The Downtown Pop Underground

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Andy Milligan directed some of the earliest shows at Caffe Cino and La MaMa, and later went on to make trashy, low-budget movies such as The Ghastly Ones, Vapors, Seeds of Sin, The Body Beneath, The Man with Two Heads, and Torture Dungeon. [more]

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Best known for his Pop Art silkscreened work, Andy Warhol was a key connector figure who circulated not only through uptown art circles, but also within the underground film, poetry, theater, and music scenes. [more]

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Interview magazine contributor Anton Perich—who documented the scenes at Max’s Kansas City and the Mercer Art Center with his Super 8 film and Portapak video camera—also began making his own public access show, Anton Perich Presents, which debuted in January 1973. [more]

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Daughter of artist Al Hansen, Bibbe Hansen was a regular at the Factory in the mid-1960s—where she co-starred with Edie Sedgwick in the 1965 Warhol film Prison and also appeared onstage as a go-go dancer at an early Velvet Underground show. [more]

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Born James Slattery, Candy Darling grew up in Massapequa Park, Long Island and moved to New York in the mid-1960s, where she became part of the street scene—eventually befriending Jackie Curtis, with whom she appeared in Warhol films. [more]

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Dancer Daniel Nagrin appeared in Shirley Clarke’s first short film, 1953’s Dance in the Sun, and he later could be found performing in the Kitchen at the Mercer Arts Center. [more]

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In the late 1960s, Debbie Harry sang backup vocals in a short-lived hippie band named Wind in the Willows, then quit the group and worked as a waitress at Max’s Kansas City before joining the Stilettoes and eventually cofounding Blondie with Chris Stein. [more]

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Best known as the star of several John Waters films, Divine also appeared in several Cockettes shows, as well as Tom Eyen’s Women Behind Bars (along with Lisa Jane Persky, who also performed in the 1976 production at the Truck and Warehouse Theater). [more]

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Ed Sanders was a mimeo publisher, frontman of the Fugs, and potty-mouthed poet who opened the influential Peace Eye Bookstore on the Lower East Side, cofounded the Yippies, and was also involved in the underground film scene. [more]

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Edie Sedgwick was a Factory superstar who appeared in Horse, Vinyl, Poor Little Rich Girl, Kitchen, Prison, and several other Warhol films between 1965 and 1966 before splitting with Warhol. [more]

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Off-Off-Broadway actress Elda Gentile performed in the Stilettoes with Debbie Harry after the demise of her previous band, Pure Garbage (which also included fellow Warholite Holly Woodlawn), and also had a child with Eric Emerson. [more]

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Eric Emerson was discovered by Andy Warhol while dancing in the audience at a Velvet Underground show at the Dom and was promptly cast in several Warhol films; he was also Chris Stein’s roommate while he was in one of downtown’s first glam bands, the Magic Tramps. [more]

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Poet Gerard Malanga became part of the Factory scene after being hired as Andy Warhol’s screen-printing assistant; he could also be seen wielding a whip while dancing to the Velvet Underground in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia series, and costarring with Mary Woronov in Vinyl at Caffe Cino. [more]

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Hampton Clanton grew up in the projects, though Clanton himself was nothing like the character he portrayed as a gang member in Shirley Clarke's The Cool World (his parents raised seven kids who went to church every Sunday and stayed out of trouble); he has since appeared in dozens of films, as Rony Clanton. [more]

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Harry Smith is perhaps best known for compiling 1952’s Anthology of American Folk Music, though he was also a notable underground filmmaker, occultist, and world-class eccentric. [more]

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Holly Woodlawn appeared with Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis in many Warhol films, on cabaret stages, and in underground theater productions, and was name-checked in the opening lines of Lou Reed’s classic song “Walk On the Wild Side” and appeared briefly in An American Family. [more]

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Before joining the Patti Smith Group, guitarist Ivan Král originally played with the scene’s ne’er-do-wells, Blondie, and codirected the 1976 punk documentary The Blank Generation. [more]

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Shirley Clarke’s 1961 film The Connection was adapted from Jack Gelber’s play, which had been a hit for the Living Theatre in 1959, and Gelber collaborated with Clarke on the screenplay, which incorporated the presence of documentary filmmakers into the plot. [more]

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Jack Smith’s underground film Flaming Creatures (1963) was hugely influential, erupting with sexually ambiguous images of gay and trans performers and shot DIY-style on shoplifted black-and-white film stock that was often overexposed to create a hazy white sheen. [more]

