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Edie Sedgwick
American model and actress (1943–1971) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Edith Minturn Sedgwick Post (April 20, 1943 – November 16, 1971) was an American actress, model, and socialite. Best known as a Warhol superstar, she gained widespread recognition as a style icon; in 1965, Vogue magazine named her a "Youthquaker," recognizing her influence on youth culture.[1]
Sedgwick starred in several of Andy Warhol's underground films, including Poor Little Rich Girl (1965) and Beauty No. 2 (1965). After leaving Warhol's Factory scene in 1966, she pursued acting and modeling independently but never regained the same level of prominence. Her mental health deteriorated from drug abuse, and she struggled to complete the semi-autobiographical film Ciao! Manhattan (1972). Sedgwick died of an overdose in 1971 at the age of 28.
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Early life and education (1943–1964)
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Edie Sedgwick was born in Santa Barbara, California, the seventh of eight children of Alice Delano de Forest (1908–1988) and Francis Minturn Sedgwick (1904–1967), a rancher, sculptor[2] and member of the historical Sedgwick family of Massachusetts. Sedgwick's mother was the daughter of Henry Wheeler de Forest, the president and chairman of the board of the Southern Pacific Railroad.[3] Her maternal great-grandfather, Reverend Endicott Peabody, founded the Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts.[4][5] She was named after her father's aunt, Edith Minturn Stokes, who was painted with her husband, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, by John Singer Sargent.[6] She was of English and French Huguenot ancestry.
Despite the family's wealth and high social status, Sedgwick's early life was troubled.[7] Initially homeschooled and cared for by nannies, Sedgwick and her siblings were rigidly controlled by their parents. Being raised on their father's California ranches, they were largely isolated from the outside world and were instilled with the idea that they were superior to most of their peers. It was within these familial and social conditions that Sedgwick, by her early teens, developed an eating disorder, settling into an early pattern of binging and purging.[8] At age 13, her grandfather Henry Dwight Sedgwick died, and she began boarding at the Branson School near San Francisco.[9] According to her older sister Alice "Saucie" Sedgwick, she was soon taken out of school because she had anorexia.[10] Her father severely restricted her freedom when she returned home.
All the Sedgwick children had conflicted relationships with their father whom they called "Fuzzy."[11] By most accounts, he was narcissistic, emotionally remote, controlling, and frequently abusive. He also openly carried on extramarital affairs with other women. On one occasion, Sedgwick walked in on her father while he was having sex with one of his mistresses. She reacted with great surprise, but he claimed that she had imagined it, slapped her, and called a doctor to administer tranquilizers to her.[12] As an adult, Sedgwick told people that he had attempted to molest her several times, beginning when she was aged 7.[7]
In 1958, Sedgwick's parents enrolled her at St. Timothy's School in Maryland. She was eventually taken out of the school due to her continuing eating disorder.[13] In the autumn of 1962, at her father's insistence, Sedgwick was committed to the private Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut. As the regime was very lax, she easily manipulated her situation at Silver Hill and her weight kept dropping. She was later sent to Bloomingdale, the behavioral health wing in the Westchester County division of New York Hospital, where her anorexia improved markedly. Around the time she left the hospital, she had a brief relationship with a Harvard student, became pregnant and procured an abortion, citing her present psychological issues.[14]
In the autumn of 1963, Sedgwick moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and began studying sculpture with her cousin, artist Lily Saarinen.[15][16][17] According to Saarinen, Sedgwick "was very insecure about men, though all the men loved her."[18][19] During this period, she partied with members of an elite bohemian fringe of the Harvard social scene.
