Andy Warhol's "The Chelsea Girls." Offset lithograph poster. 742x585 mm, 29¼x23 inches. 1966.
"The Chelsea Girls" was Warhol's first commercial success, although it was not quite critically acclaimed (with the seeming exception of the two reviews used on the poster). Centered around the Chelsea Hotel and the women who live there, the movie was a split-screen project in which one side of the screen was black and white and the other in color. It was first screened at New York's Cinematheque, then it was picked up by the Filmmaker's Distribution Center and shown in several prominent art theaters, including Cinema Rendezvous, the Regency Theater and the York Cinema. The image for the poster was adapted from a photograph by Billy Name, the archivist and photographer for The Factory from 1964-1970. It shows Andy Warhol, Mary Woronov, Nico, and Susan Bottomly (aka International Velvet). Although Warhol doesn't appear in the film, using his recognizable image on the poster was intended to capitalize on his celebrity to ensure an added dimension of success to the film. When the movie first screened in Great Britain, in 1967, Alan Aldridge designed the poster and the movie title was shortened to, simply, "Chelsea Girls."
