Oral history interview with Marilyn Minter, 2011 Nov 29-30 Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Marilyn Minter on November 29, 2011. The interview took place in the artist's studio in New York City, and was conducted by Judith Richards for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program. Marilyn Minter reviewed the transcript in 2015. Her corrections and emendations appear below in brackets with initials. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Interview JUDITH RICHARDS: This is Judith Richards interviewing Marilyn Minter in her studio in New York City on November 29th, 2011, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, disc one. Marilyn, I'd like to start with asking you about your family background, as far back as you want to go, certainly to grandparents, and especially noting those who you knew personally and talk about their names and their occupations and then your parents, and then we'll go to you. MARILYN MINTER: Well, that's a big mystery. I met my grandmother on my father's side, but he was such a scoundrel, they all just disinherited him. He was from a moneyed background in Virginia. JUDITH RICHARDS: Do you know the grandparents’ names? MARILYN MINTER: Hortense Minter—she was German. JUDITH RICHARDS: That's your grandmother's— MARILYN MINTER: Grandmother on my father's side. She lived in Point Pleasant Beach— JUDITH RICHARDS: Pleasant Beach— MARILYN MINTER: Jersey, yes, she was a Northerner. JUDITH RICHARDS: And your grandfather's name? MARILYN MINTER: Never met him. I know he died of a heart attack on a golf course. That's all I know. JUDITH RICHARDS: And then your father's name? MARILYN MINTER: My father is Allan Shelton Minter. JUDITH RICHARDS: A-L-A-N? MARILYN MINTER: A-L-L-A-N Shelton—Sheldon?—yes, with a T, I think—Minter. And he was directly related to Patrick Henry. It was a good Virginia family, as they say. But he was like an inveterate gambler, alcoholic, womanizer, so he was a black sheep. JUDITH RICHARDS: And what about your mother's side of the family? MARILYN MINTER: My mother was born in Indiana, but she was very young when her father moved to Louisiana and became a wildcatter and made a lot of money in the oil business. JUDITH RICHARDS: What was your mother's name? MARILYN MINTER: She had a long name. She was baptized Catholic, but I only remember two of them—Honora with an H-O-N-O-R-A, Elizabeth Laskey—which was her last name, L-A-S-K-E-Y, Minter. JUDITH RICHARDS: And her parents' names? MARILYN MINTER: They were Irish. That's all I know. They were very Irish. I don't know anything about them. Her mother ended up—she was considered senile, which I guess today would be Alzheimer's. And her father probably same thing, died of alcoholism or—it just runs rampantly in my family, alcoholism and drugs. JUDITH RICHARDS: How did your mother and father meet? MARILYN MINTER: They met, I think, in New York City, but I'm not sure. They got married, I think— JUDITH RICHARDS: What were they doing in New York City? MARILYN MINTER:—eight weeks later. [Laughs.] I don't know. No, it's a real fog. It's not like— JUDITH RICHARDS: Did they live in New York City after they moved there? MARILYN MINTER: No, they were both—I think—I don't know, they were going to nightclubs. They were going to the Stork Club, a very glamorous—I have pictures of them. They were gorgeous people. JUDITH RICHARDS: And they were being supported by their families? MARILYN MINTER: I don't know. My mother was for sure. She wanted to be an actress, but they thought it was déclassé and she wasn't allowed, so she was bright in the sense of she was very well read and she spoke French and she was a very well brought up southern belle. But she was racist, sexist—well, she wasn't homophobic. She hated Jews, but some of her best friends were Jews. It was just—she loved her maids, but she hated black people as a race. And she was wildly attracted to my father, who was very good-looking and a compulsive bad boy. [Laughs.] JUDITH RICHARDS: Did either of them go to college? MARILYN MINTER: Yes. My mother went to Tulane. I don't think she graduated—Sophie Newcomb [the women’s college of Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana –MM]—and my father went to some school in Virginia, but my brother looked it up in Richmond and he said no, he never graduated either though my father said he graduated with a degree in engineering. And for a minute there, he worked as an engineer for Caterpillar, which was this big heavy equipment company. JUDITH RICHARDS: Where was that? MARILYN MINTER: In Louisiana. They went back to Louisiana. My mother was older than my father. She says five years, he said seven. I don't know what was true. JUDITH RICHARDS: So you were born in Louisiana? MARILYN MINTER: I was born in Louisiana. One of my brothers— JUDITH RICHARDS: Exactly when and where? MARILYN MINTER: Shreveport in 1948, and that's all I know. JUDITH RICHARDS: What date? MARILYN MINTER: July 19th. JUDITH RICHARDS: And your brother is older or younger? MARILYN MINTER: Both of them are older. JUDITH RICHARDS: Oh, what are their names? MARILYN MINTER: Allan Shelton— JUDITH RICHARDS: Like your father? MARILYN MINTER:—Minter III and Charles Laskey Minter—A-L-L-A-N Shelton—I think it's [S-H-E-L-T-O-N]—it's not with a T; it's with a D, yes. JUDITH RICHARDS: I'm sorry, you said they were how much of an age difference? MARILYN MINTER: Oh, five and six years older—enough, yes, a big difference, yes. JUDITH RICHARDS: So when you were growing up, do you remember anything about elementary school, what your strongest interests were? MARILYN MINTER: Well, my dad was a horrible womanizer. I remember being woken up in the middle of the night from them fighting, terrible fights, blood on the walls. And if I walked into the room, they would stop. So I had this burden of having to go into the room to get my dad to stop beating up my mother. JUDITH RICHARDS: Did your brothers do that too? MARILYN MINTER: They didn't hear it, because they were a room down the hall, but they all tried to always get him to stop. He had a terrible temper. And she used to egg him on. It was almost like that's the only way she could get his attention. JUDITH RICHARDS: You've done a lot of thinking about this, I’m sure. MARILYN MINTER: Oh, I've done a lot, yes. And like it was a pretty dysfunctional childhood. It was as dysfunctional as it gets really. It's Faulkner-esque. I don't know if I want to go into the details though. Yes, that's for therapy. [They laugh.] JUDITH RICHARDS: But when you were young— MARILYN MINTER: I remember my dad being a real bad drunk, falling down on top of me, falling downstairs. I knew the word alcoholism, alcoholic, on the wagon, as soon as I was prescient. That table you put in front of couches, I thought it was a cocktail table until I was in my 30s. [Laughs.] I used to sit—he was a scratch golfer, and he would hustle on the golf course, so that's how he made his living, and he gambled. So he worked for Caterpillar for a brief period of time, and then he just made his living hustling people. And everybody loved him because he was so charming. He was gorgeous and charming, and he had affairs with all my mother's friends. And then eventually he had an affair with a woman who he left my mother for. And I was about eight. And then my mother had a nervous breakdown and became a drug addict. And I sort of raised myself from that moment on. JUDITH RICHARDS: Were your brothers still at home? MARILYN MINTER: They were torn. One of them—my mother pulled him out of high school—he was a senior, he was captain of the football team, president of the class, and made him move up to Fort Lauderdale with her. And he ended up going to this other high school, Catholic high school. He was on their football team, and he used to play his teammates that he had been going to school with since he was about—I don't know—they grew up going to high school—St. Patrick's high school in Miami. Then my other brother was a football star. JUDITH RICHARDS: What was his name again? MARILYN MINTER: Allan. JUDITH RICHARDS: Oh, that's right. MARILYN MINTER: I mean, there were reporters waiting to interview him when I was a little girl. They would be camped out on the lawn. He was an All-American when he was in high school.