Mary Woronov Interview by Cynthia Rose

Cult actress/artist Mary Woronov lives and paints in a former dance studio in L.A. where’s she’s been since the 70s. She was born in Brooklyn Hts. in 1943. Her father was a doctor. She was 5’ 11” by the age of 12, her parents divorced, and she was sent to a boarding school at 14. She later attended Cornell in Ithaca, NY, as an art (sculpture) major. She was taken to Andy Warhol’s Factory in 1964 where she met Gerard Malanga. That led to a movie career and her joining a 12 person troupe known as The Exploding Plastic Inevitable and going on the road with The Velvet Underground in 1966 and 67. “And there was my dad in this den of freaks, really trying to be a dad, ‘Now Mr. Warhol, you look after Mary!’ It was stupefying, but what were they going to do with this weird girl they brought up who brought Lou Reed home to breakfast after these crazy nights?” “I could never have gotten through this without them. I always considered my family to be something I could pretend to be rid of. I don’t know how they did it, but what they gave me was a rock. I was not addictive, I always came down, I always went home. My parents also gave me this thing of not being afraid to be different. They were wacky, but in a 50’s way.“ Her whip dancing with Malanga was a major part of the extreme, controversial, ahead of its time audio visual experience. Woronov could be seen on stage in front of the band and sometimes on screen behind them in various Warhol films. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable was treated as a major art happening and received lots of publicity. At the time the 1966 Velvets banana LP, which came out (late) in March 67, was treated as a souvenir of the show.

“This girl brought in the Velvet Underground and we thought they were great when nobody else did. They couldn’t get airplay and they stuck to Warhol because it was their only means of getting heard. Andy incorporated them into his system. They were all used to drugs and that kind of life where you just do nothing all night, you sleep in the daytime, then get up and do nothing again. It was just a very weird life. Andy incorporated them and made something called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable and we’d go into places and the band would go on stage.

Behind the band would be the movies we had made, and in front of the band would be me, Gerard or Ingrid or Nico. Nico would sing, Gerard and I would dance together and Ingrid would act like an asshole, it was a complete thing. We toured all over with it, then went back to New York where Andy set up shop in the Dom or the Polish Center or whatever it was called on St. Mark’s Place and we used to play there every night.” (The Dom on St. Mark’s Place is now a substance abuse center.)

“The Velvets? They’re very important. But in New York, they were frowned on in New York. They couldn’t get on the air, are you joking? The only reason they played is because of Warhol. Because he used them sort of as an advertisement, he put on this happening called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. They had a loop of a film and his band was part of the show. Otherwise they could never have gotten a gig. After a while, they got a following and they left Warhol, but were they successful in their own time? Never! Never, never, never successful, no. Not the way bands can be. I mean if you think Dylan was successful when he played in the Village, well, OK. They played in the Village. They got that successful. But they weren’t successful like records, giant amounts of records. Did you see Oliver Stone’s movie about the Doors? The way they portrayed Warhol? You don’t learn a damn thing about the Doors. But you learn about Los Angeles’ attitude towards New York then. It was evil, it was full of witches and black magic, it was decadent and disgusting, and that’s how they saw us. When we went there as The Velvets, they hated us. They hated us and we were not a hit. But we were sought out by curious minds. Tennessee Williams would show up. Dali would show up. Really famous people would show up without anyone else. We were on the edge and everybody else was asleep. We didn’t like what they liked. But certainly, we didn’t rule the world. They did! No one even knew we were around unless they looked real hard. This was especially because of the homosexuals. Because, I mean, they were outlawed. And they were doing most of the art. Gays did a lot. Try to get rid of that, you get rid of a very, very major part of art.

At the time, in New York, homosexuals were so put down that they revolted. That was Stonewall, hardly the free speech movement. At the same time, hippies were marching against guns, sticking flowers in muzzles.”

Woronov (also billed as Mary Might) was one of the stars of Andy Warhol films, usually released by Filmmakers Co-Op. These ground breaking (in many ways) 16mm underground films were unlike the now better known, more polished and more commercial later “Warhol” features, which were mostly directed by Paul Morrissey. They could be any length, were often unscripted and unrehearsed, and filmed with one stationary camera. Notorious in their day, they are mostly pretty hard to see now.

