Hey, there’s a new documentary about Candy Darling opening this week: Beautiful Darling, directed by James Rasin. She was a Warhol superstar, of course, and the inspiration for two classic Lou Reed songs (“Candy Says” and the second verse of “Walk on the Wild Side”).
But before and after her Factory fame, Darling was an accomplished stage actress, in several plays by Jackie Curtis (one of which co-starred Robert DeNiro) and as Violet in the 1972 Off Broadway premiere of Tennessee Williams’ Small Craft Warnings.
Candy Darling’s also a character in the musical Pop!, which had its world premiere at Yale Rep in late 2009 (not to mention a developmental workshop through the Yale Institute of Music Theater the previous summer). That show, by Maggie-Kate Coleman and Anna K. Jacobs, is getting new productions in July at the Studio Theatre in Washington DC and next season at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre.
In the Yale Rep production of Pop!, Candy was played by Brian Charles Rooney. She was played by Stephen Dorff in the 1996 movie I Shot Andy Warhol, which covers the same events as the musical. In Beautiful Darling, her diaries and letters are read aloud by Chloe Sevigny.
I saw a terrific exhibit on Candy Darling in 1997 at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Hers was an extraordinary well-documented life, from her childhood spent in the Kim Novak fan club to the packed memorials following her death from leukemia in 1974. There are deathbed photos of her and even a farewell note she wrote for her friends to read after her death. She was just 29 when she died.
The Rasin documentary has the all-important blessing of Candy Darling’s friend Jeremiah Newton, who’s credited as a producer of the film.