Anyone interested in what downtown New York used to be should check out "Beautiful Darling," the fascinating new documentary about Candy Darling, the pioneering drag queen transsexual who became one of the most legendary of Andy Warhol's superstars.
The movie features revealing interviews with people like John Waters, Paul Morrissey and Fran Lebowitz, and it's full of incredible footage of Candy Darling as she mingles with the famous.
For a while, she got famous herself. In the fabled back room of Max's Kansas City, people would show up just to gawk at her, and she would show up to be gawked at.
Candy Darling was really the first person to implant the drag queen into pop culture. Her arresting look set the stage for everyone from Divine to RuPaul, but what was magnetic about her, with her faux-aristocratic Jackie O stage whisper, is that she was really acting all day and all night.
She eventually got her chance to be a real actress, appearing in Warhol films like "Women in Revolt" and on stage in the 1972 Off-Broadway premiere of Tennessee Willliams' "Small Craft Warnings."
For a time, Candy Darling ruled the downtown scene, but Warhol, in his legendary coldness, lost interest in her. Then she got cancer. It was the result of the hormones she ingested, and it took her very quickly.
Her story is tragic, and really quite haunting, but it may be no exaggeration to say that in death, Candy Darling finally became the movie-star-in-her-own-mind she'd always wanted to be. She was a great actress, but in a special way. The one role she was ever truly made for was playing herself.
