- Donyale Luna
-
Donyale Luna 
Born Peggy Ann Freeman
August 31, 1945
Detroit, Michigan, USDied May 17, 1979 (aged 33)
Rome, ItalyDonyale Luna (August 31, 1945 - May 17, 1979) was an American model and cover girl. She also appeared in several films, in Camp by Andy Warhol, Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? by William Klein, as Groucho Marx's companion in Otto Preminger's Skidoo, and most notably as Oenothea in Federico Fellini's Satyricon and as the title character in Salomé, a film by director Carmelo Bene.
Contents
Birth and childhood
She was born Peggy Ann Freeman in Detroit, Michigan.[1] She attended the prestigious Cass Technical High School.[2] Her parents were Peggy and Nathaniel Freeman; her mother killed her father, who was reportedly abusive, when Donyale was 18. Luna's mother wanted her to become a nurse.
Despite the parentage stated on her birth certificate, she insisted that her biological father was a man with the surname Luna and that her mother was Indigenous-Mexican and of Afro-Egyptian lineage. According to the model, one of her grandmothers was reportedly an Irish former actress who married a black interior decorator. Whether any of this background is true is uncertain. In the mid 1960s, a relative described Luna as being "a very weird child, even from birth, living in a wonderland, a dream."[3]
Modeling career
After being discovered by the photographer David McCabe, she moved from Detroit to New York City to pursue a modeling career. In January 1965, a sketch of Luna appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar.[3][4] She became the first African American model to appear on the cover of a Vogue magazine, the March 1966 British issue,[5][6] shot by British photographer David Bailey.
According to The New York Times, she was under exclusive contract to the photographer Richard Avedon for a year at the beginning of her career.[3]
An article in Time magazine published on 1 April 1966, "The Luna Year", described her as "a new heavenly body who, because of her striking singularity, promises to remain on high for many a season. Donyale Luna, as she calls herself, is unquestionably the hottest model in Europe at the moment. She is only 20, a Negro, hails from Detroit, and is not to be missed if one reads Harper's Bazaar, Paris Match, Britain's Queen, the British, French or American editions of Vogue.[4]
In 1967, the mannequin manufacturer Adel Rootstein created a mannequin in Luna's image, a follow-up to the company's Twiggy mannequin of 1966.[citation needed]
Luna appeared in a nude photo layout in the April 1975 issue of Playboy; the photographer was Luigi Cazzaniga.
Acting career
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Luna appeared in several films.
She appeared in several movies produced by Andy Warhol. These included Screen Test: Donyale Luna (1964), in which critic Wayne Koestenbaum described Luna as "pure diva, presenting a delicious mobile excess of mannerism";[7] Camp (1965), and Donyale Luna (1967), a 33-minute color film in which the model starred as Snow White.
In Federico Fellini's Fellini Satyricon (1970), she portrayed the witch Oenothea, "who," according to one commentator, "in a trade-off with a wizard long ago ended up with fire between her legs. And it's real fire too, because Fellini shows us a scene in which a long line of foolish-looking peasants wait with unlit torches at Oenothea's bed. When their time comes, each devoutly places his torch between her legs to her sex, and, Poof."[8]
Luna also appeared in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, the Otto Preminger comedy Skidoo (in which she was featured as the mistress of crime boss "God", who was portrayed by Groucho Marx), and the British documentary Tonite Let's All Make Love in London.[9]
Luna starred as the title character in the 1972 Italian film Salomé, by director Carmelo Bene.
Racial identity issues
According to the journalist Judy Stone, who wrote a profile of Luna for The New York Times in 1968, the model was "secretive, mysterious, contradictory, evasive, mercurial, and insistent upon her multiracial lineage -- exotic, chameleon strands of Indigenous-Mexican, Indonesian, Irish, and, last but least escapable, African." A London magazine (The Sunday Times Magazine, article by Harold Carlton) hailed her as "the completely New Image of the Negro woman. Fashion finds itself in an instrumental position for changing history, however slightly, for it is about to bring out into the open the veneration, the adoration, the idolization of the Negro ... "[3]
When Stone asked her about whether her appearances in Hollywood films would benefit the cause of black actresses, Luna answered, "If it brings about more jobs for Mexicans, Asians, Native Americans, Africans, groovy. It could be good, it could be bad. I couldn't care less."[3][5]
Romantic relationships
In the mid 1960s, Luna was married to an actor for 10 months.[4] Later she reportedly was engaged to the Austrian-born Swiss actor Maximilian Schell, to an unnamed Danish photographer, and to Georg Willing, a German actor who appeared in European horror films (such as 1970's "Necropolis") and with the Living Theatre.[3]
Around 1969 Luna was also romantically involved with German actor Klaus Kinski. Both posed together on several photographs. The relationship ended when Kinski asked her entourage to leave his house in Rome: he was concerned that their drug use could damage his career.[10]
Luna married the Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga.[11] In 1977 they had a child: Dream Cazzaniga.
Drug use and death
In the late 1960s, in an interview, Luna expressed her fondness for LSD: "I think it's great. I learned that I like to live, I like to make love, I really do love somebody, I love flowers, I love the sky, I like bright colors, I like animals. [LSD] also showed me unhappy things -- that I was stubborn, selfish, unreasonable, mean, that I hurt other people."
Luna died in Rome, Italy, in a clinic, after an accidental drug overdose.[12]
Film and television
- Screen Test: Donyale Luna (Andy Warhol, 1964)
- Camp (Andy Warhol, 1965)
- Screen Test 3 (Andy Warhol, 1966)
- Screen Test 4 (Andy Warhol, 1966)
- Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966)
- The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (12 December 1966)
- Donyale Luna (Andy Warhol, 1967)
- Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (Dave Davies, 1967)
- The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (1968, released 1996)
- Skidoo (Otto Preminger, 1968)
- Fellini Satyricon (Federico Fellini, 1970)
- Salvador Dalí (1971)
- Salomé (Carmelo Bene, 1972)
References
- ^ While some sources give her birth name as Peggy Anne Donyale Aragonea Pegeon Freeman, the name on her birth certificate is Peggy Ann Freeman.
- ^ Parade - The Modesto Bee, 8 January 1967
- ^ a b c d e f Judy Stone, "Luna, Who Dreamed of Being Snow White", The New York Times, 19 May 1968
- ^ a b c "Fashion: The Luna Year". Time. 1 April 1966. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840625,00.html. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
- ^ a b Iconic Cover Girls - Coco & Creme
- ^ 230 British Vogue Covers – History of Fashion in Pictures … - All Women Stalk
- ^ Koestenbaum, Wayne (2003). ""Andy Warhol: Screen Tests": Moma Qns, New York - Critical Essay". ArtForum. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_42/ai_109023349/pg_1.
- ^ David R. Ignatius, "The Moviegoer: Fellini Satyricon at the Cheri 3", The Harvard Crimson, 6 April 1970
- ^ The role of God's mistress was originally written for Faye Dunaway.
- ^ Christian David: Kinski: Die Biographie. Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 2006, p. 194-195.
- ^ Luigi Cazzaniga:::Photographer
- ^ "Donyale Luna", The New York Times, 22 May 1979, page C16.
External links
- Official Donyale Luna Fansite
- Donyale Luna at the Internet Movie Database
- Dargis, Manohla. "filmography". The New York Times. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=43748. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
- ""The Luna Year" profile". Time (magazine). 1966. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840625,00.html. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
Categories:- 1945 births
- 1979 deaths
- African American actors
- African American models
- American female models
- African American female models
- American film actors
- Cass Technical High School alumni
- Drug-related deaths in Italy
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