Jane Holzer Thought Andy Warhol Could Make Her a Star. Instead, She Helped Him Reach a New Level of Fame.
In June 1964, the pop artist Andy Warhol attended a party at the home of Jane and Leonard Holzer who lived in a twelve-room apartment at 955 Park Avenue with a maid, a butler, a Yorkshire terrier, and a toy poodle. Warhol had always been intrigued by female fashion, and twenty-three-year-old Jane Holzer wore designer clothes and had a distinctive style that was all her own. With a long, abrupt face that, at unguarded moments, looked haunted, Holzer possessed a distinctive, arresting look. Holzer was attractive, yes, but her glory was her magnificent hair — an enveloping golden mane reminiscent of the MGM lion’s, a splendid statement that announced her presence to the world. Holzer was much more than simply pretty. She had presence.
Three or four days after the dinner party, Holzer was walking along Madison Avenue with the photographer David Bailey when he waved at Warhol on the other side of the street. The pop artist came sprinting over. Warhol had been intrigued by Holzer, and he would not miss this opportunity to develop a relationship. After spending several years devoted to making pop art, Warhol had started spending much of his time creating underground movies.
When Warhol asked Holzer, after chatting for a few minutes, if she would like to be in one of his films, she immediately said, “Sure, anything’s better than [being] a Park Avenue housewife.” She was hardly a housewife, but she was canny enough to know that a little self-deprecation goes a long way. The two sized each other up right away. Warhol saw a dynamic, charismatic woman with money and connections. Holzer, for her part, wanted to be a star and thought Warhol could get her there. The sight of a camera sent shivers through her. “My chin goes up,” she said. “My tummy goes in.”
A plan was quickly hatched: Warhol would feature Holzer in his underground movies and accompany her to parties and dinners around Manhattan. He would give her a bit of his downtown cool and avant-garde excitement, and she would give him entrée to elite circles he could not move in alone. “I think he saw somebody just made for his purposes,” reflected Isabel Eberstadt, who at that time was writing a profile of Warhol and his scene. “She [Holzer] was very narcissistic, very ostentatious. She was packageable.”
Holzer had a new patina of glamour about her. Now, when she went out on her evening rounds to both the exclusive uptown parties and seedier art-world hangouts farther downtown, people were beginning to recognize her. And while she had the newfound prestige of a movie actress, she did not have to be embarrassed by having her East Side friends see the films.
Overnight success rarely happens overnight. In Holzer’s case, her celebrity percolated for more than a year, until it exploded into the heavens and beyond in the fall of 1964. Suddenly, her face was everywhere. And she even had a new name—Carol Bjorkman, a Women’s Wear Daily columnist, named Holzer “Baby Jane,” after the 1962 horror thriller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (in which Bette Davis plays a demented woman who tortures her disabled sister, played by Joan Crawford). Baby Jane hardly seemed a flattering title, but the name stuck.
