Amanda LePore – The WOW Report

Darling by David Bailey, 1973

“I am a star because I have always felt so alienated and I project this feeling to others.”

She was a film star, a socialite, a model, a celebrity, Manhattan Bohemian royalty and inspiration to generations of transgender castaways.

I wish she would have been around for our era, a time when we can at least speak about transgender rights, with trans-people on the cover of magazines, with their own television shows, thanking people for their Emmy Awards, and being handed medals for bravery. At 73-years-old, would Darling be held as the pioneering Trans Icon she truly is? Would she have wanted mainstream acceptance? Would she still be ravishingly gorgeous? I like to think that Candy Darling might have had it all.

Like Andy Warhol and the rest his crowd, Darling probably wasn’t all that political. But she did possess audacity, daring and spunk, taking a path of her own choosing, instead of the one imposed on her by the social conventions and the morality of her time.

Considering Darling on her birthday, I think it is time for her to be feted, with homage of every kind. I suggest a USPS stamp in 2018, perfect for our modern times.

Darling’s persona began as a socialite in the rarefied 1960s underground Greenwich Village scene of outsiders who accepted her and loved her for who she was. Her Darling daring was quite profound. She lived at a time in NYC when a person would be arrested for dressing as the opposite gender in public and being transgendered was not a plea anyone could use in defense. She could only have dared to use the women’s public bathroom.

Darling served as a muse for Warhol and she starred in many of his underground movies. She even had a role in a Tennessee Williams’ Off-Broadway play. Yet, for everything she accomplished in her short life, Candy Darling was her own greatest creation.

Darling idolized the great Golden Age Of Hollywood female stars. She was especially infatuated with Kim Novak. The soft spoken dame wearing diamonds and gowns was who she wanted to be. Many of her friends said she was always in character to the point where it was silly. But in a way I feel that it was probably a defense mechanism, a way to create a world around herself and a person to play on the stage we call life so that in the end it blocks out the fact that many during her time did not and would not accept her. I am sure many people Candy knew did not accept her as a woman or even as a person for that matter, but wanted be around her because she was a living, breathing work of art.

Darling was born James Lawrence Slattery, Jr. in Massapequa, LongIsland. He was raised by a single mother who worked as a bookkeeper at Manhattan’s Jockey Club.

He won a “Most Beautiful Baby” contest, mistakenly entered as a girl by his mother. As a kid, he ran a Kim Novak Fan Club. When he was 17-years-old, he was confronted by his mother with the rumors that he had been spotted in drag in a local gay bar. He exited the room and then remade his entrance as a girl.

When he was 20-years-old, Jimmy Slattery left Long Island and moved to Greenwich Village, arriving as Candy Darling. Drag Artist/Actor Jackie Curtis (born John Curtis Holder, Jr.), just 17-years-old, introduced Darling to Warhol after he had seen her in a play written by Curtis. Warhol cast them as two girls gabbing about glamour while Joe Dallesandro is getting a blow job from an old girlfriend in his film Flesh (1968).

Andy and Candy, via YouTube

Darling also appeared with Curtis and the late, great Holly Woodlawn (born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl) in Paul Morrissey and Warhol’s Women In Revolt (1972).

She played minor parts in major films, including Klute (1971) with Jane Fonda, and La Mortadella (1972) with Sophia Loren. Her best screen role is in Some Of My Best Friends Are (1971) about a sad group of people stuck in a mafia owned gay bar on Christmas Eve. Other film credits include Brand X (1970), Der Tod Der Maria Malibran (1972), and the low budget holiday horror flick Silent Night, Bloody Night (1974). She worked hard to be cast in the lead role in the film version of Gore Vidal’s novel Myra Breckinridge (1970), but the part went to Raquel Welch.

Darling and Tony Mansfield in :Women In Revolt”, via YouTube.

Darling is immortalized in pop culture, referenced in The Rolling Stones tune Citadel from their album Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967):

“Candy and Taffy

Hope we both are well

Please come see me in the Citadel.”

She is mentioned in a pair of Lou Reed songs, Candy Says:

“Candy says I’ve come to hate my body

And all that it requires in this world…”

And, of course, Walk On The Wild Side:

“Candy came from out on the Island

In the backroom she was everybody’s darlin”

In I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) Darling is portrayed, rather remarkably, by hunky Stephen Dorff. In the HBO film Cinema Verite (2011) she is played by Willam Belli.

