Edie Sedgwick

Biography

Edith Minturn Sedgwick Post (April 20, 1943 – November 16, 1971) was an American actress, model, and socialite. Best known as a Warhol superstar, Vogue named her a "Youthquaker" in 1965, recognizing her influence on youth culture and style. Born in California into a prominent New England family, Sedgwick briefly studied sculpture in Cambridge before moving to New York City in 1964. The following year, she became a muse to Pop artist Andy Warhol and starred in several of his underground films, including Poor Little Rich Girl (1965) and Beauty No. 2 (1965). Her distinctive look and screen presence made her one of the defining style icons of the mid-1960s. After leaving Warhol's Factory scene in 1966, she pursued acting and modeling independently but never regained the same level of prominence. Her mental health deteriorated from drug abuse, and she struggled to complete the semi-autobiographical film Ciao! Manhattan (1972). Sedgwick died of an overdose in 1971 at the age of 28.

== Early life and education (1943–1963) ==

=== Family background and early childhood === Edith "Edie" Minturn Sedgwick was born at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, California on April 20, 1943. She was the seventh of eight children of Alice Delano de Forest (1908–1988) and Francis Minturn Sedgwick (1904–1967). Her father was a rancher, sculptor, and member of the historical Sedgwick family of Massachusetts. Her maternal grandfather Henry Wheeler de Forest was the president and chairman of the board of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Her maternal great-grandfather, Reverend Endicott Peabody, founded the Groton School in Groton, Massachusetts. She was named after her father's aunt, Edith Minturn Stokes. She was of English and French Huguenot ancestry. Despite the family's wealth and social prominence, Sedgwick's childhood was marked by isolation and strict parental control. Raised primarily on her father's California ranches, she and her siblings were homeschooled, cared for by nannies, and sheltered from the outside world. Her sister Alice "Saucie" Sedgwick later recalled, "We really lived in two worlds—indoors and outdoors. Outdoors, that vast physical world of the ranch, was just pure freedom and elation, especially if you were out riding alone. Indoors meant inside the main house with the family. That was the world of form—very strict rules of conduct, all repressive, all belonging to that other world in the East that my parents were from." The family's fortunes increased in the early 1950s after oil was discovered on Rancho Corral de Quati, generating substantial income and enabling the purchase of the larger nearby Rancho La Laguna in 1952. Several of Sedgwick's siblings had conflicted relationships with their father, whom they called "Fuzzy" because he "didn't want to be called Daddy." As an adult, Sedgwick told friends that he had attempted to molest her several times, beginning when she was aged 7. It was within these familial conditions that Sedgwick, by her early teens, developed an eating disorder, settling into a pattern of binging and purging.

=== Boarding schools and mental health treatment === At age 13, following the death of her grandfather Henry Dwight Sedgwick, she attended The Branson School near San Francisco. According to her sister Alice, she was soon withdrawn from the school because of anorexia and she returned to an abusive home life. Sedgwick told her friend Gillian Walker that "her father would come after her and lock her up and force her to stay in bed—a helpless, isolated prisoner, a drugged princess." Her brother, Jonathan Sedgwick, recalled that after she discovered their father having sex with a mistress, he slapped her and dismissed her account as delusional, then had her sedated by a doctor. "Mummy wouldn't believe her—she just had a blockage against things like that. Nobody'd believe her, so she was really a prisoner," he said. In 1958, Sedgwick's parents enrolled her at St. Timothy's School in Maryland. She was eventually taken out of the school due to her continuing eating disorder. In the autumn of 1962, at her father's insistence, Sedgwick was committed to the private Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut. Since the regime was very lax, she easily manipulated her situation and her weight kept dropping. She was later sent to Bloomingdale, the Westchester Division of New York Hospital, where her anorexia improved. After her release from Bloomingdale, she had an affair with a Harvard student and underwent an abortion.

