Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar (Review)
Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar by Cynthia Carr
Cynthia Carr's new book on superstar Candy Darling will be available as a paperback in March in the U.S. and in April in the U.K.
Before reading this book I thought I already knew Candy's story from her published diary (edited by her friend Jeremiah Newton), the miniature Candy Darling book published by Hanuman and the bits and pieces I had picked up about her life from Andy Warhol biographies or books about the New York Underground theatrical productions that gave rise to off-off-Broadway. I was wrong.
Carr's book goes into a lot more detail about Candy's upbringing, the events we associate with her and the people she knew - including those who are still alive such as Agosto Machado and George Abagnalo (who appeared as the photographer in Women in Revolt and later went on to co-write the script for Andy Warhol's Bad.)
In addition to the work she did with Andy Warhol, the book includes an extensive description of how Richard Avedon got Candy to pose completely naked (including her male genitalia) as part of his photographic triptych, Andy Warhol and Members of The Factory, New York that is now in the Museum of Modern Art.
Also included is the story behind the "death" photos by Peter Hujar that are often posted on Instagram. Carr quotes Hujar about how Candy was "camping it up...Playing every death scene from every movie." Although these photographs are sometimes presented as Candy on her deathbed, they were actually taken before her first operation (exploratory surgery) - months before she died. (They were taken in September of 1973 and she died in March of the following year.)
There are plenty of other Candy projects that are in this book that are rarely mentioned in other books including details about the roles she didn't get. (A role that director Ron Link rejected her for because, in the words of the playwright Tom Eyen, "Ron didn't want to use her because he said she was on too much of a star trip.")
As Carr notes in the introduction to the hardback version, by April 1972, "Candy was nearing the pinnacle of her singular career. She wasn't just a Warhol 'superstar.' She would soon appear in a Tennesse Williams play, in a Richard Avedon photo in Vogue [and] in Lou Reed's most iconic song... All this at a time when few transgender people were even visible."
It is the chapters leading up to Candy's death that I found the most interesting - a chronological account, including dates, that details by the day and sometimes by the hour the activities leading up to her final passing and reveals who was there in the end for her.
Death was a strange phenomenon among the tawdry glamour of underground New York in the 1970s. It only existed in old black and white movies. Underground icons weren't meant to die. They were supposed to go on forever.
A sample of the glossy photo repros. from the hardback edition
The tale that Carr tells encompasses not only Candy's life but the history of gay liberation in New York during the late sixties/early seventies - something we take for granted now but which has never been more important, particularly given the way that transgender individuals are treated now by the far-right who bizarrely are back in power. (It's like we've been transported back to the 1950s and the liberating 1960s and 70s never existed.)
I was glad to see a mention of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries and the account of Sylvia Rivera defending street gays - not every gay wants to imitate the repetitive cycle of heterosexuality in a nuclear family with adopted kids.
Carr's story captures the glamour and humour of Candy's life but also the sadness. If Candy had lived longer she might have become the woman she wanted to be. Jackie Curtis was satisfied with being a drag star, as was Holly Woodlawn, but one senses from the early pictures of Candy in this book and her admiration of Christine Jorgensen, that Candy really did feel more comfortable as a woman than a man.
I appreciate and applaud Carr for all the research she has put into her book which turns a "superstar" into a very real person - a mortal - yet also gives us a taste of a period and lifestyle that seems so much more glamorous than today's polished, commercialised drag scene. Candy may not have been political (although her character in Women in Revolt is hilariously so), but it was the tawdriness of yesterday's drag, the rejection of the middle class values of the 'norm', that elevated 'drag' to a political statement as espoused by transgender activists like Sylvia Rivera.
Highly recommended.
Gary Comenas
Warholstars.org/February 2025