CIAO! MANHATTAN
The shooting for Edie's final film,
Ciao! Manhattan, started on April 15, 1967. The film was first conceived by Robert Margouleff (producer) and Chuck Wein in an East Village coffee shop. After talking together they decided to make a p*rn film called
Ciao Manhattan on a budget of $47,500. [size=-7](EDIE318)[/size] Later in Robert's office, Chuck suggested they use Edie. Chuck's only credit on the film was: "Black and white sequences are based upon a story by Chuck Wein and Genevieve Chapin."
According to Margouleff., the film got crazier and crazier: "Everybody on the set needed a poke [of speed] , first once a day, then twice. We actually set up a charge account at Dr. Roberts office.... Shooting got so unpredictable. There was one scene in which Paul America was supposed to drop off Jane Holzer at the helioport at the Pan Am building. We filmed him driving up up and letting her out and then driving off. He was supposed to drive around the block and be available for more footage to the scene. But he just kept on going. We didn't hear from Paul again for about eight months until finally David tracked him down in Allegan, Michigan where he was in jail. We had to get permission from the Governor to film him in jail and try to integrate that into the footage." [size=-7](EDIE 321/3)[/size]
On October 24, 1967. Edie's father died. Toward the end of his life, one of his brother's heard him say: "You know, my children all believe that their difficulties stem from me. And I agree. I think they do." [size=-7](EDIE356)[/size]
Edie was in Gracie Square Hospital at the time of her father's death. When she came out, she moved in with L.M. Kit Carson who had written a film he wanted Edie to be in. They had an affair and moved into the Warwick hotel posing as man and wife. Unable to cope with her drug addiction and irratic behaviour, Carson moved out. Several days later Edie was committed to Bellevue Hospital. After contacting her private physican, she was let out of Bellevue, but was later committed to the Manhattan State Hospital after a drug overdose. [size=-7](EDIE363)[/size]
Her brother, Jonathan, describes her state when Edie's mother finally took her out of the the hospital and back to the ranch in Santa Barbara in the late fall of 1968: "She couldn't walk. She'd just fall over... like she had no motor control left at all. The doctor did a dye test of some sort and it showed the blood wasn't reaching certain parts of the brain... She couldn't talk. I'd say, "Edie, goddam it, get your head together... She'd say, 'I... I... I... know... know... know... I... I... can but it's ha... ha... hard...' "[size=-7] (EDIE370)[/size]
Eventually she was well enough to live in town and got an apartment in Isla Vista near the U.C. Santa Barbara. She was hospitalised again in August of 1969 in the psychiatric ward of Cottage Hospital after being busted for drugs by the local police. While in hospital she met another patient, Michael Post, who she would later marry. [size=-7](EDIE371/76)[/size]
When Edie got out of the hospital, she hung around with a group of bikers called the Vikings. One of the bikers, Preacher Ewing remembers her as "a little larger than life in her capacity to hit the depths... I used to call her Princess, because that's what she thought she was...She'd say her parents were so fantasticaly upper-class... she was condescending. It was really ludicrous, because she'd ball half the dudes in town for a snort of junk." [size=-7](EDIE387)[/size]
Edie was in the hospital again in the summer of 1970 but was let out under the supervision of two nurses to finish
Ciao! Manhattan. [size=-7](EDIE388)[/size]
For the shock treatment segment in the film, a real clinic was used and Edie knew exactly how the gag should be placed and how the airway went in. The segments of her in her "apartment" were actually filmed at the bottom of an empty swimming pool in Los Angeles. [size=-7](EDIE390)[/size]
Soon afterwards, suffering from the DTs, Edie was admitted to the same clinic they used to film the shock treatment in Ciao Manhattan, where she had real shock treatments[size=-3].[/size]
Michael Post: "She was in the clinic from January 17 to June 4... She had shock treatments - I don't know how many - maybe twenty or more. Dr Mercer told me that she'd had some shock treatments in the East. He authorized the new ones because he thought Edie could be close to suicidal." [size=-7](EDIE398)[/size]
According to David Bourdon, "Between January and June of 1971, she received twenty or more shock treatments." [size=-7](DB316)[/size]
CIAO! EDIE
Edie married Michael Post on July 24, 1971. She stopped drinking and taking pills until October when pain medication was given to her to treat a physical illness. She remained under the care Dr. Mercer who prescribed her barbituates but she would often demand more pills or say she had lost them in order to get more, often combining them with alcohol.
On the night of November 15, 1971, Edie went to fashion show at Santa Barbara Museum, a segment of which was filmed for the television show
An American Family, Lance Loud had already met Edie before on a beach in Isla Vista and she spoke to him in the lobby "drawn" by the cameras.
After the fashion show Edie attended a party and was verbally attacked by one of the guests who called her a heroin addict. The guest was so loud that she was asked to leave. Edie rang Michael who arrived at the party and could see that Edie had been drinking.
Eventually, they left the party, went back to the flat, where Michael gave Edie the meds that had been prescribed for her, and they both fell asleep.When Michael woke up the following morning at 7:30, Edie was dead. The coroner registered her death as Accident/Suicide due to a Barbituate overdose.
Saucie (Edie's sister
"Edie was buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Ballard, up over the San Marcos Pass. It used to be a dingy village so small that if you went through it at fifty miles per hour you'd miss it. It's in the Valley, but it's nothing. A few live-oak trees. No one would ever go there except to see the veterinarian."[size=-7] (EDIE425[/size]
(from warholstars.org)