Sedgwick was deeply affected by the loss of her older brothers, Francis Jr. (known as "Minty") and Robert (known as "Bobby"), who died within eighteen months of each other. Francis, who had a particularly unhappy relationship with their father, suffered several mental breakdowns, eventually committing suicide in 1964 while at Silver Hill Hospital.[20] Robert, her second oldest brother, also suffered from mental health problems and died after falling into a coma when his motorcycle crashed into the side of a New York City bus on New Year's Eve 1965.[21]
On her twenty-first birthday in April 1964, Sedgwick received an $80,000 trust fund from her maternal grandmother. In September 1964, she relocated to New York to pursue a career in modeling. In December 1964, she was injured in an automobile accident.[9]
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The Factory (1965–1966)
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Film career
In March 1965, Edie Sedgwick met artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol at a party hosted by producer Lester Persky and soon became a regular presence at Warhol's Midtown Manhattan studio, The Factory.[22][23]
During one visit, Warhol was filming Horse (1965), which Sedgwick makes an appearance marking the beginning of her on-screen collaboration with him. Soon after, she made a brief cameo in Vinyl (1965), Warhol's adaptation of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange.[24] Although the film featured an all-male cast, Warhol inserted Sedgwick into the project.[23] Though her appearances in both films were limited, they attracted considerable attention and prompted Warhol to cast her as the central figure in his subsequent work. He dubbed Sedgwick his "Superstar," and their frequent public appearances helped popularize the term.[9][25] Sedgwick herself explained the concept on The Merv Griffin Show, reflecting its novelty to mainstream audiences at the time.[26]
Sedgwick's first starring role was in Poor Little Rich Girl (1965), originally intended as part of a planned series known as The Poor Little Rich Girl Saga, which also included Restaurant, Face, and Afternoon. Filmed largely in Sedgwick's apartment, the film portrayed her daily routines in a casual, observational style. She next appeared in Kitchen, filmed in May 1965 and released the following year, written by Factory regular Ronald Tavel and featuring several members of Warhol's circle. After Kitchen, Chuck Wein replaced Tavel as writer and assistant director on Beauty No. 2 (1965), filmed in June and premiered in July; the film depicts Sedgwick reclining on a bed in her underwear with Gino Piserchio as she is being taunted by Wein off-camera.[23] Throughout 1965, Sedgwick continued working with Warhol on films including Outer and Inner Space, Prison, and Lupe.[27]
By late 1965, however, her relationship with Warhol had begun to deteriorate as Sedgwick gravitated towards the Bob Dylan crowd, and she left the Factory scene in early 1966. In May 1966, Warhol told the Los Angeles Times: "Edie was the best, the greatest. She never understood what I was doing to her. I don't know what's going to happen to her now."[28] After being dismissed from Dylan's circle and surviving a fire in her apartment in October 1966, Sedgwick returned to the Factory seeking work.[29][30] Warhol cast her in one final project, The Andy Warhol Story, in which René Ricard satirically portrayed Warhol. Filmed in November 1966, the film was never released and was screened only once at the Factory.[30]
Modeling career
Warhol's films were for the most part shown only in underground film theaters and in viewings held at The Factory, and were not commercially successful. Despite this, Sedgwick attracted growing mainstream media attention for both her film appearances and her personal style.[31][5] Her look—black leotards and tights, miniskirts, chandelier earrings, and heavy eye makeup—made her a fashion icon of the 1960s.[32] She popularized the miniskirt by wearing altered children's skirts and cropped her naturally brown hair short, often spraying it silver to mirror Warhol's own silvery appearance.[33]
In an August 1965 Vogue photoshoot, Edie Sedgwick was photographed by Enzo Sellerio wearing only hosiery and a black ballet leotard, balancing atop a leather rhinoceros.[1] Vogue anointed her an "It Girl" and a "Youthquaker."[1][34] Sedgwick's mother disapproved of her modeling career and hoped she would return to sculpting and painting, which she had pursued before becoming a model.[35] She also dismissed reports of Sedgwick's lavish fur collection as "utter nonsense," despite a New York Times account claiming she owned multiple mink coats and exotic furs.[35][9] Later that year, Fred Eberstadt photographed Sedgwick for Life magazine's November 1965 pictorial, "The Girl with the Black Tights."[5] Her cultural impact was underscored when artist Roy Lichtenstein and his wife dressed as Warhol and Sedgwick for a 1965 Halloween party.[30] In 1966, Women’s Wear Daily named Sedgwick one of New York’s "fashion revolutionaries."[36]
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Later years (1966–1971)
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When Sedgwick returned to California for the Christmas holidays in 1966, her parents put her in a psychiatric ward.[37]
Sedgwick attempted to forge a legitimate acting career. She auditioned for Norman Mailer's 1967 stage adaptation of his novel The Deer Park was being produced. But Mailer "turned her down … She was very good in a sort of tortured and wholly sensitive way …She used so much of herself with every line that we knew she'd be immolated after three performances."[38]
In March 1967, Sedgwick began the shooting of Ciao! Manhattan, a semi-autobiographical underground film co-directed by John Palmer and David Weisman. Due to her rapidly deteriorating health from drug use, the film was suspended. After further hospitalizations for drug abuse and mental issues in 1968 and 1969,[39] Sedgwick returned to her family's ranch in California to recuperate. In August 1969, she was hospitalized again in the psychiatric ward of the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital after being arrested for drug offenses by local police. While in the hospital, Sedgwick met another patient, Michael Post, whom she married in July 1971.[40]
Sedgwick was hospitalized again in the summer of 1970 but was let out under the supervision of a psychiatrist, two nurses and the live-in care of filmmaker John Palmer and his wife Janet. Determined to finish Ciao! Manhattan and have her story told, Sedgwick reconnected with the film crew and began shooting in Arcadia and Santa Barbara in late 1970. She also recorded audio tapes reflecting on her life story, accounts Weisman and Palmer incorporated into the film's dramatic arc. Filming completed in early 1971, and the film was released in February 1972.
