Cookie Mueller
Cookie Mueller | |
|---|---|
| Born | Dorothy Karen Mueller March 2, 1949 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
| Died | November 10, 1989 (aged 40) , U.S. |
| Occupations |
|
| Years active | 1969–1989 |
| Spouse | |
| Partner | Sharon Niesp (1973–1981) |
Dorothy Karen "Cookie" Mueller (March 2, 1949 – November 10, 1989) was an American actress, writer, and
Early life
Cookie Mueller grew up with her parents Frank Lennert Mueller (d. 1984) and Anne (Sawyer) Mueller (d. 1995, aged 82) in the Baltimore suburbs in a house near the woods, a mental hospital and railroad tracks. She was nicknamed Cookie as a baby: "Somehow I got the name Cookie before I could walk. It didn't matter to me, they could call me whatever they wanted." During her childhood Cookie, along with her parents, brother Michael, and sister Judy, took road trips across the country:
In 1959, with eyes the same size, I got to see some of America traveling in the old green Plymouth with my parents, who couldn't stand each other, and my brother and sister, who loved everyone. [Cookie's brother Michael actually died in an accident on March 20, 1955.] I remember the
stalagmitesand -tites were poorly lit.
Mueller had many pets as a child, including many turtles (one named Fidel), a dog named Jip, snakes, and tadpoles. Cookie began to write at age 11, when she wrote a 321-page book about the
With a swath of pivotal events in Mueller's life—including her brother's death at age 14, the result of climbing a dead tree, which collapsed on him in the woods near their home—she went on to pursue her writing, and in high school hung out with the hippie crowd. One of Mueller's idiosyncrasies as a teen was that she constantly dyed her hair: "'Whenever you're depressed, just change your hair color,' she [her mother] always told me, years later, when I was a teenager: I was never denied a bottle of hair bleach or dye. In my closet there weren't many clothes, but there were tons of bottles."
She took a small job at a Baltimore men's department store and saved enough funds to head to Haight-Ashbury, where she continued the hippie lifestyle. Mueller traveled across the country, living with groups of vagrants, and settled in places such as Provincetown, Massachusetts; British Columbia; San Francisco; Pennsylvania; Jamaica; and Sicily.
Career
Film
In 1969, Mueller first met film director
After her underground film status had faded, she moved to New York and became a writer, journalist, and columnist.[2][3]
Author
Mueller wrote the health column "Ask Dr. Mueller" for the East Village Eye and later served as art critic for Details. Mueller's books, How to Get Rid Of Pimples (with photos by David Armstrong, Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar) (1984, Top Stories #19-20); Ask Doctor Mueller (1996), a collection of her writings; Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black (1990), a memoir; and Garden of Ashes (Hanuman Books, 1990) are cult classics. Other works include the novella Fan Mail, Frank Letters, and Crank Calls (Hanuman Books, 1988) and several collections of short prose.
Personal life
Mueller was in a relationship with Sharon Niesp, an actress, singer and
Mueller later married
Death and legacy
Mueller died from
The last of Mueller's quotes, an elegy of her intent and existence, was written shortly before her death:
Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won't have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes. You will be released from sexual obsessions. You will not have
venereal disease. You will be free.
Nan Goldin created and widely exhibited The Cookie Portfolio 1976–1989, a series of 15 portraits, after Mueller's death. One photograph, "Cookie and Vittorio's Wedding" (1986), documents Mueller's wedding to Vittorio Scarpati, an Italian artist and jewelry designer from Naples who died of AIDS just seven weeks before Mueller.[7] Another of Goldin's photographs, "Cookie at Vittorio's Casket, NYC, September 1989," was called a "magnificent portrait ... a great image. Devastating but great," by the San Francisco Examiner's art critic David Bonetti.[8]
Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller, an oral history of Mueller's life, was published in 2014.[9]
Bibliography
- Mueller, Cookie (1984). How to Get Rid of Pimples. New York: Top Stories. ISBN 0-917061-19-5.
- Mueller, Cookie (1988). Fan Mail, Frank Letters, and Crank Calls. New York: Hanuman Books. ISBN 0-937815-14-4.
- Mueller, Cookie; Scarpati, Vittorio (1989). Putti's Pudding. Kyoto: Kyoto Shoin. ISBN 4763685449.
- Mueller, Cookie (1990). Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black (2022: Collected Stories, expanded ed.). New York: Semiotext(e). ISBN 0-936756-61-6.
- Mueller, Cookie (1990). Garden of Ashes. New York: Hanuman Books. ISBN 0-937815-36-5.
- Mueller, Cookie (1997). Scholder, Amy (ed.). Ask Dr. Mueller: The Writings of Cookie Mueller. New York: Serpent's Tail High Risk Books. ISBN 1-85242-331-5.
Filmography
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1970 | Multiple Maniacs | Cookie Divine / Cavalcade patron / Jesus follower | |
| 1972 | Pink Flamingos | Cookie | |
| 1974 | Female Trouble | Concetta | |
| 1977 | Desperate Living | Flipper | |
| 1978 | Final Reward | Veronica | |
| 1979 | Seduction of Patrick | Short | |
| 1980 | Underground U.S.A. | Betty (a barmaid) | |
| 1981 | Subway Riders | Penelope Trasher | |
| Polyester | Betty Lalinski | ||
| 1982 | Smithereens | Karen, in horror movie sequence | |
| Tempest | New Year's Eve Party Girl | ||
| 1983 | Variety | Woman in bar | |
| 2000 | Downtown 81 (a.k.a. New York Beat Movie) | Second go-go dancer | (final film role) |
References
- ^ Mandell, Jonathan (January 4, 1990). "Cookie & Vittorio". New York Newsday. p. Part II/4. Retrieved March 20, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
- OCLC 972429558.
- ^ Mandell, Jonathan (January 4, 1990). "Cookie & Vittorio". New York Newsday. p. Part II/5. Retrieved March 20, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
- ^ https://www.wickedlocal.com/obituaries/pneo0592158
- ^ .
- ^ Mandell, Jonathan (January 4, 1990). "Cookie & Vittorio". New York Newsday. p. Part II/3. Retrieved March 20, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
- Newspapers.com.
- ^ Bonetti, David (November 23, 1992). "How I bought 2 Nan Goldins at auction". San Francisco Examiner. p. Part Z-B4. Retrieved March 20, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
- Newspapers.com.
Further reading
- Curley, Mallory (2010). A Cookie Mueller Encyclopedia. Randy Press. OCLC 694457403.
- Dorris, Jesse (October 2, 2014). "A New Book Celebrates the Downtown Icon Cookie Mueller". The New York Times.
- Griffin, Chloé; Waters, John; Stole, Mink; Indiana, Gary (September 30, 2014). ISBN 978-3-942214-20-9.
- Corbett, Rachel (August 29, 2017). "On the side of the angels". The Art Newspaper.
External links
- Cookie Mueller at IMDb
- Courage, Bread and Roses: A Tribute to Cookie Mueller Archived August 10, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
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