“It wasn’t that he sought us out. It was like we gravitated towards him and he let us in. I know that Billy (Name) knew Ondine, maybe The Turtle and people like that. He knew them before. He came to the Factory and he fell in love with Andy, in the way that he wanted to help Andy, in other words he understood what Andy wanted and he would silently help him do it. The same with Gerard (Malanga). Gerard would bring gorgeous girls in. He would bring famous people in. Andy liked that. And Billy brought this nightlife in, that Andy knew nothing about. But when they came in, Andy accepted things. Nothing was good or bad to Andy. Everything was the same. He took it in and synthesized it and started making art of it. What he did with us were the movies and I think it’s his greatest bit of art. When he was with us he thought of not making art anymore, he did these plastic balloons and that was art floating away, it was the last art show he wanted to have because he liked movies and he thought that’s what he wanted to do. And we were it, we were the core. When he got shot, that all went to hell. Not in the sense that Paul Morrissey kept it going, but in the sense that he went off in a new direction.

“Warhol and Corman both had a very similar mentality. I don’t know where it came from. It’s sorta the mentality of the immigrant or something. I don’t know where Corman’s from, but he certainly has it, ‘Just use what we have and go forward.’ Warhol didn’t like foreign things. He didn’t like foreigners. He liked things which were like him, things which were his brand of American. Seriously, I think the only reason he liked me, as I say in the book, is I’m Slavic looking. He was so funny.

He worked all the time, never took vacations. He told us to work, he told us you need to work! They were always the first words out of his mouth. He had no concept of having a good time. Which used to bother us. We used to worry about him. As a group, we really worried about him. We were very protective. He never had a good time. I never, ever saw him have a good time. His idea of a good time was standing in a waiting room. If he was at a party he looked like he was in a waiting room. The only thing that used to make him happy, I have to say, was meeting famous people. That is true. He’d get very excited, then he’d go, ‘Oh, so what…’ All of his movies failed to make any money. It depressed him! When he had The Velvets, they didn’t make any money. His art was not very profitable until much, much later. He wasn’t doing things for money the way Corman was. Corman’s attitude was ‘I already have this much. If I make it for even less money, I’ll make money.‘ Within that, you could have all the freedom you liked. Not very much freedom, just as much as you liked if you don’t spend money.

Mary with International Velvet
“With Warhol you were used as an object. It was like you were a fly or something. He just put the camera on you and waited for you to do something, until finally you did something. I saw one person try to kill themself. That was kind of funny.” Several Warhol films with Woronov were unleashed in 66. THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO (b/w, 70 mins.) opened in Feb. HEDY (THE SHOPLIFTER) or THE 14 YEAR OLD GIRL (b/w, 70 mins.) opened in March. It featured music by The Velvet Underground. Mario Montez plays Hedy (Hedy Lamarr), Woronov is 2’nd billed as the policewoman, and Ingrid Superstar, Gerard Malanga, and director Jack Smith were in it. MILK was a short. “I gave an actress a glass of milk about every three minutes.” THE BEARD was a version of a play by Michael McClure, who sued. The only one with script, it couldn’t be shown. Woronov was Jean Harlow.

The most famous was the epic CHELSEA GIRLS (66) which was two 16 mm films, shown side by side, running 210 mins. It even was partially in color and featured instrumental jamming by The Velvet Underground. Paul Morrissey was production assistant. The “Pope Ondine” segment featured Ingrid Superstar, Mary Might and International Velvet. “Hanoi Hanna (Queen Of China)” also featured Might, Velvet, and Superstar. Other segments included Brigid Polk, Mario Montez, Malanga, Edie Sedgwick, and Nico (and her son by Alain Delon, Ari). It opened in September and played around the country in various “art” theatres. Nobody was paid for being in these Warhol films, but CHELSEA GIRLS made news and money, so Mary’s mom sued. She eventually got $1000 in an out of court settlement. “I never saw any of it.”

The next year (67), Warhol released THE 24 HOUR MOVIE, or ****, a feature guaranteed not to make money. It was, again, two separate 16mm reels. Two projected images were superimposed on a single screen. It was shown complete only once (in December). The “superstars” in it included International Velvet, Ultra Violet, Gerard Malanga and Ingrid Superstar. The “Imitation of Christ” segment features Nico, Ondine, Brigid Polk, Taylor Mead and Tom Baker. “I realized when I was writing, this is not going to happen again. It was good and it was special in its way and it will be lost. Just as much as something from the Edwardian period. I realized that I was tremendously fond of these people. I didn’t know how until I started writing. I would start writing, thinking, ‘I gotta write about so and so because I really hated them,’ and I would realize I didn’t really hate them at all. It’s interesting to write something now about the past. ”

