Candy Darling Would Be 80 Today

Until quite recently, Candy Darling (1944-1974) was the most beautiful male-to-female trans person most people had ever seen. She wasn’t just gorgeous, but she possessed a studied, graceful femininity not unlike that of Marilyn Monroe or Jackie O. In her day, there was an assumption of camp performance that automatically greeted such behavior. Many observers I’m sure assumed that hers was just a more refined, finely tuned version of the thing that nightclub drag performers do — mimicking old Broadway and Hollywood stars. But here (went the assumption), instead of cruel impressions of Bette Davis or Ethel Merman or whatever, was somebody who really nailed it, or really inhabited the character.

Only it wasn’t a character. If she’d lived long enough, she may have gone the full route and had “the operation”, although she always insisted she didn’t want to do that (while simultaneously detesting her inconvenient appendage). She simply wanted to be accepted for who she was, a gentle and beautiful person who liked to dress and adorn herself in a way that has traditionally been associated with biological females. Why “DO” anything? Why be forced to declare yourself, or define yourself? Nowadays, those of us who care have tools for talking about someone like Candy, who was so very far outside the binary construct, and whose poignant wish in her very last journal entry was for nothing more than a husband. Such a basic thing for most people, but for her, in her time and place, a seemingly unattainable fantasy. A pop culture icon, whose image was projected onto movie screens and whose name was sung on the radio, but who was completely alone.

Candy passed away 50 years ago, and she’d have been 80 today. Just in time for these milestones arrives Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Supertar by Cynthia Carr (whom us old-timers remember as “C. Carr” from the Village Voice). I devoured it — like so much candy — in two or three sessions, because it’s the world I’ve always wanted to live in, that period of artistic ferment in New York when mid-century inhibitionism (I just coined that, thank you) was overthrown…for a time. Candy is most succinctly described as a member of Andy Warhol’s Factory, and a star of several of his movies, though she was more than that. She is also remembered as the muse of rock and roll singers: she is mentioned in the Rolling Stones’ song “Citadel” (1967) and Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” (1972). The Velvet Undergound’s “Candy Says” (1969) is entirely about her.

I’ll withhold Candy’s given name, though Carr does reveal it in the book, along with plenty of intel about her original identity. Carr does the best she can do at an impossible task: reporting the historical facts while respecting Candy’s wish to be mistress of her own persona. She came from a working class Long Island family, with a homophobic dad (of course) and a mother who did a better job of trying to understand a son who was as patently effeminate as it is possible to be, it seems, from the time s/he was a toddler. After high school Candy attended a local cosmetology college, visited gay bars, and finally began cross-dressing in public. The LIRR into NYC became her lifeline. The gay scene in Greenwich Village was exploding at the time. It became the only place where she could truly live as herself.

Hanging out at Caffe Cino brought her into contact with theatrical people. She starred in a play by her close friend Jackie Curtis, Glamour, Glory and Gold (1967) and this is what brought her to the attention of Warhol. Later she would also star in Curtis’s Vain Victory: The Vicissitudes of the Damned (1971) with Curtis, Warhol, Ondine, Tally Brown,Mario Montez, Sam Green, Mary Woronov, Holly Woodlawn, the Vasulkas (founders of The Kitchen) and others.  In between, she’d also been in Charles Ludlam’sWhen Queens Collide (1968), the legendary show that resulted from Ludlam’s walkout from John Vaccaro’s original Ridiculous company. We were thrilled to see friend Melba LaRose quoted frequently in Carr’s book as a source on Candy’s early theatrical years. And naturally Penny Arcade!

From here, Candy was cast in the landmark movies that Paul Morrissey made for Warhol, Flesh (1968), and Women in Revolt (1971), though somehow not Trash (1972). This led to other movies. She was in the ensemble of Win Chamberlain’s 1970 satire BrandX with Taylor Mead, Sally Kirkland, Abbie Hoffman, Sam Shepard, Ultra Violet, Baby Jane Holzer, and Pat Paulsen. She has a substantial role in Some of My Best Briends Are (1971) withFannie Flagg and Rue McClanahan. She has bit parts in Klute (1971), Lady Liberty (1971) and Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972.) She was also in some of the avant-garde films of German director Werner Schroeter. Darling considered not being cast as the lead in Myra Breckinridge as the main disappointment in her life. And you know what? It would have been a vastly better movie with her in the lead role.

A consolation prize: she was cast in the original 1972 production of Tennessee Williams’ Small Craft Warnings at the request of the playwright. A late life triumph was her Marilyn-inspired lead in Tom Eyen’s The White Whore and the Bit Player at La MaMa in 1973. She had acted in some Eyen’s other plays earlier in her career.

The biggest revelation for me from Carr’s book (heartening and disheartening both) was how unstable Candy’s life remained until the day she died. She never attained anything like financial security or even a place to call home. She mostly couch-surfed, “depended on the kindness of strangers”, and on particularly desperate days, returned to her mom’s house on Long Island to crash. She turned tricks at times for income, when fees for acting in plays or films or modeling weren’t sufficient. When she did manage to get a small kitty together, her champagne tastes and need for hormone injections quickly wiped her out. (Why would all that be heartening, you may ask? Well, your correspondent is no Croesus nor are countless of his friends who have chosen a life in the arts. It is good to know that it might just be barely possible to achieve lasting significance of a kind, even if your purse is never rewarded. In America we tend to forget that. In fact, it is a deep, dark, well-buried secret).

So Candy went without healthcare and her cancer (probably caused by the hormones) went unnoticed for far too long, so her end, when it came, was very quick. The book reveals that Candy also had several missing teeth — which must have been especially painful psychologically for one to whom beauty was so important.

Yet the celebrities who visited her on her death bed and/or came to her funeral included: Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft, Tennessee Williams, Peter Allen,Julie Newmar,Gloria Swanson, Sylvia Miles, and naturally most of the folks from the Factory/Ridiculous/La Mama orbit. Other powerful admirers included Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dennis Hopper. The arts patron and socialite Sam Green (later a close friend of John Lennon and Yoko Ono) supported her for long stretches, but couldn’t do so indefinitely. Candy died broke, practically homeless.

The timing of her death was also unfortunate. If she’d lived into the disco era, the age of the Village People and Wayland and Madame and The Love Boat and so forth, she might have attained some of the mainstream attention she truly wanted. But in the early ’70s, her friendship with certain hip celebrities was not sufficient to get her past the gatekeepers. On the plus side, we still have Women in Revolt, and that ain’t hay.

In addition to Carr’s excellent book, I would also refer you to the 2010 documentary Beautiful Darling, featuring interviews with Tennessee Williams,Valerie Solanas, Jackie Curtis,Holly Woodlawn, Fran Lebowitz, John Waters, Julie Newmar, Taylor Mead, et al. And Candy herself, preserved in amber. I can’t imagine that she ever wanted to be 80 anyway.

Here are a couple of drawings of Candy and Women in Revolt drawn by my wife in tribute!

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