Hi , I just got bored anf wanted to do a tribute page on Donyale Luna ( 1945-1979). She was a supermodel in the 60's and 70's who came to a stop because she died on a overdose drug in Rome , Italy in 1979. I'll be getting more picutures. But please keep in clean

Donyale Luna (August 31, 1945 – May 17, 1979) was an American model and actress. In 1966, Luna became the first African American model to appear on the cover of British Vogue.

She also appeared in several underground films by Andy Warhol, and had roles in Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966), and most notably as Oenothea in Federico Fellini's Satyricon (1970).

[edit] Birth and childhood

She was born Peggy Ann Freeman in Detroit, Michigan^[2] to Nathaniel A. and Peggy Freeman (née Hertzog). She was the youngest of three daughters.^[3] In January 1965, her mother fatally shot her father in self-defense as he was reportedly abusive.^[4]

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 Luna, one of her grandmothers was reportedly a former Irish actress who married a black interior decorator. Whether any of this background is true is uncertain. Luna's sister later described her as being "a very weird child, even from birth, living in a wonderland, a dream." She would routinely create fantasies about her background and herself.^[4]

As a teen, she attended the prestigious Cass Technical High School^[5] where she studied journalism and was in the school choir. It was during this time that she began calling herself "Donyale". She was later described by friends and classmates as being "kind of a kook".^[4]

[edit] Career

[edit] Modeling

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.^[6][7] She became the first African American model to appear on the cover of a Vogue magazine, the March 1966 British issue,^[8][9] 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.^[6]

An article in Time magazine published on April 1, 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.^[7]

By the 1970s, however, Luna's modeling career began to decline due to her drug use, eccentric behavior and tendency to be difficult.^[10] A designer who Luna once worked for said, "She [Luna] took a lot of drugs and never paid her bills".^[11] Fellow model Beverly Johnson later said, "[Luna]" doesn't wear shoes winter or summer. Ask her where she's from-Mars? She went up and down the runways on her hands and knees. She didn't show up for bookings. She didn't have a hard time, she made it hard for herself".^[10]

Luna appeared in a nude photo layout in the April 1975 issue of Playboy; the photographer was Luigi Cazzaniga.

[edit] Acting

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";^[12]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."^[13]

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.^[14]

Luna starred as the title character in the 1972 Italian film Salomé, by director Carmelo Bene.

[edit] Personal life

[edit] Racial identity issues

According to the journalist Judy Stone, who wrote a profile of Luna for The New York Times in 1968, Luna 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 ... "^[6]

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."^[6][8]

[edit] Romantic relationships

In the mid 1960s, Luna was married to an actor for 10 months.^[7] 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.^[6]

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.^[15]

Luna married the Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga.^[16] In 1977 they had a child: Dream Cazzaniga.

[edit] 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.^[17]

[edit] Filmography

• 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)
• 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)

[edit] References

[img:$uid]http://www.ismoyo.com/blogimages/fashion/charlotte-march-donyale-luna.jpg[/img:$uid]

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[Edited 12/23/12 12:01pm]

Timmy84 said:

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[Edited 12/23/12 12:01pm]

Thank you Timmy for contributing

Her story is tragic but somewhat mysterious .

This is the picture when she was younger. She had a daughter named dream but there are no pictures. I read some bio's and blogs some people said that she was flightly and some said kooky. For some reason I would like to get a interview where she is talking and I can here her voice , instead of hearing the others talk.

Another picture : she was 6'3 .

Judging from the times she lived in, I can see how she can be seen by some as kooky. The fact she succeeded at all as a black model in those days is amazing in of itself. Her Vogue cover least was more to brag about than Tyra's Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover thirty years later.

Timmy84 said:

Judging from the times she lived in, I can see how she can be seen by some as kooky. The fact she succeeded at all as a black model in those days is amazing in of itself. Her Vogue cover least was more to brag about than Tyra's Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover thirty years later.

You made a point , her vogue cover was very beautiful. I think why she struggled with her race and stuff like that because at the time it seemed the more exotic the more beautiful. But i respected her kookiness because she was original and uniuqe , that's why she's an icon in my eyes.

SimpleSoul said:

Timmy84 said:

Judging from the times she lived in, I can see how she can be seen by some as kooky. The fact she succeeded at all as a black model in those days is amazing in of itself. Her Vogue cover least was more to brag about than Tyra's Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover thirty years later.

You made a point , her vogue cover was very beautiful. I think why she struggled with her race and stuff like that because at the time it seemed the more exotic the more beautiful. But i respected her kookiness because she was original and uniuqe , that's why she's an icon in my eyes.

I respect her kookiness too. Definitely an icon. Probably underrated in the modeling legends category.

Thanks for posting...I don't think I've ever heard about her.

She is exquisite though.

babynoz said:

Thanks for posting...I don't think I've ever heard about her.

She is exquisite though.

No problem , some people that people don't know anything about are the ones with the most intresting stories.

babynoz said:

Thanks for posting...I don't think I've ever heard about her.

She is exquisite though.

She has a tribute page on wordpress. Google Donyale Luna and it should be in the first page... in addition to being the first black woman on British Vogue, she was also the first black model here to be on the cover of Harper's Bazaar, be it a painting version of hers with her complexion lighter.

babynoz said:

Thanks for posting...I don't think I've ever heard about her.

She is exquisite though.

Yazzzz---Donyale, gurl! She was one of the 60's "it Girls" in international high fashion, a contemporary of ladies like Pat Cleveland, Naomi Sims, and Beth Ann Hardison (who later went on to become one of the most powerful modeling agents in the country. Donyale was skrait from the Motor City, Detroit, and took the European fashion houses by storm:

Wow thanks everyone, I had never heard of her before.

missfee said:

Wow thanks everyone, I had never heard of her before.

No prob. Like I said, she's really underrated in the fashion world. Everybody talks about pioneers in modeling but many fail to mention her. The real pioneers often get that treatment to be honest.

SimpleSoul said:

morningsong said:

SimpleSoul said:

I saw her in that movie. I didn't know anything about her beautiful lady, sad she's gone. Thanks for posting.

Skidoo 1968

Updating the blog : I wasn't on due to the holidays.

She needs a movie about her life , just like Gia (model) and dorothy dandridge. Also here are some pictures before her modeling days:

Sources : http://www.donyaleluna.wordpess.com

/

[Edited 12/31/12 16:37pm]

Her story would be a real good box office biopic...

Timmy84 said:

Her story would be a real good box office biopic...

Who would play her though? A biography by a close friend or family member would be good with rare pictures.

SimpleSoul said:

Timmy84 said:

Her story would be a real good box office biopic...

Who would play her though? A biography by a close friend or family member would be good with rare pictures.

That's a good question... I agree about the biography. I'm sure she's got surviving members that were around when Donyale was happening to explain her.

By the way, her original name was Peggy Ann Freeman if that hasn't already been brought (and apologies to SimpleSoul if it's already brought up).

Wow. She's really intriguing. I had no idea that she existed, but now I want to know more. Great thread (both info and pics)

Timmy84 said:

By the way, her original name was Peggy Ann Freeman if that hasn't already been brought (and apologies to SimpleSoul if it's already brought up).

No Problem , But with some of these pictures she might have some of the races she described such as Mexican and Indonesian. Also I like this thread better than the one at lipstick alley , they did more bashing than learning about her. And also with the biography i want to know more about dream and what happened to her after her mother's death.