Paul Johnson, a strapping blonde young man from New Jersey, was
reportedly discovered in mid-1965 by theatrical producer
Lester Persky at the discotheque Ondine
and brought to the attention of Andy Warhol
at Warhol's "Factory" (work-living space).
According to Warhol, "Paul was unbelievably good-looking - like a
comic-strip drawing of Mr. America, clean-cut, handsome, very
symmetrical. He seemed to be exactly six feet tall and weigh some nice
round number." He immediately moved into The Factory and became a part
of the Warhol family of superstars, factotums and hangers-on, his
contributions classed mostly in the latter category. Warhol crowned him
"Paul America," likely because of his having lived at the funky America
Hotel on West 46th St.
America wound up living at The Factory from 1965 to 1968, where Warhol
only talked to him through intermediaries (even in his presence) as he
believed Johnson to be a "fool." According to Warhol superstar
Ondine, "Paul America was everybody's lover....
He was the personification of total sexual satisfaction. Without a
brain in his head. Just beautifully vapid. He was a wonderful creature.
Anybody who wanted anything from Paul could get it. He was there to
satisfy. And he did."
The handsome youth was cast in the starring role of Warhol's 1965 film
"My Hustler," his most famous role. A heavy user of LSD, America
claimed that he didn't even remember the shoot, and was barely
conscious that he was in a movie. The anti-romantic film, which
consists of two 33-minute long takes (the length of a 1,200-ft. reel of
16-mm film, which Warhol, the cameraman/director, exposed continuously)
is considered a landmark of gay cinema and ranks, with his "Chelsea
Girls," as the most financially successful of Warhol's early narrative
films. The film made America a gay icon. He appeared in two unreleased
Warhol sequels, ('My Hustler: In Apartment' and 'My Hustler: Ingrid'),
as well as Dan Williams' silent film 'Harold Stevenson.'
America and Edie Sedgwick -- another Factory
regular -- became lovers, united in their common lust for drugs, and they
lived together for a brief time at New York's Chelsea Hotel. They
indulged heavily in speed as classic co-dependents. According to
Sedgwick, "I'm not sure what attracted me to him unless it was a kind
of admiration brought about by the drugs which I was so heavily
inundated by."
However, while they were together, America kept Sedgwick from being
exploited. Their relationship was an on-again/off-again affair, as
America continually left New York for the country (his brother owned a
farm in Indiana). Eventually, friction over control issues forced them
apart.
Years later, America appeared with Sedgwick in the long-gestated film
"Ciao Manhattan," his second and last film role. In the movie, he
played a drug dealer ingeniously named "Paul America." In a scene in
which he chauffeured a character to the Pan Am building, America drove
off the set and vanished. The filmmakers finally found him in a
Michigan jail as he had been busted driving back to his brother's farm
in Indiana. The filmmakers had to finish filming his scenes in jail.
America eventually became a violent sociopath, and was banished from
the Warhol fold for good. America and a cohort robbed art curator
Henry Geldzahler's apartment, and stole
Warhol alumnus Billy Name's collection of
Warhol paintings in 1977. Geldzahler reported that by the early 1980s,
America "was a wasted creature after they [Warhol's crowd] had finished
with him. They finally washed their hands of him and let him float
away. He's a poor burned-out thing living in a commune in Indiana and
trying to pull himself together."
He was killed by a car in Ormond Beach, Florida in 1982.
