Barbara Allen

Barbara Allen is a recurring presence in Andy Warhol’s diary, moving through a close-knit social world where friendships, romantic entanglements, work, and public attention frequently overlap. Her appearances are not organized around one continuous story so much as a series of encounters: a proposed trip that may or may not happen, a temporary change of address, a reunion, a failed acting opportunity, and nights when she is alternately displaced, misunderstood, or comforted. Taken together, these episodes show her navigating a social circle whose invitations and affections could shift quickly, and in which even small gestures—who gets picked up, who sits beside whom, who leaves with whom—carry weight.

Place in Andy Warhol’s Circle

In November 1976, Allen called to say that she would join Andy and Jed Johnson on their drive to Chadds Ford if they left after noon. They set off at about one, but the diary’s next entry says that Barbara Walters did not come after all. It does not establish whether Allen joined the trip, so the two references should not be treated as the same person. The episode nevertheless catches the practical texture of Allen’s appearances in the diary: social plans were made by telephone and folded into journeys already being organized around other people.

By December, Allen’s housing arrangements were entangled with those of people in Warhol’s circle. She was moving into Fred Hughes’s house on East 89th Street and Lexington Avenue for a while. Allen had rented her East 63rd Street apartment to Catherine Guinness; Guinness had then let Allen stay there, but sharing the apartment had become too much. The move was a temporary solution to a specific domestic strain, placing Allen in Hughes’s house rather than leaving her in the crowded arrangement with Guinness.

Allen also acted as a connector. In March 1977, she was bringing Princess Firyal of Jordan down to The Factory. Her role in that visit is recorded simply and without elaboration, but it places her within the network through which prominent visitors and Warhol’s workplace met. Later, at a weekend in Montauk, she appeared alongside Peter Beard and Margrit Rammè. Rammè kissed Beard in front of Allen, described in the diary as Beard’s former girlfriend; despite the awkward configuration, the two women got along. The scene gives a compact picture of overlapping past and present relationships without reducing Allen’s part in it to jealousy or confrontation.

Disappointment, Romance, and Social Position

The Montauk weekend also brought a more personal disappointment. Allen was upset that Jack Nicholson had given a part she had auditioned for to an unknown actress who had worked in New York theater. The diary does not identify the role or describe the audition, but it records the reversal clearly: Allen had pursued an opportunity and lost it to someone less established. Her disappointment sits beside the weekend’s relaxed social encounters, showing how professional hopes and private company coexisted in the same setting.

By January 1978, Allen was feeling the effects of her association with Philip Niarchos and Manuela. She asked Andy to take her to the New York Film Critics dinner and sounded down. She told him that it was getting to her that Philip and Manuela were around, while people inviting her out kept asking whether she still wanted to be included if the couple were also invited. The problem was not merely that she saw them; their presence had become a test of whether she remained welcome. The diary records her unhappiness through this repeated social question, making invitations themselves a measure of her uncertain position.

At a dinner in July, Allen’s distress became visible. Vitas Gerulaitis and others had persuaded Andy to come to the River Café, where Vitas was hosting a gathering. Allen showed the group a ring Nastase had given her. When Nastase arrived with a beautiful model, Allen went upstairs and cried. Richard Weisman called her foolish for being upset when she knew Nastase was married and had children. Truman Capote offered a different response, saying he had a very rich man for her, with three planes, abundant money, and a house in Mexico; the extravagant promise cheered her. The episode moves from a displayed token of intimacy to a painful encounter with its limits, then to consolation offered in the same theatrical terms as the social world around her.

Andy Warhol as Companion and Intermediary

Allen’s relationship with Andy was marked by renewed contact and by his willingness to accompany her into social and cultural events. In March 1977, after several weeks without contact, she called and asked him to come immediately to her mother’s home at 834 Fifth Avenue. Andy walked over. He saw Allen descending the staircase looking gorgeous, like a version of her mother, Honey, and offered her a job at the office. Their conversation also turned to her changed figure and to the film Bad. Andy warned her not to see it because, if she saw herself portrayed as very fat and accompanied by farting sounds, she would be furious with them. The exchange brings together reconciliation, an offer of employment, and a frank discussion of how a film might represent her body. It shows Andy treating Allen both as someone he welcomed back into his orbit and as a person potentially affected by his work.

In April 1978, Allen again took the initiative in arranging an evening together. She had no one to accompany her to a screening of Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby, so she picked Andy up at 7:45 and they went to the Paramount building at Columbus Circle. At the screening, she met Baryshnikov, seated him beside her, and then left Andy for the dancer. When she asked Andy what he was doing later, he said he was going home; she responded with amusement that this was great. The small exchange turns a shared outing into a sudden change of allegiance: Allen’s attention shifted to the person she had just met, and Andy was left out of their plans.

Recurring Encounters and Narrative Significance

A few days later, Allen reappeared in a report of gossip from Studio 54. Jack Nicholson and Ryan O’Neal had both been there, and people worked to keep them apart. Allen thought the effort was because of her, but the diary explains that the underlying situation concerned Anjelica, who had recently been seeing Ryan. Stevie Rubell said he had enjoyed keeping the two men apart. The episode corrects Allen’s understanding without making her the cause of the dispute: she was close enough to the drama to read it as personal, while the diary supplies a different explanation.

Allen’s later appearances retain this pattern of proximity without secure centrality. At the River Café she was hurt by Nastase’s arrival with another woman; at the film screening she redirected her attention from Andy to Baryshnikov; at Studio 54 she mistook a social maneuver as being about her. In June 1977, when she and Stan left a gathering with Andy, the two were still together as he parted from them. These brief records do not establish a lasting romantic history or a single defining outcome. Instead, their episodic form makes Allen’s position legible through changes of company, the pressure of invitations, and the mismatch between what she imagines a scene means and what the diary later explains. She remains a distinct participant in Warhol’s social world: sometimes an organizer, sometimes a disappointed aspirant, and sometimes the person whose feelings register most plainly when attention moves elsewhere.