Film Review: Beautiful Darling
This riveting documentary about one of the legendary triumphant gender illusionists is also a compelling portrait of an endlessly fascinating era.
April 21, 2011
-By David Noh
http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/reviews/specialty-releases/e3i63338c2d7900bc239043b695fc0464dcCandy Darling (1944-74) was the most beautiful of all the so-called Andy Warhol "superstars" of the late 1960s-70s, a delicately featured, porcelain-skinned, platinum-blonde presence with the breathily evanescent voice and presence of Marilyn Monroe and her own self-professed idol, Kim Novak. Darling was also a man, born James L. Slattery on Long Island, New York.
James Rasin's documentary Beautiful Darling charts her singular, star-struck life with formidable insight and impressive detail. He was greatly aided in this endeavor by producer Jeremiah Newton, who met and befriended Darling as a teenager and salvaged her diaries and mementos—including her bodily ashes—after her death, shielding them from her mother, who had remarried a homophobic man and wanted only to conceal the truth about her son.
