Edie Sedgwick

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 and sculptor,[7] and a member of the historical Sedgwick family of Massachusetts. Sedgwick's mother, Alice, was the daughter of Henry Wheeler de Forest, the president and chairman of the board of the Southern Pacific Railroad.[8] She was named after her father's aunt, Edith Minturn Stokes, who was famously painted with her husband, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, by John Singer Sargent.[9] She was of English and French Huguenot ancestry.

Despite the family's wealth and high social status, Sedgwick's early life was troubled.[10] The Sedgwick children were raised on the family's California ranches. Initially schooled at home and cared for by nannies, their lives were rigidly controlled by their parents. They were largely isolated from the outside world, and it was instilled into them 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. At age 13 (the year her grandfather Henry Dwight Sedgwick died), Sedgwick began boarding at the Branson School near San Francisco. According to her older sister Alice "Saucie" Sedgwick, she was soon taken out of the school because of the eating disorder. Her father severely restricted her freedom when she returned home.

All the Sedgwick children had conflicted relationships with their father (whom they called "Fuzzy"). By most accounts, he was narcissistic, emotionally remote, controlling, and frequently abusive. He also openly carried on affairs with other women. On one occasion, Edie walked in on him 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.[11] As an adult, Sedgwick told people that he had attempted to molest her several times, beginning when she was seven.[10]

In 1958, her parents enrolled her at St. Timothy's School in Maryland. She was eventually taken out of the school due to an eating disorder that had progressed to anorexia.[12]

In the autumn of 1962, at her father's insistence, Sedgwick was committed to the private Silver Hill psychiatric hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut. As the regime was very lax, Sedgwick easily manipulated the situation at Silver Hill, and her weight kept dropping. She was later sent to Bloomingdale, the Westchester County, New York 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.[13]

In the autumn of 1963, Sedgwick moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts and began studying sculpture with her cousin, artist Lily Saarinen. According to Saarinen, Sedgwick "was very insecure about men, though all the men loved her."[14][15] 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 18 months of each other. Francis Sedgwick, who had a particularly unhappy relationship with their father, suffered several breakdowns, eventually dying by suicide in 1964 while committed at Silver Hill Hospital. Her second oldest brother, Robert, also suffered from mental health problems and died when his motorcycle crashed into the side of a New York City bus on New Year's Eve 1965.

On her twenty-first birthday in April 1964, Sedgwick received an $80,000 trust fund from her maternal grandmother. Soon after, she relocated to New York City to pursue a career in modeling. In March 1965, she met artist and avant-garde filmmaker Andy Warhol at a party at Lester Persky's apartment, and began frequently visiting The Factory, Warhol's art studio in Midtown Manhattan.[1] During one of her subsequent visits, Warhol was filming Vinyl (1965), his interpretation of Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange. Despite Vinyl's all-male cast, Warhol put Sedgwick in the movie. Around this time, she also made a small cameo appearance in another Warhol film, Horse (1965).[1] Sedgwick's appearances in both films were brief but generated enough interest that Warhol decided to cast her in the starring role of his next films.

The first of these avant-garde films, Poor Little Rich Girl (1965), was originally conceived as part of a series of films featuring Sedgwick called The Poor Little Rich Girl Saga. The series was to include Poor Little Rich Girl, Restaurant, Face and Afternoon. Filming of Poor Little Rich Girl began in March 1965 in Sedgwick's apartment; it depicted her going about her daily routines. Sedgwick's next film for Warhol was Kitchen, which was filmed in May 1965 but was not released until 1966. Written by Factory scriptwriter Ronald Tavel, the film stars Sedgwick, Rene Ricard, Roger Trudeau, Donald Lyons and Elecktrah. After Kitchen, Chuck Wein replaced Ronald Tavel as a writer and assistant director for the filming of Beauty No. 2 (1965), which was filmed in June and premiered in July 1965. The film shows Sedgwick lounging on a bed in her underwear with Gino Piserchio and being taunted by Chuck Wein off-screen.[1]

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. Regardless, Sedgwick began receiving attention from the mainstream media, who reported on her appearances in the films and on her personal style. During this period, she developed a distinct look including black leotards, mini dresses, large chandelier earrings, and heavy eye make-up. Sedgwick also cut her naturally brown hair short and dyed it with silver spray, thus matching her look with Warhol's, who was known for wearing silvery hair pieces. Warhol dubbed Sedgwick his "Superstar", and they began appearing together at various public events.

