Warhol's `Mary Might' -- From The Factory To Cult Movies, Mary Woronov Is Living An All-American Life On The Cutting Edge

Most people know Mary Woronov from offbeat movies - "Eating Raoul" or "Rock 'n' Roll High School". They see "Mary Woronov" shelves in the video store. But they have little idea of the life behind the name, a human passage which mirrors a fascinating hidden history.

In Andy Warhol's legendary Factory, his combination office, art studio and film-making center, Mary Woronov was a linchpin member. She was a whip-dancer for Velvet Underground, acted off-Broadway during the turbulent '60s, and worked for Roger Corman - California's king of the B movie. She was a star in Oliver Stone's first movie and worked with actors from Sylvester Stallone to Paul Bartel.

During the 1980s, she joined a different underground: the Los Angeles punk scene, home to bands with names like Fear, Black Flag and the Germs. Its descendants would include (and even populate) hit Seattle groups like Nirvana and Foo Fighters.

Woronov's is an ultimate American life. Others may write of the "cutting edge," but she has lived on it, as part of three different eras of cultural change: Warhol's 1960s pop revolution, Corman's elevation of genre culture, and the scene which, with Nirvana's later triumph, helped "punk" change music, advertising and marketing.

These separate movements, each of which at the time seemed marginal, made profound connections with changes in the national psyche. Warhol's worship of youth tapped America's fear of aging. And all his early work engaged with emerging tastes: from consumerism to a gay aesthetic to mass media's penchant for voyeurism.

Like Warhol, Roger Corman helped make pop culture serious. Without both these men, "punk" might have been impossible - and punk changed the way youth is wooed and marketed.

In an art all her own - bold, vibrant paintings - Mary Woronov captures moments from each of these histories. Her work has been published in lavish editions and it hangs in collections around the world. She has served on the board of LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions), and been cited for artistic achievement by LAICA (The Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Exhibitions). Warhol, her first mentor, would be proud.

Right now, Woronov is thinking about Andy. She's just published "Swimming Underground," an intense memoir of her life in his Factory. Written in the voice of her youth, it is a tough, unblinking portrait - one which even shocked her unsuspecting publishers. "I think they expected a `Warhol book.' "

"Swimming Underground" is indeed a Warhol book, but takes readers to the heart of the real action. Here are Warhol and his clique seen through a prism of drugs and troubled personalities. Critical reaction to this expose has ranged from vitriolic ("drug-induced dimestore surrealism") to admiring ("frightening yet exhilarating").

Inside the Factory

Tucking her 6-foot-tall frame carefully into a chair, the Mary Woronov of today is very different from its narrator. It has been 30 years since Warhol first filmed her (in "Screen Test" and "Hedy", followed by "Chelsea Girls".) She is now a tan, svelte, elegant Hollywood veteran. Then, she was Andy's `Mary Might': tough and self-destructive.

Woronov's journey underground parallels bourgeouis America's. At first, she would leave her college (Cornell) by bus, cruising down to the Factory for short weekends. But soon she became a full-time acolyte, seduced by the drugs, the art and human spectacle. Oddly enough, her parents supported her. "My poor mother; she always said, `Oh well, it's art.' "

Of the Warhol coterie, she reveals, "It wasn't like Andy even sought us out. We just gravitated towards him and he let us in."

Due to the haphazard milieu he attracted, Warhol's Factory life became freakish: It mixed drugs and drag queens, hustlers and socialites. Their pursuits and tastes would profoundly change him.

It is hard for critics, says Woronov, to imagine. The Warhol she first met had just stopped drawing advertisements. He was living in a world "where gays were outlaws." And he was unaware that "craziness" was sometimes lethal. (In 1968, Warhol was shot - almost fatally - by an unhinged woman.)

Woronov, however, remembers all of it. "When all these freaks showed up, Andy just accepted them. To him, nothing was ever `good' or `bad.' Whatever was around, he made art from it. He just made art out of whatever came close."

"They absolutely hated us"

"Swimming" lays bare the truths of superstardom: Large chunks of boredom alternate with frantic activity; drug-fueled passions give rise to fervent rivalries. It was a moment-to-moment life, extreme and erratic. Yet Woronov knows the films it produced are history. "I think those films are Andy's greatest bit of art. You look at everything which subsequently happened, in film and in art, and you realize why they matter."

In music, as in film, Warhol left a huge legacy. It is the work of the Velvet Underground (recently re-issued in a five-CD set.) The band had begun as another Warhol product, part of a "happening," the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Woronov was its lead dancer, and she writes about the group's near obscurity.

