Joe Dallesandro

Little Joe never once gave it away
Everybody had to pay and pay
A hustle here and a hustle there
New York City's the place where they said, "Hey babe
Take a walk on the wild side"
I said, "Hey Joe
Take a walk on the wild side"

                                                   --Lou Reed (lyrics about Joe Dallesandro)

 Joe Dallesandro, born in Pensacola, Florida on December 31, 1948, was perhaps the most famous actor in the Warhol movie factory. His father, Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro II, was an Italian-American sailor, and his mother was 16-year-old Thelma Testman. By the time Dallesandro was five, his mother was serving five years in a Federal Penitentiary for interstate auto theft.  As a teenager, Dallesandro supported himself by prostitution and later nude modeling. 

Dallesandro met Andy Warhol in 1967 while he was shooting Four Stars, and they cast him in the film on the spot. Warhol would later comment "In my movies, everyone's in love with Joe Dallesandro."  Ambivalent about his fame as a Warhol Superstar, he cannot escape the power of his allure in those films, nor the power his image has wielded over each succeeding generation to discover him during the last 40 years.

Photograph by Paul Morrisey.

Photograph by Paul Morrisey.

 

 

 

 

Joe Dallesandro

Photgraphed with his oldest son, Mike, by Greg Gorman.

 

 

Autograph

Morrisey Photograph

As the first openly eroticized male sex symbol of the movies to walk naked across the screen, Dallesandro likes to tell interviewers that all he ever had to do in a Warhol/Morrissey film was show up.

 

From Paul Morrisey's Heat (1972)

Paul Morrisey's Trash (1970)

Stills From Paul Morrisey's Trash (1970)

Joe Dallesandro at the Hollywood Collector's Show (Burbank, CA 07/18/2009)

Hollywood Collector's Show (Burbank, CA 07/18/2009)

Joe played young men named Joe in all his movies—movies that were improvised, no less!

 

 

 

 

Joe Dallesandro was the model for the cover of Sticky Fingers, an album by The Rolling Stones designed by Andy Warhol in 1971.