62 Facts About Valerie Solanas

Valerie Jean Solanas was an American radical feminist known for her attempt to murder the artist Andy Warhol in 1968.

Valerie Solanas believed Warhol was conspiring with her publisher, Maurice Girodias, to keep her manuscript from getting published.

On June 3,1968, Valerie Solanas shot Warhol and art critic Mario Amaya at the Factory.

Valerie Solanas was charged with attempted murder, assault, and illegal possession of a firearm.

Valerie Solanas was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sentenced to three years in prison.

Valerie Solanas continued to promote the SCUM Manifesto and was an editor for the biweekly feminist magazine Majority Report.

Valerie Solanas became destitute and died of pneumonia in 1988.

Valerie Solanas was born in 1936 in Ventnor City, New Jersey, to Louis Solanas and Dorothy Marie Biondo.

Valerie Solanas's father was a bartender and her mother a dental assistant.

Valerie Solanas had a younger sister, Judith Arlene Solanas Martinez.

Valerie Solanas's father was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to parents who immigrated from Spain.

Valerie Solanas's mother was an Italian-American of Genoan and Sicilian descent born in Philadelphia.

Valerie Solanas's parents divorced when she was young, and her mother remarried shortly afterwards.

Valerie Solanas disliked her stepfather and began rebelling against her mother, becoming a truant.

Valerie Solanas beat up a girl in high school who was bothering a younger boy, and hit a nun.

Valerie Solanas reported that her grandfather was a violent alcoholic who often beat her.

In 1953, Valerie Solanas gave birth to a son, fathered by a married sailor.

Valerie Solanas was an open lesbian, despite the conservative cultural climate of the 1950s.

Valerie Solanas attended the University of Minnesota's Graduate School of Psychology, where she worked in the animal research laboratory, before dropping out and moving to attend Berkeley for a few courses.

In 1967, Valerie Solanas called pop artist Andy Warhol at his studio, the Factory, and asked him to produce Up Your Ass.

Valerie Solanas accepted the script for review, told Solanas it was "well typed", and promised to read it.

Valerie Solanas later contacted Warhol about the script and when she was told that he had lost it, she started demanding money.

Valerie Solanas was staying at the Chelsea Hotel and told Warhol that she needed money for rent so he offered to pay her $25 to appear in his film I, a Man.

Valerie Solanas was satisfied with her experience working with Warhol and her performance in the film, and brought Maurice Girodias, the founder of Olympia Press, to see it.

Valerie Solanas had a nonspeaking role in Warhol's film Bike Boy.

In 1967, Valerie Solanas self-published her best-known work, the SCUM Manifesto, a scathing critique of patriarchal culture.

Valerie Solanas took this to mean that Girodias would own her work.

Valerie Solanas suspected that he was coordinating with Girodias to steal her work.

On June 3,1968, Valerie Solanas arrived at the Hotel Chelsea and asked for Girodias, who was unavailable.

Valerie Solanas stayed there for three hours before heading to the Grove Press, where she asked for Barney Rosset, who was not available.

Actress Sylvia Miles claimed Valerie Solanas arrived at the Actors Studio looking for Lee Strasberg, asking to leave a copy of Up Your Ass.

Valerie Solanas then visited producer Margo Feiden in Brooklyn to convince her to produce Up Your Ass.

Feiden repeatedly refused to produce the play, so Valerie Solanas pulled out her gun and she promised to shoot Andy Warhol to make her and the play famous.

Valerie Solanas went to the Factory and waited outside for Andy to get money.

Valerie Solanas left but later entered the building with Warhol and Factory assistant Jed Johnson.

Later that day, Valerie Solanas turned herself in to police, gave up her gun, and confessed to the shooting, telling an officer that Warhol "had too much control in my life".

Valerie Solanas was fingerprinted and charged with felonious assault and possession of a deadly weapon.

Valerie Solanas demanded a retraction of the statement that she was an actress.

At her arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court, Valerie Solanas denied shooting Warhol because he would not produce her play but said "it was for the opposite reason", that "he has a legal claim on my works".

Valerie Solanas appeared at New York Supreme Court on June 13,1968.

Florynce Kennedy represented her and asked for a writ of, arguing that Valerie Solanas was being held inappropriately at Elmhurst.

The judge denied the motion and Valerie Solanas returned to Elmhurst.

In January 1969, Valerie Solanas underwent psychiatric evaluation and was diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia.

Valerie Solanas represented herself without an attorney and pleaded guilty to "reckless assault with intent to harm".

Valerie Solanas was sentenced to three years in prison, with one year of time served.

Robert Marmorstein, writing in The Village Voice, declared that Valerie Solanas "has dedicated the remainder of her life to the avowed purpose of eliminating every single male from the face of the earth".

In November 1971, Valerie Solanas was arrested again for aggravated assault after threatening Barney Rosset, editor of Evergreen Review.

Valerie Solanas was institutionalized several times and then drifted into obscurity.

Valerie Solanas worked for a year and a half as an editor for Majority Report, a biweekly feminist publication.

Valerie Solanas said that until she was informed by Violet, she was unaware of Warhol's death in 1987.

Valerie Solanas wished to be supported for her own creative work.

The film's director, Mary Harron, requested permission to use songs by The Velvet Underground but was denied by Lou Reed, who feared that Valerie Solanas would be glorified in the film.

Six years before the film's release, Reed and John Cale included a song about Valerie Solanas, "I Believe", on their concept album about Warhol, Songs for Drella.

Rachel Zampelli played Valerie Solanas and sang "Big Gun", described as the "evening's strongest number" by The Washington Post.

Swedish author Sara Stridsberg wrote a semi-fictional novel about Valerie Solanas called, published in 2006.

In 2006 Valerie Solanas was featured in eleventh episode of the second season Adult Swim show The Venture Bros as part of a group called The Groovy Gang.

The group was a parody of the Scooby Gang from Scooby-Doo and was made up of parodies of Valerie Solanas, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, Patty Hearst, and Groovy.

Solanas was featured in a 2017 episode of the FX series American Horror Story: Cult, "Valerie Solanas Died for Your Sins: Scumbag".

Ronell believed that Valerie Solanas was threatened by the hyper-feminine women of the Factory that Warhol liked and felt lonely because of the rejection she felt due to her own butch androgyny.

Valerie Solanas believed Solanas was ahead of her time, living in a period before feminist and lesbian activists such as the Guerrilla Girls and the Lesbian Avengers.

Valerie Solanas is described as a victim, a rebel, and a desperate loner, yet her cousin says she worked as a waitress in her late 20s and 30s, not primarily as a prostitute, and friend Geoffrey LaGear said she had a "groovy childhood".

Fahs believes that Valerie Solanas embraced these contradictions as a key part of her identity.