An Underground Survivor at the Oscars: Holly Woodlawn, Puerto Rican Actor Today Mediático presents another Oscars-themed reflection by regular contributor Roberto Ortiz, independent scholar, on the career of Holly Woodlawn, Puerto Rican transgender actor, pioneer, and Warhol superstar, mythicized in the opening lines of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” and included in the “In Memoriam” section of the 88th Academy Award’s ceremony. Ortiz explores the significance of Woodlawn’s career and the terms on which she was memorialized at the Oscars suggesting that although it reflects the U.S. mainstream’s attempts at inclusivity with respect to trans people there’s a continuing exclusion of performers who, like Woodlawn, defy fixed identity categories and are still not welcome among the predominantly white, wealthy, hetero and homonormative Oscars ceremony audience. I’m not afraid of playing a man; I was born a man. And I’m not afraid of being a woman. I love women. Too much is made of gender. I want people to say of me, ‘Here is a person who has something to offer besides gender.’ – Holly Woodlawn in The New York Times, 1970 …some little queens told me they had read my book, adding that if it weren’t for me, they couldn’t do it… What do you say when somebody tells you you’re Lana Turner? – Holly Woodlawn in The Advocate, 2000 She was called a superstar though in truth she was more of a starlet. The caption on a publicity photo for her 1970 film debut described her beauty as “either original or freakish.” Her looks – androgynously thin, light-skinned, with green eyes, prominent nose and overbite – didn’t fit Latino stereotypes. The press termed her a drag queen, transvestite or female impersonator, but she resisted labels and was flippant about suitable gender-specific pronouns. She identified as an actor, but most thought she only played herself. Her most famous scenes showed her masturbating with a beer bottle and faking pregnancy with a Published by MEDIÁTICO: http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/mediatico | 1 An Underground Survivor at the Oscars: Holly Woodlawn, Puerto Rican Actor pillow to collect welfare. She was considered an Underground Legend, Transgender Pioneer, Lou Reed Muse, and Warhol Superstar. The “In Memoriam” video during the 2016 Academy Awards ceremony featured a bittersweet surprise: the inclusion of Holly Woodlawn (1946 – 2015), an underground cinema actor best remembered for her debut in the Andy Warhol presentation/ production Trash [https://vimeo.com/103046694] (Paul Morrissey, 1970). Unfamiliar to mainstream audiences, the Puerto Rican performer had a brief moment of posthumous recognition after her death from cancer complications on December 6, 2015, which was announced by her Trash co-star and friend Joe Dallesandro through his Facebook page. There were obituaries in major newspapers and trade publications, several online tributes, and Facebook shares from fans and friends. Many posts repeated the “immortalized” version of her story, reducing the 69-year-old’s life to the opening lyrics of the 1972 song “Walk on the Walk Side” and to her acclaimed performance in Trash, on which she only worked for six days in late 1969, earning 25 dollars per day. She was described as Andy Warhol’s and/or Lou Reed’s muse, two misleading labels that suggested close creative relationships. However, she hadn’t met Reed when he wrote “Walk on the Wild Side,” a song that offered snapshots of people associated with Warhol’s studio (the Factory) based on hearsay. And it was director Paul Morrissey, not Andy Warhol, who “discovered” Holly Woodlawn and turned her into a Warhol Superstar by casting her in Trash. As Frances Negrón Muntaner (2004 & 2015) has argued, there was more to Holly Woodlawn than the Warhol Superstar label. Her involvement with Warhol’s Factory was actually brief. She only “starred” in two largely improvised Warhol productions, in which her co-stars were the main attractions. Trash’s real star was the very young, buff and oft- nude Joe Dallesandro, who appeared shirtless on the poster, and the publicity for Women in Revolt (Morrissey, 1971, which began filming before Trash’s release), including the DVD release cover art, privileged co-star Candy Darling, who dominated the film with Jackie Curtis. Despite irregular – and usually short – appearances in underground or independent Published by MEDIÁTICO: http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/mediatico | 2 An Underground Survivor at the Oscars: Holly Woodlawn, Puerto Rican Actor cinema between 1970 and 2012, Holly Woodlawn spent more time performing on stage than acting in movies. However, cinema and music had the power to create her most enduring images (echoes of what happened to Carmen Miranda during the 1940s and 50s) and, like an aging classic Hollywood star, during her last decades she retold stories from her Factory days, gamely playing what became her longest role: surviving Warhol