Death
On the night of November 15, 1971, Sedgwick went to a fashion show at the Santa Barbara Museum that included a segment filmed for the television show An American Family.[41] After the show, she attended a party where she drank alcohol. She then phoned her husband to pick her up. On the way home, Sedgwick expressed thoughts of uncertainty about their marriage.[42] Before they both fell asleep, Post gave Sedgwick medication that had been prescribed for her. According to Post, Sedgwick started to fall asleep very quickly and her breathing was "bad – it sounded like there was a big hole in her lungs" but he attributed it to her heavy smoking habit and went to sleep.[43]
When Post awoke the following morning at 7:30 a.m., he found Sedgwick dead. The coroner ruled her death as "undetermined/ accident/suicide". Her death certificate states the immediate cause was "probable acute barbiturate intoxication" due to ethanol intoxication. Sedgwick's alcohol level was registered at 0.17% and her barbiturate level was 0.48 mg%.[44]
Sedgwick was not buried in her family's Sedgwick Pie cemetery plot but in the small Oak Hill Cemetery in Ballard, California.[45]
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Personal life
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Relationships and marriage
In 1965, Sedgwick began living at the Chelsea Hotel, where she became close to Bob Dylan. Dylan and his friends eventually convinced Sedgwick to sign up with Albert Grossman, Dylan's manager. According to Paul Morrissey, Sedgwick had developed a crush on Dylan that she thought he reciprocated. She was also under the impression that she and Dylan would star in a mainstream film together. Unbeknownst to Sedgwick, however, Dylan had secretly married his girlfriend Sara Lownds in November 1965. Morrissey claimed that Sedgwick was informed of the marriage by Warhol, who reportedly heard about it through his lawyer.[46] Morrissey added that Dylan likely never had plans to star in a film with Sedgwick and "hadn't been very truthful."[46]
Dylan has routinely denied that he had a romantic relationship with Sedgwick but did acknowledge knowing her. In 1985, he told Spin: "I never had that much to do with Edie Sedgwick. I've seen where I have had, and read that I have had, but I don't remember Edie that well. I remember she was around, but I know other people who, as far as I know, might have been involved with Edie. … I did know her, but I don't recall any type of relationship. If I did have one, I think I'd remember."[47]
In December 2006, several weeks before the release of the controversial film Factory Girl, the Weinstein Company and the film's producers interviewed Sedgwick's older brother, Jonathan, who claimed that Sedgwick told him she had aborted a baby she claimed was Dylan's shortly after she was injured in a motorcycle accident.[48] As a result of the accident, doctors consigned her to a mental hospital, where she was treated for drug addiction. No records from a hospital or the Sedgwick family exist to support this story. Nonetheless, Jonathan claimed, "Staff found she was pregnant but, fearing the baby had been damaged by her drug use and anorexia, forced her to have the abortion."[49][50]
In 1966, Sedgwick became involved with Dylan's friend, folk singer Bob Neuwirth. During this time, she became increasingly dependent on barbiturates. In early 1967, unable to cope with Sedgwick's drug abuse and erratic behavior, Neuwirth broke off their relationship.[37]
Sedgwick met Michael Post at a hospital in Santa Barbara. Post was also attempting to quit drugs. After their wedding on July 24, 1971, Post claims he helped her achieve sobriety.[51] However, in October 1971, Sedgwick relapsed after taking prescription pain medication given to her for a physical illness, which in turn led to abusing barbiturates and alcohol.[citation needed]
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In pop culture
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Books
