Edie Sedgwick: Superstar!

You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.

-- Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"

Edie Sedgwick was a bright social butterfly whose candle of fame burned brightly at both ends in the years 1965 and 1966. Born into a wealthy White Anglo-Saxon Protestant family of impressive lineage, Edie became a celebrity due to her famine beauty and style, and to the wealth and glamour that was attached to the rich then and always in American society. A native California (though her family's roots were in Massachusetts and New York City), she made her debut in Fun City in the mid-60s as very intelligent and well-spoken young lady with a certain panache that beguiled the fashionable trend-setters and those who ballyhooed those fashions and trends.

Her association with Pop Artist-extraordinaire Andy Warhol, who had started out in commercial design and brought those techniques to the fine arts, helped secure his reputation by making him seem less ridiculous as he originally was perceived. With the glamorous Edie in tow when he made the rounds of parties and gallery openings, Warhol himself became a major trend-setter in New York as the dynamic duo generated reams of copy and free publicity. Originally an outsider, FAR OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM, Warhol eventually was wooed by wealthy socialites and became a major part of the art establishment. He was famous for far more than the 15 minutes prescribed by himself and was a colossus of the New York art scene at the time of his death.

Edie enjoyed her life of celebrity as Warhol's consort, but alas, her own personal fame prescription ran for 15 minutes, run down by a welter of drugs, both prescribed and obtained on the street. By the end of 1966, the transit of her star had gone into an eclipse from which she never recovered.