Holly Woodlawn

Holly Woodlawn, born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl on October 26, 1946, in Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico, was an American actress whose career spanned film, theater, cabaret, and Broadway. She died on December 6, 2015. Her father was a German-American soldier in the U.S. Army, and her mother was Puerto Rican. After her mother relocated to New York and married Joseph Ajzenberg, the family settled in Miami Beach, where Woodlawn's name was changed to Harold Ajzenberg.

At approximately fifteen or sixteen years of age, in 1962, Woodlawn left Miami Beach and hitchhiked north to New York City with a group she described as "Cuban queens," carrying only $27. She took the first name Holly from Holly Golightly, the protagonist of Breakfast at Tiffany's, and acquired the surname Woodlawn in the summer of 1969 when a friend, watching a rerun of I Love Lucy, spotted the word "Woodlawn" in the subway background of an episode and suggested it. Lou Reed's 1972 song "Walk on the Wild Side" references Woodlawn's journey from Miami to New York City.

Woodlawn's film career began through her association with Andy Warhol's Factory. She had first encountered Warhol at a Factory party for the 1968 film Flesh, arranged through Warhol superstar Ondine, but no professional relationship developed at that time. Director Paul Morrissey later became aware of Woodlawn after she posed as Warhol superstar Viva and charged a camera to Warhol's account, and subsequently gave an interview presenting herself as a Warhol superstar. Morrissey contacted her and cast her in Trash, filmed in October 1969 and released in October 1970, in which she played the transgender girlfriend of a character portrayed by Joe Dallesandro. She was paid $25 per day during filming. The New York Times critic Vincent Canby described her performance as "something to behold, a comic book Mother Courage who fancies herself as Marlene Dietrich but sounds more often like Phil Silvers." Director George Cukor campaigned for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to nominate Woodlawn for an Academy Award for the role, though no nomination resulted.

Her second major film with Morrissey was Women in Revolt, released in 1972, a satirical treatment of the women's rights movement. Photographer Richard Avedon photographed Woodlawn alongside co-stars Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling for the June 1972 issue of Vogue. That same year, she starred in Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers, a low-budget 16mm musical feature directed by Robert Kaplan, which was believed lost until its 35mm negative was rediscovered when DuArt Film and Video closed its storage facility in 2013 and was subsequently restored by the Academy Film Archive. In 1973, she appeared in Broken Goddess, described by J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum in Midnight Movies as an "apparently plotless mood piece" in which Woodlawn ran and posed through Central Park at dawn.

Her stage work began in September 1969, when Jackie Curtis cast her as Cuckoo the Bird Girl in the play Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit. In May 1971, she replaced Candy Darling in a production of Vain Victory, written and directed by Jackie Curtis, at the La MaMa theatre. In 1978, she co-starred with Divine in a run of Tom Eyen's The Neon Woman at Hurrah, directed by Ron Link. Woodlawn's Broadway career included an appearance in The Ritz in 1983. She also appeared in films by Rosa von Praunheim, including Tally Brown, New York in 1979.

During the 1990s, Woodlawn made cameo appearances in productions including Night Owl in 1993 and Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss in 1998. She appeared in Twin Falls Idaho in 1999 and Milwaukee, Minnesota in 2003. One of her final acting roles was the character Vivian in the television series Transparent. In 1991, Woodlawn published her memoir, A Low Life in High Heels, written with Jeff Copeland.