The cover of the terrific album I Am A Bird Now (2005) by Antony And TheJohnsons, is an iconic shot of Darling on her deathbed by 1970s era photographer Peter Hujar.

Candy Darling left this world in spring of 1974, taken by Lymphoma (the same cancer that I survived), possibly complicated by the hormones she had been taking. In a letter addressed to Warhol, Darling wrote:

“Unfortunately before my death I had no desire left for life. I am just so bored by everything. You might say bored to death. Did you know I couldn’t last? I always knew it. I wish I could meet you all again.”

The eulogy at her funeral was read by her friend, actor Julie Newmar. Newmar:

“Well, Candy just worshiped and adored me and was so kind and marvelous that it was just a natural thing to have done. Candy was a genius. Hers was an extraordinarily high achievement. Her skin was so flawless, her behavior not limpid but liquid, the movement of her hands exquisite.”

Photograph by Gerard Malanga, 1971, via YouTube

Darling’s family destroyed most of her papers after she passed. But, a pair of memoirs were published posthumously: The Candy Darling Diaries (1992) and My Face For The World To See (1997). Her BFF, Jeremiah Newton, produced an excellent documentary, Beautiful Darling (2010), directed by James Rasin, with narration by Chloë Sevigny.

Photograph via YouTube

November 25,1960 – John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr.:

”It’s hard for me to talk about a legacy or a mystique. It’s my family. The fact that there have been difficulties and hardships, or obstacles, makes us closer.”

He didn’t use the “F.” or “Jr.” for his name; he simply went by John Kennedy. He was wealthy, charming, athletic, commanding and very handsome. He was also as close to a prince as this country could ever have.

There are so many iconic photographs of him, including the one where he is playing under his father’s desk in the Oval Office, but none more heartbreaking than the one where he is wearing that tiny blue coat, saluting his father’s passing coffin.

Photograph by Cecil Stoughton, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library

He made the newspapers on the first day his of life, and the last. Every milestone of his life was covered by the press: his baptism; his first Christmas; his first teeth, his first steps, his first haircut, his graduation from high school and college, who he was dating, including his classmate at Brown, Brooke Shields, plus Cindy Crawford, Madonna, Sarah Jessica Parker and Daryl Hannah; and the press cheered as he emerged with his gorgeous bride after their secret wedding in 1996.

John Kennedy was the charmed star of late-20th-Century America, yet, as it had been for so many members of his family, his ending was swift, public and way before its time.

Kennedy had both the Kennedy charisma and its curse. He sought privacy even after giving up a career in law or government. He failed the New York bar exam twice, before passing on his third try, and it was all covered by the media.

But like many sons of famous fathers, Kennedy seemed to always be searching for his place in the public life. The expectations for him had to have been overwhelming. He must have been conscious of the burden of being an ultimate American Icon.

There was that short while where it seemed he might try to make it as an actor. It was one of his passions. He had appeared in many plays while attending Brown University. But, his mother strongly disapproved, saying it was an unsuitable profession. In 1985, Kennedy made his NYC acting debut in front of an invitation-only audience at NYC’s Irish Theater. Nye Heron, the director of the Irish Arts Center, said that Kennedy was: “One of the best young actors I’ve seen in years”. Kennedy’s first professional acting gig was playing a fictionalized version of himself in a season-eight episode of the sitcom Murphy Brown. In this episode, Kennedy visits Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen) at her office, to promote a magazine he is publishing.

It was publishing that he chose in real life, even after spending all those years in front of the press. He was the founder and editor of George, a glossy magazine about politics.

While he helped the Democratic Party raise money, he never did run for office. He made his political debut at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, where he introduced his uncle Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Invoking his father’s inaugural speech, which called a generation to public service, he received a three-minute standing ovation.

Although he repeatedly played down expectations that he would one day run for public office, we all dreamed it was possible. Alfonse M. D’Amato, the former Republican Senator from New York who was a contributor to George, said Kennedy would make a strong candidate for NYC Mayor, a suggestion that Kennedy laughed off. Kennedy:

”A public career is… it’s a lot to bite off. And you better be ready for it, and you better have your life set up for it and you better be prepared to do it for the long haul.”