The next year Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanis (the day before the Robert Kennedy assassination!) “After Warhol was shot, he really did become a factory instead of what he was when he called himself a factory. He just did portraits of famous people and he stopped letting the people I knew, the crazy people, come around. When the silver factory was going on, these people were nuts.” Warhol became obsessed with celebrities. In 69 he and Morrissey started Interview, which is still being published. “I think it was a consequence of being shot. But what was around Andy he made art of. If he was shot, he would go on about it, make art of it. I mean he just made art out of what came close to him. When we were around him, he made us art. When he started sectioning himself off and giving over to other people, I mean Morrissey started making his movies. Other people started running the factory. I don’t really know what he was like then because I wasn’t there, but it was different.

“He did not understand when people did not like him. Like if people didn’t like The Velvets he would ask everybody, ‘What’s wrong with them?’ It never occurred to him that they were perceived as ‘beyond’ and scary, singing stuff about heroin. He just could not believe that they didn’t understand his point or didn’t like him. So when someone actually shoots him, or tries to take the money away from him because they were wronged, he really didn’t understand that. I mean, it’s obvious but, still, it would hurt him.”

In 68 Woronov started appearing in plays. “I started doing plays, off off Broadway plays and I got a little bit of a name for myself, mainly because I just did the wackiest plays in the world and people were floored at what I did. The Arms Of Electra, Big Mama. Off off Broadway plays were not what they are now. People came from uptown and took their lives in their hands. And we would put on these insane plays like Kitchenette. In Conqueror Of The Universe, we were all running around with giant dicks! I often played a man, or a female very much like a man. They were very crazy plays. You could say your dialogue or not say your dialogue or scream at the audience. It was the time of the Living Theatre, of Charles Ludlam’s Theatre of the Ridiculous. That’s what I was in. Charles Ludlam had a part of it and Juan Vaccaro had another part. I did these plays and I realized that I liked to act. It was the only thing I was doing.”

She was in three features by her husband at the time, Theodore Gershuny. KEMEK (PV #15) was filmed in 1970 in Italy and Canada. Years later Woronov was brought back to film new framing scenes and it was first released as FOR LOVE OR MURDER. “After doing all those plays with the Warhol generation I was not exactly your average actress. I was pretty much up for anything. Nobody’s seen these movies. OK, I’m still doing art movies on the East Coast. I was mostly doing plays, which is how he (Gershuny) saw me. Actually, I think he wanted to ball me but he said, ‘Look, I’m doing this movie in Europe and I want you to be in it.’ And it was a really incredible movie. But the producer had cancer. He died and it ended up in the producer’s estate. It was just a beautiful movie and he put his all, his heart into it. It was a great story too, so twisted. My husband does these great, very twisted, well his generation is 50’s into the 60’s, it’s a very bizarre generation, the 50’s just before it turns. And he knows his film culture well. He would do these movies about what men considered sexy in that time, that era. That’s what SUGAR COOKIES is. And it was a twisted era! This one was about a man who was inventing a drug that would make everyone brain dead, whatever. He was all powerful and he had a woman who helped him – that was me. And Alexandra Stewart was the girl that he sent to get – he needed from a man who was on the island of Rositano in Italy.

This man didn’t know what it is but he discovers that and ends up stopping the drug man. Or maybe he doesn’t stop him. I don’t remember. But in the end, what it is, is I dress in black. Alexandra Stewart dresses in white and this man is torn up by us and the other man is the all powerful man, – the whole thing. It’s just this weird scenario. It was interesting and dark.

“Anyway that was the first one and it was taken away from him and he figured like Oliver (Stone), ‘OK, I have to make some piece of dreck. People will see it, then they’ll give me another movie.’ So he made SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT.” The 1972 mental institution horror movie with NYC underground stars and John Carradine was a Cannon release filmed in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Producer, screenwriter Jeffrey Konvitz later wrote THE SENTINEL. SILENT (aka DEATH HOUSE and NIGHT OF THE DARK FULL MOON) was later frequently shown and ridiculed by Elvira. The cast includes Ondine, Candy Darling, Tally Brown and Jack Smith. “But we used all the Warhol people, Candy Darling, so on. And we made it. I always saw these people. I love ’em, always saw them. I stopped being with them, hanging with them. And after Andy got shot, I was out. Most of that crowd were out. Anyway, my husband made SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT but he made it so twisted most of those people don’t consider it a horror movie anymore. So he tried to make a semi-porn movie, which was SUGAR COOKIES, which was also so twisted, nobody could classify it.”

HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD
Oliver Stone was the associate producer of the (softcore) X rated SUGAR COOKIES (PV #15). It was rereleased by Troma (cut) in 1977. “He decided to direct this movie and he said ‘I will write a part for you because you’re my wife and you’re going to be the star of the movie,’ and I thought ‘Wow, man this is perfect, he’s going to write this great part for me, just the way he sees me, this fabulous, terrific girl, you know, who’s so nice and wonderful and so that was my first porno movie. He wrote a part where I was a lesbian and I fucked a lot of people with a gun. That was my first really rocky nudie. There was a lot of nudity in it. I found out that I didn’t really care about nudity. That means it just doesn’t affect me. As a matter of fact, I like being nude. It just doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is that I know other people are bothered by it, so I’m the first one to put on something. It’s like you’re sitting at the beach and what if you just don’t feel like looking at someone’s ass, and there it is. It’s like really offensive. The problem for nudity for me is that I always think I’m offending everybody.” In 1973 Lou Reed somehow made it to #16 (!) on the pop charts with his “Walk On The Wild Side,” which described the New York scene that Woronov had been a part of.

SEIZURE (74) was directed by Oliver Stone. It stars Jonathan Frid from DARK SHADOWS in a plot borrowed from Bergman’s HOUR OF THE WOLF. It was made in Canada in and around a rented house. “You can’t see that one. He took it off the market. It’s just not around, but it’s his first feature. He wrote and directed it. And it was a horror movie. See, he helped my husband do SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT and, I think, when he saw how easy it was, it made him think, ‘I’m gonna do my own.’ So he did a movie where these people are trapped in a house and they’re suddenly visited by these mythological creatures. One was the Queen Of Evil. One was a giant and the other was Herve Villechaize, a dwarf. They decimate them in these games they insist on playing. He was always interested in doing movies and I think he thought the way to do movies was to do one that was commercial. Martine Beswick played the Queen Of Evil. I just played this very nice lady, which was the way Oliver saw me, who was decimated.”

Meanwhile, she continued to act in plays. She received the 1974 Theatre World Award for acting in The Boom Boom Room by David Rabe. “I tried to actually get a legitimate job, a paying job. An agent actually took me on and he sent me to Lincoln Center and I got a job in The Boom Boom Room. I was Julie Newmar’s stand-in. But she didn’t go onstage, so I took it over. Then I got the Theatre World Award and by that time I was an actress.” That led to Woronov spending six months on SOMMERSET, an ABC offshoot of ANOTHER WORLD. It had an always shifting cast that during its 70 – 76 run included Ann Wedgeworth, Bibi Besch, Audrey Landers, JoBeth Williams, Ted Danson, Michael Nouri and Sigourney Weaver. “My agent was Jeff Hunter, he was such a great guy. He said, ‘Well, you’ll do a soap and you’ll make a lot of money and then you’ll do a play.’ I did a soap, SOMMERSET. Oh it was a horrible thing. They’re really bizarre. Now I could do it very easily. Then, it was just too bizarre for me. I hated it. My role ran forever and we were in this cement box for a whole summer. I had no knowledge of TV and it was the first TV thing I did and I just didn’t like it. Because I didn’t like it, I came out to Hollywood (in 75) and I worked with Corman.

“Then I started doing lots of movies and that’s when I realized what I was gonna do. I just did these great movies. I call Roger Corman the Andy Warhol of the West Coast, for me, anyway. I was allowed to do just what I’d done with Warhol, which was, do these movies that were so cheap you could do what you wanted to do, and which were so cheap you didn’t get paid. Which was just like Warhol, who really was cheap. The people who hung around Corman at the time were really the cream of the crop. I mean Allan Arkush and Joe Dante were the editors. Jonathan Demme was running around with a camera. Paul Bartel was my acting mate. It was just loads of fun.”

