O. J. Simpson

O. J. Simpson enters the diary in a brief but revealing encounter in Buffalo, where a planned meeting and photo session turn an ordinary visit into a small exercise in celebrity image-making. The entry records not a biography, but the details Warhol noticed: Simpson’s warmth, his memory of familiar names, and the unexpected success of photographs taken while he wore a five-day beard.

The Buffalo encounter

On October 19, 1977, Andy Warhol traveled from New York to Buffalo for a meeting with O. J. Simpson at a motel. Before Simpson arrived, Warhol asked Richard whether he had reminded him to bring a football. He had not, so they asked the motel manager to find one, proposing that it be autographed by Simpson and Warhol. The football supplied a makeshift prop for the meeting, while the plan to obtain both signatures gave the encounter a playful, personalized frame.

Simpson arrived without the football, but the diary emphasizes his ease rather than any inconvenience. He remembered Regine's and asked about Marisa Berenson, whom he and Warhol had presented an Oscar with the previous year. Warhol described him as very sweet, recording a friendly manner alongside his recognition of people and places in their shared celebrity orbit.

Beard, photographs, and star image

Simpson had a five-day beard, which led Warhol to expect that the pictures would be poor. Fred Hughes disagreed, predicting that the beard would make Simpson look sexy. The photographs proved him right: Warhol singled out Simpson’s good looks, and the images that seemed at risk of being spoiled instead confirmed his visual appeal.

The moment captures how the diary attends to a star image as something tested in front of the camera. A small physical detail—the unshaven face—becomes the point of uncertainty, and the resulting pictures settle it. Warhol’s reaction is immediate and visual: Simpson is not merely a famous visitor, but a face whose appearance can surprise even the people arranging the shoot.

A brief place in Warhol’s celebrity world

The entry offers only a narrow glimpse of Simpson; it does not develop his biography or explain the arrangements behind the meeting. Its significance lies in the concentrated record of contact: the football that had to be found locally, Simpson’s recollection of Regine's, his question about Marisa Berenson, and the successful photographs. Together these details place him within the diary’s recurring attention to fame as a social encounter and a camera-ready image, while leaving the relationship between Simpson and Warhol otherwise unspecified.