Paul America
Encyclopedia
Paul Johnson better known as Paul America, was a member of Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

's Warhol Superstars group who starred in one Warhol-directed film, My Hustler. He also appeared in Edie Sedgwick
Edie Sedgwick
Edith Minturn "Edie" Sedgwick was an American actress, socialite, model and heiress. She is best known for being one of Andy Warhol's superstars. Sedgwick became known as "The Girl of the Year" in 1965 after starring in several of Warhol's short films in the 1960s...

's last film Ciao! Manhattan
Ciao! Manhattan
Ciao! Manhattan is a 1972 American avant garde film starring Edie Sedgwick, one of Andy Warhol's Superstars. Although not a documentary, the film centers around a character very closely based on Sedgwick, and deals with the pain of addiction and the lure of fame.-Film overview:Written and directed...

(1972) and in the documentary Superartist.

Warhol years

According to most stories, Warhol discovered America at a discotheque called Ondine sometime in mid-1965, and soon invited him to visit The Factory
The Factory
The Factory was Andy Warhol's original New York City studio from 1962 to 1968, although his later studios were known as The Factory as well. The Factory was located on the fifth floor at 231 East 47th Street, in Midtown Manhattan. The rent was "only about one hundred dollars a year"...

. At first he simply hung around making repairs to a motorcycle, eventually forming close relationships with the Warhol crowd; living briefly with Chuck Wein
Chuck Wein
Chuck Wein was an American promoter and manager of entertainment acts whose celebrity stemmed from his five-year association with Andy Warhol and from his discovery of Edie Sedgwick who became Warhol Superstar of 1965.Wein graduated from Pittsburgh's Taylor Allderdice High School in 1957 and...

 and engaging in a short-lived romance with Edie Sedgwick.

Warhol described America as "unbelievably good looking - like a comic strip drawing of Mr. America, clean cut, handsome, very symmetrical," and also suggested that perhaps he may have gotten his name because of an apartment in which he had lived at the Hotel America, "a super-funky midtown hotel that was the kind of place Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider , better known by the stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American comedian, social critic and satirist...

, say, stayed in." He himself often had problems with the name given:
America has seemingly become a gay icon
Gay icon
A gay icon is a public figure who is embraced by many within :lesbian, :gay, :bisexual and :transgender communities...

, mainly for his performance in the title role of Warhol's, My Hustler. After My Hustler, America appeared in several other Warhol films from 1965: the unreleased sequels, My Hustler: In Apartment and My Hustler: Ingrid, and also Dan Williams's silent film Harold Stevenson, in which America, Gerard Malanga
Gerard Malanga
Gerard Joseph Malanga is an American poet, photographer, filmmaker, curator and archivist.-Early life:Born in the Bronx, New York, Malanga graduated from the School of Industrial Art in Manhattan and attended Wagner College on Staten Island...

, Stevenson, Sedgwick, and others converse and drink wine while posing photogenically on a couch in a New York hotel suite. Another four-minute silent portrait of Paul America, shot on the beach during the making of My Hustler, had been found in the "long version" of that film, in the edited montage by Dan Williams that was added to the sixty-six-minute film in 1967.

Later years and death

Also, that same year after a brief stint in the U.S. Army, America obtained legal assistance and convinced Warhol to reimburse him retroactively for his role in the by-then commercially-successful My Hustler. He reportedly received around $1,000 in several installments.

America also starred alongside Edie Sedgwick in John Palmer and David Weisman
David Weisman
David Weisman is a film producer, author, and graphic artist who is most noted for his films Ciao! Manhattan and Kiss of the Spider Woman...

's film Ciao! Manhattan
Ciao! Manhattan
Ciao! Manhattan is a 1972 American avant garde film starring Edie Sedgwick, one of Andy Warhol's Superstars. Although not a documentary, the film centers around a character very closely based on Sedgwick, and deals with the pain of addiction and the lure of fame.-Film overview:Written and directed...

(1972), filmed from 1967 to 1971. His role in the film was severely diminished when he was imprisoned on Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

 drug-related charges. America tried to contact Warhol for the last time in 1982.

On October 19, 1982, Paul America was killed by a car while walking home from a dental appointment in Ormond Beach, Florida
Ormond Beach, Florida
Ormond Beach is a city in Volusia County, Florida, United States. The population was 36,301 at the 2000 census. As of 2004, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 37,929. Ormond Beach is the northern neighbor of Daytona Beach and is home to Tomoka State Park.-History:Ormond Beach was...

.

External links

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