DEATH RACE 2000 (75), directed by Paul Bartel, was her first West Coast credit. She played Calamity Jane. “Paul Bartel was a friend of my first husband. My first husband did a small movie and Paul Bartel did SECRET CINEMA. They were friends in New York. Actually, that’s how I came to Hollywood. Paul went to L.A. to do, I think, PRIVATE PARTS, and then he got this Corman movie, DEATH RACE 2000 and he called me and said, ‘Listen, if you come over here, I’ll get you a part in this Corman movie. I know once he sees you, he’ll hire you.’ And, in fact, that’s exactly what happened. Working with Paul is great. He’s not the kind of director that screams and yells at you. At first you think he doesn’t know what he wants, but he does. Corman got the same amazing personalities as Warhol but I tell you, he didn’t care for them at all. I remember him screaming at Sylvester Stallone, ‘I don’t care who you are! In my movie, you show your ass!’ He’s gonna get a massage from this woman and he wanted to put something over his ass. And that was the only time Corman came to the set! This was DEATH RACE 2000 and Sylvester didn’t take this little napkin off his ass. Corman was furious. That was all he cares about. He is a business guy. Because it was a business, because he thought of nothing but turnover, he created an area that’s been, in many ways, the most fertile for really independent movies, cheaper American movies. Sometimes when Paul was doing DEATH RACE 2000 he made it quite a bit funnier. Cause he saw it as a comedy, but Corman didn’t, ’cause comedy doesn’t make money. He would say to Paul, ‘Look, more blood, less jokes,’ and in the cutting room, he’d force him to cut out jokes. And go for film of some guy getting his head blown off.

“When I came out here, to the West Coast, suddenly there was no peer pressure in art anymore. See, in New York, I knew all these famous great artists and I sort of thought I wasn’t going to make art. I would do these angry black and white drawings on great big brown wrapping paper and then right after I did them, I’d tear them up. I hated them so much and I was so angry that I wasn’t an artist and I wasn’t getting anywhere. Susan Rothenberg was my best friend, she was so famous. But when I came out to L.A., all that vanished. I stopped doing black and white. I started doing color, acrylic oils. I actually used canvas instead of paper. I stopped being so self destructive. I looked at the (local) art and said, ‘Wow, this is really trash.’ And they looked at me and separated themselves very quickly. They were very macho in L.A., no homosexual art, no female art. I felt so superior to them. That’s when I started painting, doing what I really love. I started really loving my art, every piece I did became like a little jewel. That’s when I got really good. I continued taking drugs in L.A. But the difference in coastline sure changed my life. The two cities are just so incredibly different. New York is this very aggressive force that runs towards things. L.A. is like this big sand trap which never forms, whereas New York is like a pinnacle.”

Many Corman produced roles followed. She was in COVER GIRL MODELS (filmed in the Philippines), CANNONBALL by Bartel and JACKSON COUNTY JAIL. Then she was drive-in movie star Mary McQueen in the hilarious HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD (77). “HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD was about making a film. They didn’t have any money for that film and they would use other pieces of film to make it and it was just because they love film. That was Allan Arkush and Joe Dante. They were great.” Woronov continued to work for and with Bartel and was hired several more times by Arkush.

“Apart from EATING RAOUL, my next favorite movie is ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL (79) and I think it’s my favorite movie because so many people like it. I can’t even remember watching it but I did enjoy doing it because it was funny. Allan said, ‘I’ve written you a part,’ these are the kind of movies I love, where they write me a part, and he said ‘you’re going to play a teacher.’ So I figured this is my time to be like Our Miss Brooks, this is going to be terrific. They brought us to the school and the school looked like it was in the ghetto and they had all of these kids and they were like rats. Then they put my outfit on and that was really stiff. When I stepped out of the dressing room, everything that I told Allan I would do, I didn’t do. I became Miss Togar. I swear I never thought about her until I stepped out of the dressing room with the makeup and costume on. She just happened, man. I don’t know where she came from, but she’s endeared me to the hearts of many.”

With Roger Corman and Paul Bartel
Many more roles followed, sometimes in very low budget and/or barely released projects. “I began to get a reputation as this… well drag her in and she’ll bring a whip with her. And that was kind of boring. But because I’ve always painted, I’ve always been connected to people in the art area, so I would get these very wiggy art movies. People who were doing a movie, trying to, but were really more interested in art, they weren’t coming out of the system. I would get lots of those. Usually they’d never see the light of day ’cause the guys lacked money. Then, the other things I’d get was, I knew lots of people who were just starting out making their own movies. And because I liked their work, I’d work for them for nothing, and they’d use me. I’d always work for scale, which my agents hated me for, so I’d be used by these people on their way up. Often their best movie was the one they did on their way up!”

