasn’t there, but it was different.

    “He did not understand when people did not like him. Like if people didn’t like The Velvets he would ask everybody, ‘What’s wrong with them?’ It never occurred to him that they were perceived as ‘beyond’ and scary, singing stuff about heroin. He just could not believe that they didn’t understand his point or didn’t like him. So when someone actually shoots him, or tries to take the money away from him because they were wronged, he really didn’t understand that. I mean, it’s obvious but, still, it would hurt him.”

    In 68 Woronov started appearing in plays. “I started doing plays, off off Broadway plays and I got a little bit of a name for myself, mainly because I just did the wackiest plays in the world and people were floored at what I did. The Arms Of Electra, Big Mama. Off off Broadway plays were not what they are now. People came from uptown and took their lives in their hands. And we would put on these insane plays like Kitchenette. In Conqueror Of The Universe, we were all running around with giant dicks! I often played a man, or a female very much like a man. They were very crazy plays. You could say your dialogue or not say your dialogue or scream at the audience. It was the time of the Living Theatre, of Charles Ludlam’s Theatre of the Ridiculous. That’s what I was in. Charles Ludlam had a part of it and Juan Vaccaro had another part. I did these plays and I realized that I liked to act. It was the only thing I was doing.”

    She was in three features by her husband at the time, Theodore Gershuny. KEMEK (PV #15) was filmed in 1970 in Italy and Canada. Years later Woronov was brought back to film new framing scenes and it was first released as FOR LOVE OR MURDER. “After doing all those plays with the Warhol generation I was not exactly your average actress. I was pretty much up for anything. Nobody’s seen these movies. OK, I’m still doing art movies on the East Coast. I was mostly doing plays, which is how he (Gershuny) saw me. Actually, I think he wanted to ball me but he said, ‘Look, I’m doing this movie in Europe and I want you to be in it.’ And it was a really incredible movie. But the producer had cancer. He died and it ended up in the producer’s estate. It was just a beautiful movie and he put his all, his heart into it. It was a great story too, so twisted. My husband does these great, very twisted, well his generation is 50’s into the 60’s, it’s a very bizarre generation, the 50’s just before it turns. And he knows his film culture well. He would do these movies about what men considered sexy in that time, that era. That’s what SUGAR COOKIES is. And it was a twisted era! This one was about a man who was inventing a drug that would make everyone brain dead, whatever. He was all powerful and he had a woman who helped him - that was me. And Alexandra Stewart was the girl that he sent to get - he needed from a man who was on the island of Rositano in Italy.