Superstar. After Holly Woodlawn’s death, many articles featured one of the black-and-white glamour portraits, taken by New York Times photographer Jack Mitchell prior to the release of Trash. They show the young Puerto Rican starlet striking classic Hollywood star poses. With penciled arched eyebrows and backlighting creating a halo effect on her hair, in one photo Holly demurely covers her chest with both arms and coyly looks away. In other photos, Holly seductively holds a cigarette – lips closed or slightly open – while invitingly looking at the camera. The “In Memoriam” video at the 2016 Oscars showed one of Mitchell’s glamour shots in which a feather boa frames her face. On the 2002 documentary A Look on the Wild Side, Holly says she used one of those photos to change the passport of a French Ambassador’s wife, impersonate her, and withdraw $2,000 from a UN building bank. After a successful first attempt, Holly returned – drunk – to get more money for drugs, but security caught her. Initially sent to the Women’s House of Detention, Woodlawn was still in the Tombs (the men’s prison) when Trash opened to generally positive reviews on October Published by MEDIÁTICO: http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/mediatico | 3 An Underground Survivor at the Oscars: Holly Woodlawn, Puerto Rican Actor 1970. As Holly amusingly tells the story, the multiple masquerades (movie star, French ambassador’s wife, female prisoner) linked to her glamorous photo illustrate the contrast between her stardom dreams and her socioeconomic hardships (stealing money for drugs, imprisoned during the film’s premiere) as a poor, addicted, transgender Puerto Rican young woman. Holly Woodlawn’s fleeting appearance at the 2016 Oscars reflected contradictions in the Academy’s response to the criticisms about lack of diversity among this year’s nominees that caused the resurfacing and trending of the Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, created by April Reign (@ReignOfApril) in response to the 2015 nominations. On the one hand, memorializing a transgender Latina actor from underground cinema seemed like a gesture of inclusiveness that compensated for past and present failures to recognize transgender and Latino actors. After the release of Trash, George Cukor reportedly launched an unsuccessful campaign that could’ve made Holly Woodlawn the first transgender (and the second Puerto Rican after Rita Moreno) actor to get an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. (Coincidentally, Holly Woodlawn passed away on the same day that the Kennedy Center Honors gala honored Moreno.) This year, Mya Taylor was overlooked on that same category for her work in Tangerine (Sean Baker, 2015), an independent comedy about transgender women of color (like Trash, directed by a white man who drew on Taylor’s anecdotes to build the screenplay). The award went to Alicia Vikander from the hit biopic The Danish Girl (Tom Hooper, 2015), which earned cisgender actor Eddie Redmayne an Oscar nomination for his performance as Danish transgender painter Lili Elbe. While it was touching to see her glamorized face in a video that also featured classic Hollywood glamour girls like Maureen O’Hara, Holly Woodlawn’s inclusion on the other hand creates the false impression that she was part of a film industry that had no place for her: “The worst was when I went to LA to become an actor but opportunities weren’t there. I came back to Florida to be a busboy and it was humiliating” (Negrón Muntaner 2015). Why honor someone whose closest connection to the Oscars was a failed nomination Published by MEDIÁTICO: http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/mediatico | 4 An Underground Survivor at the Oscars: Holly Woodlawn, Puerto Rican Actor campaign and leave out – among others – a starlet like Joan Leslie, the Warner Brothers ingénue who starred in the Oscar-winning films Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941) and Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz, 1942) and who participated in Academy events? Why offer viewers a glimpse of a deceased transgender actor but exclude transgender performer Anohni, one of the two vocalists (with South Korean soprano Jo Sumi) not invited to perform their Oscar-nominated songs during the ceremony? While Holly Woodlawn is recognized as a transgender pioneer, how many value her as a Puerto Rican actor and see her in relation to Oscar-winning presenter (but not nominee) Benicio del Toro or to red carpet favorite Jennifer Lopez (absent from the 2016 ceremony, but very visible in 2015, when she became part of a widely circulated GIF)? Holly Woodlawn was born Haroldo Santiago Dankahl in Puerto Rico from a short-lived relationship between Aminta Nilda Rodríguez Franchesci, of the southern town of Juana Díaz, and a US soldier of German descent. Aminta left her child with her family and migrated to New York, where she met and married Joseph Ajzenberg, a Jewish Polish immigrant.