She also became a fan of the L.A. punk music scene and can be seen in the Suicidal Tendencies “Institutionalized” video (with Jack Nance!). “In the beginning, I liked Elvis, all those Brooklyn bands, The Shangri Las… Then I got into Motown, when I was with Warhol. I liked the black stuff. I never liked the Beatles. I never liked the English stuff. I hate it. I think they ruined rock ‘n’ roll because their influence was so great, all the American Brooklyn bands just fell apart. Then, after I came out here, I fell in love with punk. I really liked it for just the wall of violence, it’s like somebody up in your face just sneering. Then when the scene sort of stopped here, I started falling back into New Orleans music through people who collect records. Professor Longhair, people like that. I liked people like The Plugz, early Los Lobos, X, The Germs, Black Flag, Fear, Lee Ving, he’s great. And the Dead Kennedys from San Francisco. The Mau Maus. They were hot! Fuck! I loved the Mau Maus. People didn’t know these bands. They only know The Red Hot Chili Peppers. It’s stupid.

The English punk movement was political, at least somewhat. Ours wasn’t political at all. It was about these fairly well off kids from suburbs. It wasn’t sexual either. They were like tribes of puppies, puppies who just flopped together.

“I had a black TransAm and I had tapes of all these bands. And the fucking car was stolen, with all those tapes. It was the worst thing in the world, because few of them made albums. It was such grunge. You have no idea. There was a band where the guy used to piss on everyone while they were dancing. You didn’t know if you were standing in beer or water. There were so many drugs. It was great. It was maddening. People were tattooing themselves with ball point pens. It was like a second childhood for me. From Warhol to punk rock. It was quite an amazing era, it was just as good as Warhol. That’s why I was in it, it had the same energy, the same vibe, the same hysteria. The bands would arrive, they would be so incredibly hot, the place would be totally destroyed. The cops would come. The night was always over when you saw these little bands of punks running, like little rats everywhere. This would happen again and again. It was insane. I don’t know what happened. It ended. It just stopped. I loved it. It was as great as the 60’s, and I come from Warhol, so I know great. You cannot top it. These people were tuned in, they were thinking differently. I knew Penelope (Spheeris) before she was famous. Her punk movie (THE DECLINE AND FALL OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION) says it. That’s great, it’s hot. It’s the truth about punk music in L.A. She was with Bob Biggs, who put out Slash magazine, Slash Records, and all those people were around him. She did a movie about these suburban kids (SUBURBIA) that was fuckin’ great. Now she’s this mother, I don’t know her now.”

Paul Bartel’s most successful cult film, EATING RAOUL, took a year and a half to make. He and Mary play Paul and Mary Bland. “He’s directed and acted and I’ve only acted but I am a big functional part of EATING RAOUL, of the aesthetic and everything. And I am not married to the man. He used to say that we were married because he liked the publicity of it. He finally stopped saying that. I wouldn’t do another interview with him until he stopped saying it. He said, ‘OK, I’ll never say we’re married,’ went and did this interview where this woman asked, ‘Are you married?’ and Paul said, ‘No, we’re divorced.’ Which is just as bad! After EATING RAOUL, he did this for about four years. It really pissed me off.” Woronov did marry a California businessman but it only lasted a few years.

HELLHOLE (85) was co-produced by AIP founder Sam Arkoff. The incredible cast includes Ray Sharkey, Marjoe Gortner, Terry Moore, Edy Williams and Dyanne Thorne. Woronov played Dr. Fletcher, a role originally intended for Britt Ekland. The original director was replaced too. “I thought that was a riot. I had so much fun making that movie. I’m embarrassed to say it, it was probably the worst movie I’ve done but it was so funny to me. I remember that the American crew really hated the fact that a foreign director (Pierre De Moro) was doing it because he had no sense of camp. He didn’t understand it at all. I had the most fun doing it because it was so out of wack, so over the top. I played this woman who ran an insane asylum and she experimented on the patients, who were all young girls between the age of 16 and 18 with giant tits. She was showing these people around the asylum and saying ‘I had the swimming pool removed and sand pits installed because sand is so much more therapeutic.’ Unfortunately they cut out the picture, which was the funniest thing, of all these girls swimming in sand. I loved my part. I was a lethal, horrible, awful woman.”

