Logo

AP; NY Times

Pioneering Transgender Actress Dies at 69

Dec 7, 2015  •  Post A Comment

“The transgender actress made famous by Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey in their 1970s films ‘Trash’ and ‘Women in Revolt,’ has died,” reports the Associated Press. Her name was Holly Woodlawn.

The story continues, “Woodlawn died Sunday in Los Angeles after a battle with cancer, said her former caretaker and friend Mariela Huerta. She was 69.”

Reports The New York Times, “Her sassy, improvised dialogue and her vulnerability touched audiences and critics, many of whom were desperate to find a glint of redeeming light in [the] relentlessly sordid film [‘Trash’]. ‘Holly Woodlawn, especially, is something to behold,’ Vincent Canby wrote in his review for The New York Times, ‘a comic book Mother Courage who fancies herself as Marlene Dietrich but sounds more often like Phil Silvers.’

The Times adds, “Ms. Woodlawn was born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl on Oct. 26, 1946, in Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico, the child of a Puerto Rican mother and an American soldier of German descent who fled the marriage almost immediately after the wedding.”

HollyWoodlawn-on-a-2009-TV-Here’s a picture we found of Woodlawn in a 2009 TV interview

 

Your Comment

Email (will not be published)