Andy Warhol cries over Candy Darling

Bob Colacello (Holy Terror - Andy Warhol Close Up (NY: HarperCollins, 1990, p. 189):

"On Tuesday, October 2, 1973, I called Candy from the Factory and asked her if she wanted anything. She eked out the sentences in short gasps, 'Yes. More juice. The sweet kind. I crave sweets.' I went to the hospital, bearing more gifts from Andy: expensive note paper, expensive chocolates.

She was spitting up phlegm when I arrived. I noticed how white she was. Ghostly. Candy called for a nurse and as soon as she arrived I left. Candy said, 'Tell Andy to call me. And no more presents. I don't need presents.' It was the first time she didn't put up a good front.

The next morning, I called Andy, and told him how badly Candy was doing and that she wanted him to call her. 'Oh, I can't Bob, I just can't. What's wrong with Candy, anyway? I mean do you think she reall has cancer or something?' I said that her doctor wouldn't tell me anything. 'I know about doctors, let me tell you,' said Andy. And then he found an excuse to get off the phone... It wasn't that he didn't care. He just couldn't cope.

I called Maxime, who with the Jacksons had been paying for bills not covered by Medicare... Maxime suggested calling Dr. William Cahan, her cancer specialist at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Hospital, and the husband of Vogue editor Grace Mirabella.

I called from the Factory, as Andy hovered over me. Dr. Cahan said that he would look into Candy's case, to see if anything could be done... Andy hovered over me through the call to Candy's mother too. Teresa Slattery appreciated what we were trying to do, but she didn't think there was much hope. Candy didn't know it, but the doctors had told her that Candy had leukemia and a malignant tumor in her stomach. I hung up the phone and told Andy. For the first and only time in the seventeen years I knew him, I saw him cry." (BC189)

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