TERRORVISION (86), a Charles Band produced sci fi comedy, was set in Las Vegas but was filmed in a Rome studio. “It was very forced, very hard and it was such a hard edged joke against American suburban people that you hated these people. That’s why it wasn’t funny, we should have been more likeable. Everybody was too broad and I think the fact that it was done in Italy was one reason. The Italians think it’s really funny to laugh at Americans but they laugh through some kind of fear or envy or something.” To help promote it, she did an interview that oddly ended up being printed half in Fangoria and half in Starlog.

In 87 Warhol died. Ondine died in 89. MORTUARY ACADEMY (88) was a necrophilic black comedy teaming Mary with Paul Bartel again. SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS (89), by Paul Bartel, reteamed Woronov with Robert Beltran (from EATING RAOUL) and Ray Sharkey (from HELLHOLE). Jackie Bisset was top billed and Woronov had her last major nude scene. In WARLOCK, she was a channeler, shown with big (fake) breasts with eyeballs!

In the early 90s, she had to have an operation. “They told me my liver was no good. That’s when I straightened out. I don’t do anything. It’s a very different life, but I love it. I like acting but the trouble with acting is you don’t get to do it that much. You have to wait for someone to hire you. So I do other things and one of the main things I do is paint. I love painting. I’ve always painted. Painting is really lonely. You just sit in a room all by yourself. Everything else is a distraction. So you get really lonely. Acting is like, you’re never lonely. There’s always someone around. Someone either putting their hands on your face or telling you what to do or insisting that you eat lunch. The problem with acting is you work in a team and you never do anything that’s yours. Everything you do when you act is part of this thing that makes a film and you better be conscious of that because otherwise your ego is out of wack. But with painting, no one else touches that canvas but me. So I get real ego satisfaction. It’s nice. I go through periods with my paintings where I really can’t stand them and then I like them and then I can’t stand them again. Painting is very personal to me.” Mary describes her paintings as “She devils watching their children eat each other.”

“I always felt that all my movies were B movies. But then I like B movies. I like film noir and they were all B movies. I’m really bad at categories, maybe that’s not true. I never thought of myself as a B movie actress until I came to California and started working for Roger Corman. This man was proud of making B movies. I realized that I was making movies that maybe weren’t going to come out or come out in Canada somewhere and make somebody a lot of money. That attitude that everybody had working on these movies was sort of like you were in school and you would graduate and make an A movie someday. I never graduated but lots of people did. The people who worked there were all great. They had great ideas. They all loved film. I wasn’t really that crazy about film. I liked acting. I liked acting on the stage especially. But I wasn’t that crazy about being a movie star. But these people loved film. They knew every inch of film.”

Mary Woronov Swimming Underground (My Years In The Warhol Factory) was published in 95. “I think Peter Ackroyd who runs the company read it and sort of didn’t like it. But he didn’t know how to tell me. He gave it to his wife Roberta and she fell flat out in love with it, like ‘This is the most important book of a generation…’ She just went on and on. And from then on, Peter just shut up! It’s not judgmental. It had to be that way though because when I was writing it I came to realize it was the largest growth period of my life, it was the largest creative period of my life. It was all those good things. But at the same time, it was moment to moment.

Looking back on it was the only time that I experienced a sense of real loss because I realized it was so good. It was dangerous, yes, but it was so good. In many ways it was what every kid wants to do. They slam really hard against reality, but they’re very resilient. They can do it at that age but you can’t do it at this age. You need to show them what’s illegal and what isn’t and what’s harmful, but, beyond that, they have to flirt with the outcome themselves. It was a really dangerous time yet everyone seemed to take care of me. They were really great to me. People who don’t like drugs and can’t take that dose of reality don’t like it, of course. The people who do like it, really love it. They seem to think of it as a work of art. Kids have come up to me, strangers, and said they liked it. It’s not a drug book. It’s more like Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries, and that was a good book. It’s not about drugs. It’s about a period and what was happening, the things were one. I think though we’re on a literal roll, I mean the nation thinks very literally and I think we’ve got the capacity to get much worse, which will not be pretty. It was condemned by The Library Newsletter. The man who wrote the Library thing said it should be burned, I was a piece of living germ that should get roasted. In other words, I represent a time these folks feel destroyed a lot of brains. And, far from discussing why, I should be stopped for it. Publisher’s Weekly loved it, called it brilliant. It’s kind of a corrective measure to what everybody thinks went on. Warhol’s books are sort of cheerful, full of cutesy wisdoms. He was very smart, he wasn’t stupid. Very few descriptions of him capture him. He was very nice. I was there at the very beginning, where we were babies. Very, very young. And everybody was very good looking. This era’s not in a box though, other than Velvets records re-issues!”