A real jock, he was often photographed shirtless. In 1988, People Magazine named him ”The Sexiest Man Alive”. They got it right that time. A picture from that issue was on my fridge until it yellowed and fell off. He was a 6-foot-1,190-pound hunk who liked to ride bicycles, rollerblade, dance, and throw footballs.

He was born on Thanksgiving Day, just three weeks after his father was elected POTUS. He was the first infant to live in the White House since 1893.

President Kennedy’s funeral was held on his son’s third birthday. Before that iconic photo was snapped, his mother had leaned down and whispered to him in advance to salute, a gesture the he had seen many times as military escorts greeted his father.

After his father’s murder, his mother moved the family to an apartment on the Upper East Side of NYC. Security was always a major preoccupation. When he turned 6-years-old, his mother commented on his maturity, telling the press:

”Sometimes it almost seems that he is trying to protect me instead of just the other way around.”

He attended a Catholic elementary school and he was so boisterous that the Secret Service agents gave him the code name Lark. Still, his mother worried about her children’s safety, especially after Robert F. Kennedy was murdered in 1968. Jacqueline Kennedy:

”If they’re killing Kennedys, then my children are targets. I want to get out of this country.”

In 1968, she married Aristotle Socrates Onassis, the Greek shipping magnate who was 29-years older, in part because of he was able to provide her family with security.

His mother was the world’s most famous woman, but she sought desperately to give her kids a normal life. When John was mugged in Central Park when he was 13-years-old, she said it was a valuable experience for him for life as an adult. Kennedy always made a point of taking public transportation in NYC.

Breaking with family tradition, he went to Brown University instead of Harvard, graduating in 1983. He majored in American History. He enrolled in law school at NYU, mostly to please his mother.

After finally passing the bar exam on the third try, he took a job as a prosecutor in the office of the Manhattan District Attorney. The tabloids labeled him the ”Hunk Who Flunked”. Kennedy:

”I’m clearly not a major legal genius.”

After four years as an Assistant D.A., and with a perfect 6-0 conviction record, he announced that the law bored him. As he left the District Attorney’s office, he told the press:

”I don’t want to be just another passenger on a liner.”

When he turned 34-years-old, he started George in a joint venture with Hachette-Filipacchi, a media conglomerate. For the next in line of America’s most illustrious political dynasty, the magazine was a way to both connect him to his family’s past and let him find his own place in the world.

In a 1998 interview, he stated:

”I think everyone needs to feel they’ve created something that was their own, on their own terms.”

For George, he was the publisher, but also an interviewer and essayist. In a controversial essay in August 1997, he described his first cousins Joseph and Michael Kennedy as ”poster boys for bad behavior”.

via YouTube

He seemed to enjoy being provocative, posing almost naked in George and inviting Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt to be his guest at the 1998 White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He also visited boxer Mike Tyson in prison, calling him ”a friend who is much different from his public image”.

Kennedy served on the boards of family foundations and several nonprofit organizations. He was the head of Reaching Up, which provides educational opportunities for low-income workers and helps people with disabilities. He worked at a soup kitchen and read to kids at a Bronx grade school.

On July 16, 1999, Kennedy left this world at just 38-years-old, even younger than his father had been. The small plane he was flying crashed into the ocean off Martha’s Vineyard. Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, his wife of just 1000 days, and her sister Lauren Bessette, also perished.

Before the terrible airplane crash, Kennedy and his wife were reported to have been living apart. She was said to be hotheaded and volatile. He wanted children; she did not. He like being in the spotlight; she hated it.

George was in trouble too, with reviewers calling it slight and already losing money. It folded for good in 2001.

The Kennedys were on their way to a family wedding. They took off at dusk, in erratic weather and limited visibility. Kennedy was a relatively new pilot and he had been warned by his doctors not to fly because of a recent broken ankle.

In a 1962 speech, Kennedy’s father prophetically said:

“I really don’t know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it is because in addition to the fact that the sea changes and the light changes, and ships change, it is because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have, in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, we are going back from whence we came.”

It felt like a kick in the stomach when I heard the news. I cried for the country, his family, and because I finally understood that he would not be marrying me.

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