Actress and transgender icon Holly Woodlawn has sadly passed away yesterday after a battle with brain and liver cancer.
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Woodlawn ran away at the age of 16 to NY and it was there she met Andy Warhol and changed her name from Haroldo Danhakl to Holly Woodlawn.
In his 1972 hit “Walk on the Wild Side”, the singer famously says, “Holly came from Miami, Fla”. Her cult status helped her make a comeback in such 1990s independent films as “Twin Falls Idaho” and “Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss”.
Though she largely faded from public view in subsequent decades, Woodlawn recently made a cameo appearance in the transgender-themed Amazon series Transparent.
“We were watching this episode of ‘I Love Lucy, ‘ ” she said, “and behind her was this sign on the No. 4 train, ‘Woodlawn, ‘ and we said: ‘That’s it. Holly…”
Her mother moved to New York to find a better-paying job, and married Joseph Ajzenburg, a Polish immigrant who was a waiter at the Catskills resort where she was working as a waitress, The New York Times reported.
However her first movie role was in the 1970 Paul Morrissey flick, Trash, alomgside Joe Dallesandro.
The actor became well known after appearing in the Andy Warhol films “Trash” and “Women in Revolt” and as a member of his NY clique, “the Warhol superstars”. Ms Woodlawn was one of the key inspirations for the Lou Reed song ” Take a Walk on the Wild Side”. There are plans for memorials on both the West Coast and East Coast. When she was fifteen she started travelling to NY.
‘It was like she knew I was there.
Arcade told The Washington Post that the history of women like Woodlawn is often being forgotten in an age of Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner – women who present gender and pass under a very different standard than in the 1960s and 70s.
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“I felt like Elizabeth Taylor”, she told the Guardian in 2007.