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Film director John Waters often visited New York City as a young man—watching performances and films by Jack Smith, Charles Ludlam, and John Vaccaro’s Play-House of the Ridiculous, which deeply influenced the trash cinema auteur. [more]

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Underground filmmaker and Village Voice critic Jonas Mekas was a Lithuanian immigrant who came to America after World War II and eventually formed the New American Cinema Group in 1960 with his friend Shirley Clarke and other likeminded filmmakers. [more]

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Judith Malina was the cofounder of the Living Theatre, along with her husband Julian Beck, and they played key roles in the development of Off-Broadway during the 1950s and Off-Off-Broadway in the 1960s. [more]

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Before starring in several Warhol films and Off-Off-Broadway plays, Mario Montez first appeared in Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures and was named after Smith’s favorite 1940s starlet, Maria Montez. [more]

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The Chelsea Girls actress Mary Woronov began hanging around the Factory around the time the Velvet Underground joined forces with Andy Warhol to produce the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which featured Woronov and Gerard Malanga as dancers. [more]

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Film director Michel Auder married Warhol superstar Viva, who starred in Agnès Varda’s film Lion’s Love with Shirley Clarke; while they all lived in the Chelsea Hotel, Clarke successfully encouraged them to become video-makers like herself. [more]

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After Tony Conrad left the Velvet Underground, its classic lineup was rounded out by drummer Maureen “Moe” Tucker; Reed was a friend of Maureen’s brother, Jim Tucker, and they cofounded a mimeo poetry zine, Lonely Woman Quarterly, while the two attended Syracuse University. [more]

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Andy Warhol’s groundbreaking multiscreen film The Chelsea Girls, which featured Nico, became an underground hit in 1966, the same year she joined the Velvet Underground; she later enlisted Jackson Browne to help with her solo debut, Chelsea Girls. [more]

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Born Robert Olivo, Ondine acted in Play-House of the Ridiculous plays and appeared in more Warhol footage than anyone (because of his acid tongue and ability to talk for hours, days even, while taking speed), landing memorable roles in The Chelsea Girls and other Warhol films. [more]

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Robert De Niro’s first semi-professional appearance on a New York theater stage was in the Jackie Curtis-penned play Glamour, Glory, and Gold, in which he played all the male roles. [more]

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Playwright Ronald Tavel was a friend of Jack Smith who worked on Flaming Creatures and wrote scenarios for Warhol’s mid-1960s films, then collaborated with John Vaccaro to form the Play-House of the Ridiculous before working with the Judson Poets’ Theatre to do his play Gorilla Queen. [more]

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Shirley Clarke began as a dancer before becoming a headstrong filmmaker who directed The Connection and The Cool World; by the late 1960s she had largely abandoned the film world to become a video pioneer, forming the Tee Pee Video Space Troupe with her daughter Wendy Clarke. [more]

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Guitarist Sterling Morrison met Lou Reed at Syracuse University and later reconnected with the songwriter in New York City, where he joined the fledgling Velvet Underground. [more]

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Before becoming a Factory regular and appearing in a variety of Andy Warhol films, Taylor Mead was already a star of underground film after his appearance in The Flower Thief, a 1960 film by Ron Rice. [more]

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Tommy Erdelyi, aka Tommy Ramone, played drums in in the 1960s with the future Johnny Ramone (born John Cummings), and in 1973 Erdelyi encouraged him to start a new band, and was more of a manager figure during the Ramones’ early days who helped define the band’s image. [more]

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Jack Smith’s friend Tony Conrad helped create the soundtrack for Flaming Creatures and performed in La Monte Young’s group the Theatre of Eternal Music with Billy Name and John Cale before performing in an early version of the Velvet Underground. [more]

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Jazz musician Tony Cox met Yoko Ono through their mutual friend La Monte Young, and together they had a daughter, Kyoko, when they lived together at 87 Christopher Street; their next door neighbor was the playwright Harry Koutoukas. [more]

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Warhol superstar Viva first met Shirley Clarke when they worked together on Agnès Varda’s film Lion’s Love, and Viva appeared in several of Andy’s films, including the controversial Blue Movie (she happened to be on the phone with him when Valerie Solanas shot him at the Factory). [more]

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Wendy Clarke is the daughter of Shirley Clarke, and together they began experimenting with video in the late 1960s—forming the Tee Pee Video Space Troupe and collaborating with other pioneering video artists, such as the Videofreex. [more]

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Before she lived at 87 Christopher Street, multimedia artist Yoko Ono organized downtown Manhattan’s first loft events, the Chambers Street Loft Series, in what is now called TriBeCa (the triangle below Canal Street). [more]