Hundreds of pages of Andy Warhol’s dishy diaries will be unsealed in 2037, sources say, which has downtown denizens worrying.
“Andy recorded everything,” a former friend of the artist said, dramatically. “And pages of his unpublished diaries are sealed for 50 years after his death. They were so explicit — he wanted to make sure a lot of people weren’t around!”
Published posthumously in 1989, “The Andy Warhol Diaries” told saucy tales about everyone from Mick Jagger to John Lennon, but the book was culled from hundreds of more pages that remain under wraps. A source close to Warhol’s estate, however, insisted the sealed pages are in limbo not because of their juicy content.
“That’s what everybody says . . . but it’s second-tier stuff,” the insider joked. “Academics can pore through it when they’re unsealed . . . The [published] diaries were scandalous enough.”
Meanwhile, Page Six has learned Warhol’s former secretary and co-author of “Diaries,” Pat Hackett, will unveil a show of never-before-seen photos from the ’60s through the ’80s, when she shot Warhol with everyone from Joan Crawford to Jack Nicholson and the Factory superstars.
“When I started working with Andy, he bought me a camera,” Hackett said. “These were shots no one else was getting because no one else was there.” Over the years, she was with Warhol at the Rainbow Room to capture Crawford at her final public appearance and snapped pics of the artist on the set of Federico Fellini’s “Amarcord.”
Hackett recalled a star-studded party where Warhol told her, “Look, Pat, if you don’t have me in a picture, you don’t have a picture.”
She’ll write long captions for 60 images, of the thousands she took, for a show that opens July 13 at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine, curated by Peter Kelly.
“They’re unusual shots . . . They’ve never been seen,” she said, adding that a personal fave is of Warhol and Rodney Dangerfield. “I feel like I’m fulfilling what was expected. I learned so much.”
We’ll just have to wait 24 years to see if the rumors about those diaries are true.