Dorothy Dean

Dorothy Dean (December 22, 1932 – February 13, 1987) was an African-American socialite, connected to Andy Warhol's The Factory—for which she appeared in the films Batman Dracula (1964), Space (1965), My Hustler (1965), Afternoon (1965), and Chelsea Girls (1966)—and Max's Kansas City, where she worked as door person. She also appeared in the documentary film Superartist (1967) about Warhol and his films.

Not to be confused with Dorothy Dene.

Biography

Dean was born in White Plains, New York, on December 22, 1932. She graduated from Radcliffe and earned an MFA at Harvard, had a master's degree in art. While living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she began associating almost entirely with gay white men, presumably in an effort to distance herself from the politics surrounding being both black and female in the 1950s and '60s, politics with which she did not identify.[1]

She was loved for her strong, verbose personality, perhaps mostly for her playful phrasing and clever nicknames (Andy Warhol, to Dean, became "Drella", a combination of Dracula and Cinderella; James Baldwin was "Martin Luther Queen"). She rarely worked; she held brief editorial and proofreading positions at publications such as The New Yorker and Vogue magazines.

Death and legacy

She died of cancer in Boulder, Colorado, on February 13, 1987.[2]

Dean is one of the subjects of Hilton Als' 1996 book The Women.[3][4] [5]

References
  1. Steven Watson. Factory Made: Andy Warhol and the Sixties. New York: Pantheon books, 2003 Archived August 29, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  2. "Dorothy Dean" at warholstars.org.
  3. Lee, Andrea (January 5, 1997). "Fatal Limitations". The New York Times.
  4. Bernstein, Richard (January 1, 1997). "Feminine Mystique in the Eyes of an 'Auntie Man'". The New York Times. Retrieved December 1, 2009.
  5. Als, Hilton (April 17, 1995). "Friends of Dorothy Dean" – via www.newyorker.com.
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