Sedgwick and Warhol continued making films together —Outer and Inner Space, Prison, Lupe and Chelsea Girls— throughout 1965. The edited footage of Sedgwick in Chelsea Girls would eventually become the film Afternoon. Their relationship deteriorated by late 1965, and Sedgwick demanded that Warhol stop showing her films.

Lupe is often thought to be Sedgwick's last Warhol film, but she filmed The Andy Warhol Story with Rene Ricard in November 1966, almost a year after finishing Lupe. The Andy Warhol Story was an unreleased film that was only screened once at The Factory. Along with Sedgwick, the film featured Ricard satirically pretending to be Andy Warhol.

Following her estrangement from Warhol's inner circle, 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, 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) in February 1966. Friends of Sedgwick's later said that she saw the supposed offer of doing a film with Dylan as a ticket to a mainstream film career. Paul Morrissey claimed that Dylan likely never had plans to star in a film with Sedgwick, and Dylan "hadn't been very truthful."[16]

Since Sedgwick's death, Bob Dylan has routinely denied that he ever had a romantic relationship with her, but did acknowledge knowing her. In December 2006, several weeks before the release of the controversial film Factory Girl,[17] the Weinstein Company and the film's producers interviewed Sedgwick's older brother, Jonathan, who said that Sedgwick told him she had aborted a baby she claimed was Dylan's. Jonathan Sedgwick claimed that Edie had the abortion soon after she was injured in a motorcycle accident. As a result of the accident, doctors consigned her to a mental hospital where she was treated for drug addiction. No hospital records or Sedgwick family records exist to support this story. Nonetheless, Sedgwick's brother also 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."[18][19]

In 1966, Sedgwick was named one of the "fashion revolutionaries" in New York by Women's Wear Daily, alongside Tiger Morse, Baby Jane Holzer, Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne, Rudi Gernreich, André Courrèges, Emanuel Ungaro, Yves Saint Laurent, and Mary Quant.[20]

Throughout most of 1966, Sedgwick was involved in an intense but troubled relationship with Dylan's friend 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.

After breaking with Andy Warhol and The Factory scene, Sedgwick attempted to forge a legitimate acting career. She auditioned for Norman Mailer when the 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."[21]

As fast as Diana Vreeland of Vogue had been to cast aside Edie the young American aristocrat, she now pounced on a teen-age working-class girl from England, Twiggy, whose arrival in New York in March 1967 caused nearly riotous events among young American followers of style and fashion.[22] In that same month, March 1967, Sedgwick began what may have seemed propitious but in fact began her torturous and final decline: the shooting of Ciao! Manhattan, a semi-autobiographical underground film co-directed by John Palmer and David Weisman. During this, she accidentally set her room on fire in the Chelsea Hotel and was briefly hospitalized with burns. Due to Sedgwick's rapidly deteriorating health from drug use, the film was suspended. After further hospitalizations for drug abuse and mental issues in 1968 and 1969, 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 the local police. While in the hospital, Sedgwick met another patient, Michael Brett Post, whom she would marry in July 1971.[23]

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.

In the summer of 1970, Sedgwick met Michael Post, who was a fellow patient at the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. They married on July 24, 1971. During this time she gave up drugs and alcohol, but in October 1971, she relapsed after taking prescription pain medication given to her for a physical illness, which in turn led to abusing barbiturates and alcohol.

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.[24] After the fashion 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.[25] Before they both fell asleep, Post gave Sedgwick the 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.[26]

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%. She was 28.[27]

Sedgwick was not buried in her family's Sedgwick Pie cemetery plot but in the small Oak Hill Cemetery in Ballard, California. Her epitaph reads "Edith Sedgwick Post – Wife Of Michael Brett Post 1943–1971".[28]

• Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga: Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story
• Victor Bockris: Andy Warhol
• Michael Opray: Andy Warhol. Film Factory
• Jean Stein: Edie: American Girl
• Andy Warhol: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
• Melissa Painter and David Weisman: Edie: Girl on Fire Book and Film
• Steven Watson: Factory Made: Warhol And the Sixties
• Nat Finkelstein and David Dalton: Edie: Factory Girl
• John Sedgwick: In My Blood: Six Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family

Wikiquote has quotations related to Edie Sedgwick.

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