Support Independent Arts Journalism As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism and keep our reporting and criticism free and accessible to all. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today. There are a number of haunting moments in the new biography Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar , written by critic and former Village Voice columnist Cynthia Carr.
There’s the revelation that Peter Hujar, whose prolific and sensitive documentation of queer New York in the 1970s and ’80s includes a striking image of Darling on what became her deathbed, would die in that very same room 13 years later when the hospital floor was repurposed to care for those with HIV. Carr also reveals that Darling’s funeral was held in the same room of the Campbell Funeral Chapel on the Upper East Side as Judy Garland’s — a Hollywood connection Darling might have appreciated. But perhaps most striking is a moment that comes early in the book.
We learn that in the 1950s actress Christine Jorgensen , one of the most famous trans women of the 20th century, had moved into a house just a 30-minute walk from Darling’s childhood home in Massapequa Park, Long Island. “Candy would make her way over there, then walk back and forth in front of the house hoping to see Jorgensen appear,” Carr writes. “But she never did.
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