Rupert Jason Smith

Rupert Jason Smith appears in the diary through a handful of consequential glimpses rather than a continuous biography: as a figure with standing in New Hope, Pennsylvania, as someone Warhol visits to discuss art projects, and as a man whose relationship with Patrick draws Warhol into judgment, concern, and remorse. The most revealing passages do not settle every fact. Instead, they show how Warhol’s confident reading of another person’s relationship gives way, when Patrick’s illness and death become known, to an uncomfortable recognition of what he had not understood.

A Portrait Made Through the Diary

Rupert’s character is assembled from Warhol’s entries, not from a sustained account in Rupert’s own voice. The diary itself was produced through a weekday routine: Pat Hackett spoke with Warhol by telephone, took extensive notes, and typed the entries, while weekend events were generally recounted together on Monday. The record began as a log of office visitors, nightly events, and business expenses; from 1976 onward, Warhol supplied the daily account, making it a more personal narrative as well as a record of expenditures. That process matters for Rupert’s portrait: what survives is Warhol’s selection and phrasing, relayed and shaped in a text assembled from conversations.

The published diary is also a deliberate selection from an original 20,000 pages. Pat Hackett explains that whole days or weeks, portions of entries, and many names were removed to give the book narrative flow. She also describes editing away much of her direct presence in the conversations, sometimes recasting herself in the third person. Rupert’s brief appearances should therefore be read as concentrated scenes in a curated account, not as a complete chronology of his life or an impartial report on his relationships.

Warhol’s Concern About Rupert’s Partner

In October 1985, Warhol called Rupert early and found Rupert’s partner answering the telephone. Warhol described the partner as Rupert’s “wife” and resolved to tell Rupert that he should end the relationship. He imagined that a separation might bring demands for a house, a dog, and a car, and characterized the partner as a nag. His forecast was not merely about practical complications: Warhol also complained that people in love do not listen to warnings and may repeat to the person being criticized what a friend has said about them.

That entry conveys Warhol’s interventionist confidence, but it offers little independent evidence about the partner or the relationship. The prospective settlement is Warhol’s prediction, not a recorded outcome, and the diary does not report whether he delivered the advice or whether Rupert acted on it. In this passage, Rupert is seen indirectly, through Warhol’s conviction that infatuation makes a person unable to recognize a relationship’s problems. The account captures the narrator’s judgment more clearly than it establishes the full circumstances of Rupert’s private life.

Patrick, AIDS, and a Reversal in Judgment

On December 16, Brigid Berlin read Warhol an article from The New York Times about a man named Patrick McAllister, although Warhol was unsure whether McAllister was the man’s last name. The report said that Patrick had AIDS and had a boyfriend who worked for a famous artist; it did not name Rupert. Warhol connected the report to Rupert and felt bad because, as he acknowledged, he had been mean to Patrick and had disliked him for years. He also wondered whether Patrick’s illness might explain changes he associated with Rupert, including an interest in macrobiotics and courses in EST.

The entry presents this identification as Warhol’s inference, not as an explicit confirmation in the newspaper article. Its emotional movement is nevertheless clear: the news unsettles an established dislike. Warhol does not claim that he had treated Patrick kindly, or that his earlier judgments were justified. Instead, his reaction registers a belated sympathy and a new possibility—that conduct he had found difficult to understand might have been connected to illness and the strain surrounding it.

A later entry records the news that Rupert’s friend Patrick had died at three in the morning while taking a shower. Patrick was in a Maryland hospital and had gone to Rupert’s home in New Hope for weekends. Warhol reports that Patrick was participating in an experimental treatment and that those around him did not know exactly what had happened. The account therefore gives both a stark circumstance of death and a limit on what can be known about its cause. It does not establish that the treatment caused Patrick’s death, nor does it supply a fuller medical history. For Rupert, the passage establishes a close connection through Patrick’s regular weekend visits, while leaving Rupert’s own response to the loss unrecorded.

New Hope and the Final Glimpse

In March 1986, Warhol travelled with John Reinhold to New Hope to talk with Rupert about art projects. The visit makes Rupert’s local status tangible: Warhol called him the grand man around town and noted that he had two Bentleys. Rupert’s house, a converted mill, struck Warhol as a stage set, with parts that looked like Roman ruins, four Persian cats, and fireplaces kept burning. These details give the scene its particular texture while also showing Rupert as Warhol encountered him: through the setting, possessions, and atmosphere of a visit organized around potential work.

The surrounding town left a different impression. Warhol described its social life as overwhelmingly gay and found the places they visited disorienting, including a restaurant where a drag queen served them and patrons were drinking in the afternoon. Rupert responded when another man called him an alien, identifying himself by his full name. After lunch, Rupert asked Warhol to leave the server a generous tip because she had stayed open for them. The episode shows Rupert acting as host and guide, attending to the service extended to his party; it does not resolve the tensions Warhol had earlier perceived in his relationship. Taken together, the visit and the entries about Patrick give Rupert a compact but unsettled presence in the diary: socially assured in his chosen town, involved in art discussions, and connected to a personal loss whose circumstances Warhol could only partly understand.