Eye Candy
By ADAM BARAN
| April 18, 2011, 3:31 pm
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/eye-candy/Even among the Warhol Superstars, Candy Darling was a standout. Her spot-on embodiment of a '40s-era Hollywood starlet — demure, mysterious, quiet — stood in contrast to the pretty-little-rich-girl routine of Edie Sedgwick, the drug-fueled silver-tongued cheek of Brigid Berlin and the Teutonic otherness of Nico. And the fact that she was a transgendered woman from Long Island only added to her mystique. Her fame spread via the Paul Morrissey films "Flesh" and "Women in Revolt," and she was immortalized by Lou Reed in the songs "Candy Says" and "Walk on the Wild Side." She died in 1974, from leukemia connected to unsafe hormone treatments, at the age of 29.
This Friday, James Rasin's documentary, "Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar," opens at the IFC Center in New York. The film features interviews from Candy's friends and admirers, including Gerard Malanga, Taylor Meade, Holly Woodlawn, John Waters, Fran Leibowitz and Candy's best friend Jeremiah Newton, as well as narration by Chloë Sevigny. T spoke with Rasin about his glamorous subject and her lasting legacy.
