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According to former Interview magazine editor, Bob Colacello, Candy Darling was born in in 1946, in Brooklyn. According to the Internet Movie Database, she was born in 1948. According to her friend/roommate, Jeremiah Newton, she was born on November 24, 1944. Her parents were Theresa Phelan, a bookkeeper at the prestigious Jockey Club in Manhattan and Jim Slattery, "a violent alcoholic who spent a lot of time at the racetrack." Candy also had a half brother, Warren from her mother`s first marriage.
Candy`s birth name was James ("Jimmy") Lawrence Slattery. He grew up in a small bungalow in Massapequa Park, Long Island, New York where he and his mother had moved after she divorced her husband. In Long Island Candy`s mother worked for the telephone company. Warren left home for the service, leaving Jimmy as the only child, later denying Candy/Jimmy`s existence to his own children.
Jimmy spent much of his childhood glued to the television absorbing old Hollywood movies and impersonating his favorite actresses - his favorite show being the Million Dollar Movie. He "learned about the mysteries of sex from a salesman in a local children`s shoe store." He finally told his mother he was gay when she confronted him. A neighbor had told Jimmy`s mother that Jimmy had been seen dressed as a girl going into a local gay bar called The Hayloft. When his mother told this to Jimmy at home, he told her to sit at the kitchen table and wait while he left the room. When he reappeared, he was in drag. His mother later told a friend of Candy`s that "I knew then... that I couldn`t stop Jimmy. Candy was just too beautiful and talented."
While living with her mother, Candy would often take the Long Island Railroad late at night to Manhattan to avoid the prying glances of neighbors. Once in Manhattan, she would refer to her home in Long Island where she lived with her mother as her "country house". She hung out in Greenwich Village meeting people through the "salon" of Seymour Levy on Bleecker Street.
Candy`s first "drag" name was Hope Slattery. According to Bob Collacello, Candy adopted this name sometime in 1963/64 after she started going to gay bars in Manhattan as well as making visits to a doctor on Fifth Avenue for hormone injections. Jackie Curtis had told Andy that Candy had got the name Hope from a girl named Hope Stansbury who Candy lived with for a few months in an apartment behind the Caffe Cino so that Candy could "study" her. According to Holly Woodlawn, Candy was first Hope Dahl, then Candy Dahl, and then Candy Cane. In her autobiography, Holly Woodlawn recalled that Candy had adopted the last name of Darling because a transvestite friend of hers named Taffy Tits Sarcastic "used to drag Candy all over the West Village and say, `Come on, let`s go, Candy, darling.` And Taffy called Candy `darling` so often that it finally stuck." According Candy`s friend Jeremiah Newton, she adopted the first name of Candy because of her "love for sweets".
Candy first saw Andy Warhol in person at the after-hours club called The Tenth of Always. They actually met in 1967 when Warhol and Fred Hughes were on their way to pick up some leather pants that Andy was having made at the Leather Man in Greenwich Village (see 1967). Candy was with Jackie Curtis who invited Andy to the play she had written and directed called Glamour, Glory and Gold. Jackie Curtis had written the play at the age of fifteen in one hour while riding the Long Island Railroad. It

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