Swimming Underground is $19.95 from Journey Editions, an imprint of Charles E. Tuttle (at 153 Milk St., Boston, MA 02109). Mary has her own website at www.wgn.net/~mmw. Some of the quotes here first appeared in Cynthia Rose’s interview in The Seattle Scene. Some additional quotes are from the SCREAM QUEENS video, Jack Stevenson’s Pandemonium and Richard Von Busch. Thanks also to New Horizons, Vince Mizzi (Johnny Ramone photo), Richard Henderson and Hal Kelly.

Mary Woronov FILMOGRAPHY

YEAR APPEARANCE
66 THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO (VSOM)

THE 14 YEAR OLD GIRL/HEDY (THE SHOPLIFTER),

THE BEARD (unreleased), SHOWER, MILK,

SUPERBOY, KISS THE BOOT (all Warhol shorts)

CHELSEA GIRLS
67 THE 24 HOUR MOVIE/****
70 KEMEK (Genesis)/FOR LOVE OR MONEY
72 SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (Paragon)

SUGAR COOKIES (Troma)
74 SEIZURE (Starmaker)

SOMERSET (NBC soap, regular)
75 DEATH RACE 2000 (New Horizons)

COVER GIRL MODELS
76 CANNONBALL (Warner)

JACKSON COUNTY JAIL (Warner)

HOLLYWOOD MAN/DEATH THREAT

On CHARLIE’S ANGELS
77 HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD

(Warner)

IN THE GLITTER PALACE (NBC)

MR. BILLION (Fox)

BAD GEORGIA ROAD (VCI)

THE ONE AND ONLY (Par.)

On LOGAN’S RUN
79 ROCK N ROLL HIGH SCHOOL (New Horizons)

THE LADY IN RED (Vestron)

On TAXI, KATE LOVES A MYSTERY
80 On BUCK ROGERS, PHYL AND

MIKHY
81 HEARTBEEPS (MCA)

ANGEL OF H.E.A.T. (Vestron)

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S MOVIE MADNESS

(MGM)
82 EATING RAOUL (CBS Fox)
83 GET CRAZY (Nelson)
84 NIGHT OF THE COMET (CBS/Fox)

MOVIE HOUSE MASSACRE (Active)

THE PRINCESS WHO NEVER LAUGHED (Fox)

(Faerie Tale Theatre)
85 HELL HOLE (RCA)

INSIDE ADAM SWIT

TERRORVISION (Lightning)

A BUNNY’S TALE (tv)

CHALLENGE OF A LIFETIME (ABC)

on KNIGHT RIDER
86 CHOPPING MALL (Vestron)

THE NOMADS (Par.)

AMAZING STORIES (MCA) (Secret Cinema)

On ST. ELSEWHERE
87 BLACK WIDOW (Fox)

KAPPA (short)

On SLEGEHAMMER, SHELL GAME, YOU, AGAIN?
88 MORTUARY ACADEMY (RCA)

WARLOCK (Vidmark)

NOT OF THIS EARTH (MGM/UA) (old footage)

MONSTERS (Lorimar compilation from series)
89 SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN

BEVERLY HILLS (MCEG)

LET IT RIDE (Par.)

HOW TO BE AN ACTOR (MVD) (instruction tape)
90 WATCHERS II (IVE)

CLUB FED (Prism)

DICK TRACY (Touchstone)

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL FOREVER (Live)]

MADE IN HOLLYWOOD
91 BUSTERS BEDROOM

(Germany/Port./Can.)

WHERE SLEEPING DOGS LIE (Columbia)
92 INVASION OF THE SCREEM QUEENS (See More) (interview and

SUGAR COOKIES scene)

THE LIVING END (Academy)

MOTORAMA (Columbia)

HELLROLLER (Hollywood Int.)

On PARKER LEWIS CAN’T LOSE
93 ACTING ON IMPULSE (Academy)

GRIEF (Academy)

GOOD GIRLS DON’T (MTI)

FLYING BLIND (Fox series semi regular)
94 I AM LEGEND (SW) (HELLROLLER clip)

SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROCK!

NUMBER ONE FAN

On BABYLON 5, MY SO CALLED LIFE
95 HERE COME THE MUNSTERS (TV)

On HIGHLANDER, FAMILY MATTERS
96 GLORY DAZE
97 SWEET JANE

Also on HART TO HART, WINGS