"Located at 33 Union Square West in the heart of New York City’s pulsing downtown scene, Andy Warhol’s Factory was an artistic anomaly. Not simply a painter’s studio, it was the center of Warhol’s assembly-line production of films, books, art, and the groundbreaking Interview magazine.
Although Warhol’s first Factory on East 47th Street was known for its space-age silver interior, the Union Square Factory became the heart, brain, eyes, and soul of all things Warhol—and was, famously, the site of the assassination attempt that nearly took his life. It also produced a subculture of Factory denizens known as superstars, a collection of talented and ambitious misfits, the most glamorous and provocative of whom was the transgender pioneer Candy Darling."
She spent much of her childhood watching television and old Hollywood movies, from which she learned to impersonate her favorite actresses such as Joan Bennett and Kim Novak. Inspired by female actresses, she began to model her life around "Hollywood glamour-queen prettiness." She was bullied in high school and dropped out at the age of 16 after a group of boys tried to lynch her. After coming out publicly as a woman.
Her name was immortalized by many famous musicians. Darling is mentioned in the chorus of the 1967 Rolling Stones song "Citadel" and is the subject of the song "Candy Says" by The Velvet Underground, written by Lou Reed and sung by Doug Yule. In addition, the second verse of Lou Reed's 1972 "Walk on the Wild Side" is devoted to her as well.
In 2010, we could watch "Beautiful Darling", a documentary that features Darling's archival film and video footage, photographs, her personal papers, archival audio interviews with Tennessee Williams, Valerie Solanas, Jackie Curtis, and Darling's mother, as well as contemporary interviews with Holly Woodlawn and other people that used to know her. The film was directed by James Rasin and produced by Jeremiah Newton and Elisabeth Bentley. Darling died of lymphoma on March 21, 1974, aged 29.
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