In 1982, Edie Sedgwick: An American Biography written by Jean Stein was published by Alfred A Knopf.[51]
In 2022, Sedgwick's sister Alice Sedgwick Wohl released the book As It Turns Out: Thinking About Edie and Andy.[52]
Film and theater
Sedgwick's life has been the subject of numerous unproduced projects and later portrayals in film and theater. In the 1980s, Warren Beatty acquired the rights to her life story and explored a film adaptation starring Molly Ringwald, but the project was never realized.[53] Sedgwick has since appeared as a character or inspiration in several works. Jennifer Rubin portrayed her in Oliver Stone's The Doors (1991),[54] while Amanda Peet's character in Igby Goes Down (2002) is described as an Edie Sedgwick-like.[55] The 2004 off-Broadway play Andy & Edie produced by Peter Braunstein dramatized her relationship with Warhol.[56]
In George Hickenlooper's film Factory Girl (2006), a fictionalized account of her life, Sedgwick was played by Sienna Miller alongside Guy Pearce as Warhol.[57] Michael Post, Sedgwick's widower, appears as a taxi driver in one of the last scenes of the film.[58] Michelle Williams portrayed a Sedgwick-inspired character in I'm Not There (2007).[59]
Later tributes include the short film Edie: Girl on Fire (2010) by Melissa Painter and David Weisman, and the animated short Too Late (2021) by Polish artist Kinga Syrek, released to mark the 50th anniversary of her death.[37][32][60]
Music
Sedgwick has been widely cited as an influence and subject in popular music across multiple decades. Critics have long speculated that Bob Dylan drew inspiration from Sedgwick in several songs, most notably his 1965 single "Like a Rolling Stone," as well as "Just Like a Woman," and "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" from his 1966 album Blonde on Blonde.[61][62] Although Dylan never publicly confirmed these associations, the speculation has persisted due to Sedgwick's close proximity to Dylan during this period and the thematic parallels noted by commentators.
The Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale," from the album The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), was explicitly written about Sedgwick at Warhol's request.[63] Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Sedgwick's image and legacy continued to resonate in alternative and rock music. She appears on the cover of Dramarama's 1985 debut album Cinéma Vérité, while the band's video for "Anything, Anything (I'll Give You)" incorporates footage from Ciao! Manhattan. That same year, The Dream Academy released the single "The Love Parade" with the B-side "Girl in a Million (For Edie Sedgwick)." Sedgwick was referenced or memorialized in songs by Primal Scream ("Velocity Girl," 1986),[64] Edie Brickell & New Bohemians ("Little Miss S.," 1988),[65] James Ray and the Performance ("Edie Sedgwick," 1989),[66] The Cult ("Edie (Ciao Baby)," 1989), and Deadbolt's "Edie" (1992).
Sedgwick's influence extended into the 21st century with additional tributes that include Tal Cohen-Shalev's "Factory Girl (Song for Edie Sedgwick)" (2009).[67] Alizée's album Une Enfant du Siècle (2010) was inspired by her life,[68] and Dean & Britta's 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests (2010) includes a song written to accompany Warhol's screen test of Sedgwick.[69] The Pretty Reckless' "Factory Girl" (2010) is also based on her, with lead singer Taylor Momsen citing Sedgwick’s style and boundary-pushing persona as an inspiration.[70] Visual references to Sedgwick appear in Lady Gaga's music videos for "Applause" and "Marry the Night,"[71] while G-Eazy's 2014 song "Downtown Love" draws on her life story.[72] More recently, Beach House cited Sedgwick’s iconography as an influence on their 2018 album 7, particularly the track "Girl of the Year."[73][74]
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Filmography
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