Everyone Walks on the Wild Side

He was, as the newspapers always put it, born Jimmy Slattery of Massepequa, Long Island, before going to New York City and becoming Candy Darling, a transvestite star of Andy Warhol’s famous Factory.

He earned a small fame in the long decade of the sixties: one of the subjects of Lou Reed’s “Walk On the Wild Side” (it is not a flattering reference) and the subject of Reed’s song “Candy Says,” mentioned by the Rolling Stones in one of their songs, the star of two of Warhol’s better known movies, chosen by Tennessee Williams to act in one of his plays, the center of a famous party attended by people like George Plimpton and the clothes designer Halston, and now 36 years after his death the subject of an apparently worshipful documentary called Beautiful Darling.