The headline to the piece is: Andy Warhol's Death: Not So Simple. A photo accompanies the piece, showing Andy lounging in a chair in a sparsely furnished room, hands clasped over his chest, wearing his trademark sunglasses, looking like he's listening to music. He might be in an office part of his place East 33rd Street place, 'The Factory' where he published a magazine. The building had once been an IRT sub-station, a place where dynamos provided electricity to the nearby Lexington Avenue line.
The Blarney Stone that I frequented was just abound the corner on Madison, and once, after a Ranger game, coming back to the car we saw a giant rat running up the side of that building. But that was before Andy had repurposed the space.
But back to the death and the story. A medical historian and retired surgeon Dr. John Ryan provides more background to Mr. Warhol's condition and the fact that the surgery was not as routine as it was portrayed in the press.
What I do remember in the aftermath of his death was that a private duty nurse was not doing her duty and did not react in time to his changing post-op condition. there was a lawsuit, and somebody got money for the negligence. That part is not mentioned in the brief story, but the 1968 incident of Andy being shot by one one models is.
The shooting incident is not expanded on, but again, I remember much more of that too. My memory is that wounded Warhol was pushed out of cab as if he was in a Cagney movie, dumped on the sidewalk in from of Columbus Hospital on 19th Street, a half a block from where I lived at the time.
I made many a delivery to Columbus Hospital in my family flower shop days, It was a block and a half from the store, run by the Catholic Health Services. It was an old building that was later expanded to become Cabrini Medical Center, but that too was eventually closed.
As Columbus Hospital there were always one or two nuns at the front desk as you entered. In those days the nuns did look like penguins, long black habit with a white band headpiece. I always had to scoot past them so that I didn't have to use the service elevator. The regular elevator was bad enough. You never really knew if it was going to move, and when it finally did move, making very unreassuring sounds, you were never confident the door would open again. It was a typical 1960s hospital elevator.
There were perhaps three steps that led to the entrance of the hospital. It was not brightly lit from the street, and looked rather dingy, which it was. When I read (or think I read, or heard) of Warhol being dumped out of a cab one evening, shot in the stomach by what I'm sure was one of his spaced-out entourage, I always wondered who came out and got him?
This was the front entrance. Not an ambulance ER entrance. Did the penguins come out for him? Did he stagger in and tell them he was shot? I always imagined it like a scene you'd see in a Cagney movie, where he dead mobster is delivered back as a message. Only Andy was instead badly wounded in the gut.
A search of NYT does come up with an initial story of the shooting; also a report on January 18, 1969 that the suspect, Valerie Solanis, is jailed in lieu of $50,000 bail. The story goes on the tell us that after several hours of shooting Warhol on June 3, 1968 she surrendered to a traffic policeman in Times Square. The short piece tells us Warhol was released from Columbus hospital on July 28. Therefore, he was in there a good while.
The NYT gave the shooting story front page coverage on June 4, 1968. Warhol had been shot three times, quite critically. At one point he was pronounced dead, but was resuscitated. (Robert Kennedy was assassinated two days later, in California. The wonderful 60s.)
The Daily News gave the story big play, as they were the type of paper that lives to cover sensational stories. No mention is made of Warhol being delivered by cab. Urban legend? The picture of the ambulance might be the one who took a colleague, who was also shot. Another chronology tells us an ambulance took both victims. The NYT tells us an ambulance was called.
The severity of Warhol's wounds play into Dr. Ryan's assertion that the gall bladder was not routine, that Warhol was damaged goods from the shooting, as well as from his use of drugs. Surgery after the shooting took five and a half hours.
In 1968 Warhol was quite well-known for his Campbell Soup can renditions as well as his "underground" filmmaking. Ms. Solanis was one of the actresses in one of those underground movies, 'I, a Man.'
I don't know if by 1968 Warhol uttered the still-repeated quote: Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.
This is 2017, 30 years since his death. He is still famous.
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