"This band was frowned on even in New York," she says. "Then we go on tour to California! Did you see Oliver Stone's movie about The Doors? That shows LA's feeling towards our circle perfectly. They thought we were evil, decadent, just disgusting. The Velvets weren't a hit; they absolutely hated us."

Warhol was always crushed by rejection. "He just did not understand people could dislike him. When they hated the Velvet Underground, for instance, Andy kept asking, `But what's wrong with them?' It never occurred to him they were perceived as weird. Yet all the songs were about S&M and heroin!"

Going "legit"

Woronov minces no words about the drugs; in the end, physical burnout drove her off to Europe. After a sojourn there, she came home to Brooklyn - and began acting in off-Broadway dramas. She joined Charles Ludlam's Theater of the Ridiculous, and took other parts in "crazy, crazy, crazy plays." John Lahr, now theater critic at The New Yorker, was then a drama critic for the Village Voice. "That '60s `underground' theater,' " he says, "was vital. It was acting out new ideas of America."

In 1974, Woronov went legit. After a "miserable" role on a TV soap, she played Lincoln Center. There, in David Rabe's play "In The Boom-Boom Room," her performance won a Theater World Award. Now a "real actress," she married avant-garde filmmaker Theodore Gershuny. Through him, she met the actor Paul Bartel.

It was Bartel who brought Woronov to Los Angeles and convinced her to work with Roger Corman. "Paul said, `Look, I'm out here to do this movie. Come out; once Roger sees your legs, he'll hire you.' " His prophecy was accurate.

Corman's world was uncannily like that of Warhol. In a studio camouflaged as a lumber yard, Woronov met talents such as Jack Nicholson, Jonathan Demme, Peter Bogdanovich, Allan Arkush, Joe Dante and Sylvester Stallone. All were struggling to meet Corman's aim: making B-movies which would sell, yet cost nothing.

Diving into the punk scene

In Los Angeles, Woronov felt less "peer pressure" in her art. Her paintings grew much larger and brighter. Meanwhile, on celluloid, she was becoming a cult. "After Warhol, I had a reputation. You know, `Bring her in, she'll drag a whip along.' Yet, because of painting, I would also do these very wiggy art movies. I was not at all your average kind of actress."

But then, Woronov did not lead an actor's life. In late 1979, she discovered punk. Not the import music, but a West Coast network - one whose crowd met in cheap clubs and parking lots. For her, all its elements seemed familiar: from people re-inventing their identities (with sobriquets like "Alice Bag" and "Darby Crash") to a new kind of music with a new aesthetic.

Now, she speaks about it with a real nostalgia, about clubs called Madame Wong's and Zero; about spending hot summer nights on asphalt, clustered round a punk tape played on a boombox. "It was like a second childhood for me, from Warhol to this was just the greatest. That's why I was in it, it had the same energy. And it seemed to happen so spontaneously!"

Unlike the Factory, only one film emerged from this underground: "The Decline of Western Civilization." It was made by Penelope Spheeris, later the director of "Wayne's World." Says she, "That was a strangely romantic time. Like those letters you sometimes get in the mail, letters that are marked `Time-Dated Material.' " Although few LA punk bands got contracts, via tapes and tours their sound spread northward. There, colliding with a love for the Velvets (and for Warholic bands like the New York Dolls), West Coast punk would make the sound called "grunge."

But, laughs Woronov, "Those clubs were really dives; you were always standing in beer or worse. Bands would destroy them, then the police would come."

Outside Spheeris' film, records and tapes, little now remains of the LA punk scene. But in Woronov's paintings it shimmers vividly; in them, kids still dance, dress up and make new music. Woronov is planning another book - this time, she will lift the lid on punk.

Meanwhile, she continues her screen career - and continues to embody cult stardom. Critic Michael Weldon wrote "The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film": the No 1 index for cult film buffs. Woronov, he says, is one of a kind. "I would consider her the ultimate cult actress, probably the best one I could name. She still looks great, still does nude scenes, and, in terms of scripts, makes daring choices."

Woronov admits her life has been a strange adventure. But ask her why and her answer is surprising. "This whole thing is due to my parents. I don't know how they did it, but they made me into a rock. I was not addictive, not afraid of being different."

"My story is all-American. My mom always saw my work as `art.' My dad stood in the Factory - in that den of freaks! - and just yelled his head off at Andy. "Now look, Mr. Warhol, you take care of Mary!' " She grins. "That's another side of American history, one we sometimes leave too much to the shrinks."

---------------------------------------------------. Where to find Woronov

"Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory" is published by Tuttle Books, $19.95. "Wake for the Angels" is a compendium of Mary Woronov's paintings, Journey Editions, $45.