Holly Woodlawn (October 26, 1946 – December 6, 2015), born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl and for some years known as Harold Ajzenberg, was an American actress. Best known as a Warhol superstar, she appeared in the films Trash (1970) and Women in Revolt (1971). Her career extended to cabaret, and she was among those named in Lou Reed's 1972 hit song "Walk on the Wild Side". Woodlawn published the memoir A Low Life in High Heels in 1991.
Holly Woodlawn was born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl on October 26, 1946 in Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico. Woodlawn's father was a German-American who was a soldier in the U.S. Army, and Woodlawn's mother was Puerto Rican. Woodlawn's mother moved to New York for work. While there, she met and married Joseph Ajzenberg when they were both working as wait staff at a Catskills resort. The family moved to Miami Beach, where Woodlawn's name was changed to Harold Ajzenberg.
Woodlawn later said that she "came out very young... I was having sex when I was seven and eight in the bushes with my uncles and cousins - of course, they were only 11 or 12 themselves... Then Miami Beach. All the Cubans arrived after Castro took over, and that's where I really came out, on 21st Street in Miami Beach".
Woodlawn has stated that in Miami Beach, she "was going to school, getting stones thrown at me and being beaten up by homophobic rednecks". In 1962, aged 15 or 16, Woodlawn ran away from home, heading north from Florida to New York City with some "Cuban queens". Woodlawn has said that she left home with only $27 and began hitchhiking. As Lou Reed stated in his 1972 song "Walk on the Wild Side", Woodlawn plucked her eyebrows while on her journey to New York City. She adopted the name Holly from Holly Golightly, the heroine of Breakfast at Tiffany's. In her memoir, A Low Life in High Heels, she said: "At the age of 16, when most kids were cramming for trigonometry exams, I was turning tricks, living off the streets and wondering when my next meal was coming. But what bothered me the most was that I gave up the senior prom for this kind of life."
Upon arriving in New York City, she "'met this guy who fell in love with me and asked me to be his girlfriend. I started taking hormones for a sex-change and lived as his wife, working in the days as a clothing model at Saks Fifth Avenue... And for six or seven years they never knew I was a boy. Not a clue!'" By 1969, she had decided against sex reassignment surgery.
Woodlawn became known after appearing in two films by Andy Warhol.
According to Woodlawn, Warhol superstar Ondine arranged for her to get invited to Andy Warhol's Factory party for Flesh (1968). Her friend Silver George introduced her to Warhol at the party, and Warhol told her she was "so glamorous" and that she ought to be in one of his films. Warhol asked for her last name, but she didn't have one because she hadn't come up with Woodlawn yet and just went by Holly. Nothing came of this encounter, and she became envious, wanting to be a part of the Factory scene after witnessing how the film launched the careers of transgender Warhol superstars Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis. During the summer of 1969, her friend Peter came up with the surname Woodlawn:As fate would have it, the TV was on and Peter was watching a rerun of "I Love Lucy." It was the episode where Lucy is riding the subway with a loving cup stuck on her head. Well, in the subway background was the word "Woodlawn," since Lucy was supposed to be riding the Woodlawn train — which, incidentally, was the train that traveled to the Bronx and made its last stop at the Woodlawn Cemetery. Peter spotted the word and his hair curled, his eyes popped, and his finger pointed as he up and shouted, "That's it! The Woodlawn Cemetery!"In September 1969, Woodlawn made her stage debut as Cuckoo the Bird Girl, who was featured in the chorus as a Moon Reindeer Girl, in Jackie Curtis' play Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit.
Around this time, Woodlawn attempted to impersonate Warhol superstar Viva and charge a camera to Warhol's account at a store. Word got around Max's Kansas City that director Paul Morrissey was shooting a Warhol film. Woodlawn gave an interview on what it was like being a Warhol superstar, although she was not associated with the Factory. Her audacity intrigued Morrissey, who showed Warhol the article. When Warhol realized she was the perpetrator from the camera heist, he wanted nothing to do with her. However, Morrissey still reached out to her and offered her a role in Trash, which was filmed in October 1969. In the film, Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro plays a heroin addict on a quest to score who, ambivalent about his sexuality, has a transgender girlfriend played by Woodlawn. Woodlawn was paid $25 per day during filming, spending the last day on heroin.
Trash was released in October 1970 to positive reviews. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote: "Holly Woodlawn, especially, is something to behold, a comic book Mother Courage who fancies herself as Marlene Dietrich but sounds more often like Phil Silvers." Her performance prompted director George Cukor to campaign for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to nominate Woodlawn for an Academy Award, but nothing came of this.
In 1971, Woodlawn replaced Candy Darling at the La MaMa theatre in a production of Vain Victory, which was written and directed by Jackie Curtis.
In Morrissey's next film, Woodlawn starred in Women in Revolt (1972), a satirical look at the women's rights movement and the PIGS (politically involved girls). In this film, she became one of the first people to say the word cunt in cinema. Photographer Richard Avedon captured Woodlawn with her co-stars Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling for the June 1972 issue of Vogue. The film also featured Woodlawn's longtime friend Penny Arcade in a small role. The pair had first met in Manhattan in 1968, and both were members of the Play-House of the Ridiculous.
Woodlawn became known as a Warhol superstar.
In 1972, director Robert Kaplan and cinematographer Paul Glickman concocted the idea of a movie whose premise would be using a transgender woman as the lead in a film without revealing the sex of the actress. Woodlawn played a young, starstruck girl hoping for success as an actress in New York City in the film, Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers. It was a low budget, 16 mm, unsuccessful musical feature which contains the song "In The Very Last Row" performed by Bette Midler. It was thought to be lost until its 35mm negative was rediscovered when DuArt Film and Video closed their storage facility in 2013, after which it was restored by the Academy Film Archive.
This was followed by Broken Goddess in 1973. Described by J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum in Midnight Movies as an "apparently plotless mood piece in which Woodlawn ran and posed through Central Park at dawn". Both Goddess and Cucumbers ran for short stints at midnight at some theaters in New York.
In 1978 she co-starred with Divine in a run of Tom Eyen's The Neon Woman (a burlesque) at Hurrah, directed by Ron Link.
She also appeared in films by Rosa von Praunheim, including Tally Brown, New York (1979). Woodlawn was friends with both the director and Tally Brown.
In 1991, she published her autobiography, A Low Life in High Heels, with writer Jeff Copeland.
During the 1990s, Woodlawn achieved a modest film and theatrical comeback, making cameo appearances in productions such as Night Owl (1993) and Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss (1998).