== Cambridge period and move to New York (1963–1965) == Sedgwick moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she had family, and made her debut as a debutante in June 1963. In the autumn, she began taking private sculpting lessons from her cousin, artist Lily Saarinen. During this period, she partied with members of an elite bohemian fringe of the Cambridge social scene and was drawn to the local gay community. Sedgwick became a regular at the Casablanca bar, where she met Harvard graduate Chuck Wein, who became her companion. On her twenty-first birthday in April 1964, Sedgwick received an $80,000 ($861,811 in 2026) trust fund from her maternal grandmother. Soon after, Sedgwick and Wein left Cambridge for New York City, where she intended to pursue modeling. That summer, she moved in with her grandmother, who lived at East 71st Street and Park Avenue. She quickly immersed herself in the city's social scene and developed a reputation for extravagant spending on clothes and the Bermuda Limousine Service. Her friend Tom Goodwin recalled that she embraced New York's nightlife, frequenting the discotheque Ondine and expensive restaurants such as L'Avventura, often treating friends to lavish meals and hiring Goodwin as her chauffeur for $100 a week. Danny Fields similarly remembered her treating large groups of acquaintances to dinner while ignoring mounting bills. According to Goodwin, Sedgwick exhausted her trust fund in about six months and reacted with disbelief when informed that the money was gone, insisting that, given her family's wealth, she should have unlimited access to funds. In late 1964, she moved into an apartment at 16 East 63rd Street in Manhattan's Lenox Hill neighborhood on the Upper East Side. In December 1964, Sedgwick was injured in an automobile accident while visiting California when she ran a flashing red light. Her friend G. J. Barker-Benfield was sitting in the passenger seat; his head went through the windshield, but he survived. During this period, Sedgwick was deeply affected by the loss of her older brothers, Francis Jr. (known as "Minty") and Robert (known as "Bobby"), who died within eighteen months of each other. Francis, who had a particularly unhappy relationship with their father, suffered several mental breakdowns, eventually dying by suicide in 1964 while at Silver Hill Hospital. Robert also suffered from mental health problems and died after falling into a coma when his motorcycle crashed into the side of a New York City bus on New Year's Eve 1965.

== Andy Warhol and the Factory (1965–1966) ==

=== Rise at the Factory and early films === On March 26, 1965, Sedgwick met Pop artist Andy Warhol during a party for Tennessee Williams at Lester Persky's apartment, where she performed an improvised "ballet-like" dance. Sedgwick and Wein had discussed experimental nightlife concepts, including an "underwater discotheque," where she'd dance ballet to Bach played at rock 'n' roll tempo." Sedgwick attended the party wearing her brunette hair in a beehive style. Struck by her appearance, Warhol reportedly exclaimed, "Oh, she's so bee-you-ti-ful." During the party, Ronald Tavel approached her and said he was scouting for stars, remarking that she resembled Nyoka the Jungle Girl. Although Sedgwick knew little about Warhol, Wein brought her to his studio, the Factory, where Warhol suggested they collaborate. Sedgwick fascinated Warhol, and he immediately put her in the film Horse. Although the Vinyl featured an all-male cast, Warhol inserted Sedgwick into the project, and he cast her as the central figure in his subsequent work. Warhol dubbed Sedgwick his "superstar," and their frequent public appearances helped popularize the term. Sedgwick explained the concept on The Merv Griffin Show, reflecting its novelty to mainstream audiences at the time. Sedgwick starred in a series of films originally conceived as a 24-hour portrait of her life, titled The Poor Little Rich Girl Saga. The films presented stylized glimpses of her daily routine: waking up and getting dressed in Poor Little Rich Girl; applying makeup and chatting in Face; meeting potential boyfriends in Beauty No. 1 and Beauty No. 2; dining with friends in Restaurant; and socializing at home in Afternoon. Many of her performances were loosely directed by Chuck Wein, who appeared as an off-screen voice. Throughout 1965, Sedgwick continued working with Warhol on films including Kitchen, Outer and Inner Space, Prison, and Lupe. Warhol financed these films with money he made from his paintings. Most were screened only at small cinemas or private viewings held at the Factory, and they generated little profit.

=== Fashion and media attention === Sedgwick attracted growing mainstream media attention for her personal style. Her look—black leotards and tights, miniskirts, chandelier earrings, and heavy eye makeup—made her a fashion icon of the 1960s. She popularized the miniskirt by wearing altered children's skirts and cropped her naturally brown hair short and dyed it blonde. Discussing her style in a 1965 interview with Women's Wear Daily, Sedgwick said: "I wear dance shirts and T shirts and tights because I'm spoiled. I always had fitted clothes, now that I've broken with my parents and they've cut off my money, I'd rather wear costumes than cheap clothes. I don't like Mod fashion … a bunch of vacant people dragging around in someone else's idea of what they should like. I don't keep up with fashion, I invent my own. I'd rather be original." In its August 1, 1965 issue, Vogue magazine anointed Sedgwick a "Youthquaker," featuring a photograph by Enzo Sellerio that depicted her balancing atop a leather rhinoceros. Sedgwick's mother disapproved of her modeling career and hoped she would return to sculpting, which she had pursued before becoming a model. She also dismissed reports of Sedgwick's lavish fur collection as "utter nonsense," despite a New York Times account claiming she owned multiple mink coats and exotic furs. Later that year, Fred Eberstadt photographed Sedgwick for Life magazine's November 1965 pictorial, "The Girl with the Black Tights." Her cultural impact was underscored when Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and his wife dressed as Warhol and Sedgwick for a 1965 Halloween party. Sedgwick's influence on fashion continued to grow in 1966, when she appeared in the March 15, 1966 edition of Vogue, modeling undergarments, and the next month, Women's Wear Daily named her one of New York's "fashion revolutionaries."