Shirley MacLaine

Shirley MacLaine emerges in the diaries not through a continuous biography but through several sharply observed encounters: as a possible magazine cover, the guest of honor at an intimate dinner, and the subject of a contentious Interview feature. Together, these glimpses show her moving between public image and editorial control. Her celebrity makes her valuable to the magazine, but it does not make her indifferent to how that magazine presents her.

Identity and Introduction

The diary identifies Shirley MacLaine as a prominent public figure whom Interview could approach both as a cover subject and as the focus of a substantial interview. The surviving account offers little about her life beyond that public role; its attention falls instead on the circumstances in which she enters Andy Warhol’s social and professional world. She appears first as a name in an editorial sales discussion, then in person at a dinner held in her honor, and later as a reader dissatisfied with the language accompanying her magazine profile.

That limited perspective matters. These are not scenes that establish a comprehensive portrait of MacLaine’s character. They record what Warhol noticed about the uses and costs of celebrity: who might attract readers, how a famous guest behaved in a room, and what happened when a magazine’s framing of an interview did not meet its subject’s expectations. MacLaine is visible through those encounters, but she is not reduced to the image the magazine constructs for her; her later objections make clear that she attends to that construction herself.

A Cover as Editorial Strategy

In 1983, Warhol discussed cover possibilities with Robert Hayes. Hayes was enthusiastic about securing Matt Dillon but rejected Warhol’s suggestion of MacLaine. Warhol explained his reasoning in straightforward commercial terms: he hoped that women who watched Donahue might buy Interview if MacLaine appeared on its cover. The proposal thus connected a particular celebrity to a hoped-for readership beyond the magazine’s existing audience. The diary records the pitch and Hayes’s resistance, not whether MacLaine was ultimately offered or appeared on the cover.

The exchange belongs to a broader change in Warhol’s work. From 1975, Interview became a major focus of his activity; as its circulation grew, celebrities increasingly wanted to be featured. The magazine offered a continuing supply of new people to meet and a promise of print visibility where Warhol’s films had once offered a part. In that setting, a cover was more than a portrait of an already famous person: it was an editorial choice about whom the magazine could bring before which readers. Warhol’s MacLaine suggestion makes that calculation unusually explicit, joining her name to an imagined audience of television viewers.

The Dinner at the Limelight

At a small dinner for MacLaine, Warhol arrived at the Limelight believing he had been invited. Brigid Berlin had relayed the schedule—cocktails at 7:30 and dinner at 8:30—and he reached the restaurant at 9:00. The doorman’s response initially left him uncertain about his status: he was told he was early, then that someone would check, and finally that it would be all right for him to enter. Only as the meal began to seem unusually intimate did he start to suspect that he had mistaken the invitation. The party had about thirty guests.

The dinner was organized around a white theme. Warhol wore a white turtleneck, while others wore white tuxedos; the food included unfamiliar crinkled green vegetables and perfumed lamb. Guests gave speeches, but Warhol was the only one who did not. MacLaine’s daughter kissed her on the lips, and Bella Abzug delivered a feminist speech before her husband spoke. A three-tier wedding cake followed, then coconut ice cream. The sequence gives the dinner its particular social texture: ceremony and performance mixed with the small details Warhol habitually recorded.

When MacLaine came around the table, she patted Warhol on the shoulder “like a dog” and greeted him: “Hello there, Andy.” The gesture is one of the diary’s most concrete impressions of her, though it does not explain her intention. Its significance lies in the contrast between Warhol’s uncertain arrival and the ease with which the guest of honor acknowledged him once he was inside. The scene also places him at the edge of an event organized for MacLaine: present, observant, and attentive to the gestures that defined the room, but not one of its speakers.

The Health Issue and the Disputed Introduction

By January 1985, MacLaine was again central to Interview through an interview for its Health issue. Jon Gould conducted the interview and was transcribing it himself so he could edit the transcript before submitting it. The account does not describe the interview itself; it documents the work around turning it into a magazine feature, including the division between the conversation, its editing, and the material that would introduce it to readers.

The friction surfaced over a banner headline: “Metaphysical Madam.” MacLaine was upset about it and tried to reach Warhol. He questioned why the word “Madam” had caused such a reaction, treating it as an ordinary word, but his uncertainty is not evidence that the headline was harmless to her. He also thought Jon’s response—telling her it was not his fault—may have brought the wording to her attention when she might otherwise not have noticed it. That is Warhol’s speculation, not a confirmed account of what first bothered MacLaine.

The introduction became a separate point of dispute. Warhol understood that Gael Love had written it and that it drew on material from other sources. Jon had written an earlier version, but it was rejected as too much about himself; Gael told him, “You are not Arianna Stassinopoulos.” MacLaine later sought to see the sources for everything in the introduction. When Warhol did not return her calls, she contacted Gael in New York and asked for “Gael Hate.” Fred Hughes said he would call MacLaine and smooth matters over. The diary records this intended intervention but does not report its outcome.

Public Image and Editorial Control

MacLaine’s appearances reveal two sides of Interview’s celebrity culture. Warhol’s proposed cover treated her fame as a possible bridge to readers of Donahue; the Health issue placed her in a feature whose headline and introductory framing she scrutinized. In the first instance she was the subject of a marketing idea. In the second, she acted as a participant with a stake in how her words and public identity reached print. The record does not show that she controlled the final presentation, but her request for the introduction’s sources shows that she challenged the editorial process rather than simply accepting it.

The contrast also helps define the limits of the diary as evidence. Warhol records his own commercial reasoning, his puzzlement over the headline, the sequence of calls, and the social details of the dinner. MacLaine’s perspective is available mainly through her actions and the complaints reported to him. Across those fragments, she is not merely a celebrity circulating through Warhol’s world: she is also a potential audience-builder, a celebrated dinner guest, and a subject who insists that the magazine’s framing be answerable to her.