On June 3, 1968, American artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol survived an assassination attempt by radical feminist writer Valerie Solanas at his Manhattan studio, the Factory. Solanas opened fire with a handgun, striking Warhol once and critically wounding him, while also grazing critic Mario Amaya.
Prior to the attack, Solanas had been a marginal figure in Warhol's Factory scene. She authored and self-published the SCUM Manifesto, a tract advocating for the eradication of men and the overthrow of capitalism, and appeared in Warhol's film I, a Man (1967). On the day of the shooting, she went to the Factory seeking the return of a copy of the script for her play Up Your Ass that she had given Warhol, but was turned away. Convinced that Warhol and her publisher, Maurice Girodias, were conspiring to suppress her work, she carried out the attack. Solanas was subsequently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sentenced to three years in prison.
Background
SCUM Manifesto and Up Your Ass
In 1967, radical feminist Valerie Solanas sought to have her SCUM Manifesto published and her play Up Your Ass produced. She presented the script of Up Your Ass to Andy Warhol in hopes that he would produce it. Warhol found the script so vulgar that he suspected she might be an undercover police officer conducting an entrapment operation. In his 1980 memoir Popism, Warhol recalled:
In fact, when we'd gone to Cannes with Chelsea Girls the year before [1967] and I'd given that interview to Cahiers du Cinéma, it was Valerie Solanis [sic] I was referring to when I said, "People try to trap us sometimes. A girl called up and offered me a film script . . . and I thought the title was so wonderful, and I'm generally so friendly that I invited her to come over with it, but it was so dirty I think she must have been a lady cop. . . ."
Solanas told Warhol that she needed money for her rent at the Hotel Chelsea, and accepted his invitation to appear in his film I, a Man (1967) for $25 (equivalent to $241 in 2025). In 1967, Warhol told the San Francisco Chronicle that Solanas headed a "very interesting" organization called SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men). He described her as believing in "destroying all men," but added, "I don't believe in her organization."
In August 1967, Solanas signed a contract with publisher Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press for $500 (equivalent to $4,828 in 2025) as an advance on the royalties he would pay for a novel. She invited Girodias to the screening of I, a Man, but their relationship soon deteriorated when Solanas realized that he could own both the SCUM Manifesto and Up Your Ass under the terms of the contract she signed. To make sense of the contract, she turned to Warhol for guidance. Warhol's lawyer Ed Katz determined that the contract had no legal standing, but Solanas refused to accept this. Solanas then focused on putting pressure on Warhol to make a movie based on the SCUM Manifesto and produce Up Your Ass. She would repeatedly call Warhol's studio and managed to obtain his home phone number. Paranoid that Warhol and Girodias had manipulated her, she became resentful. Girodias later recalled:
Then she got worse and worse characterwise. She didn't want to work on the novel she was supposed to write for me. The novel was supposed to be an autobiography, a personal confession. And she began getting extremely angry with Warhol. She felt he owed her a lot of money. But there was no contract, no written papers of any sort. I kept trying to pacify her vis-à-vis Warhol. And I am sure Warhol was doing the same when she went to complain about me. She got angry at me because I would not publish her SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto, and because she could not write that novel. She transferred the anger.
Solanas asked Warhol to return the copy of the Up Your Ass script that she had given him, but he was unable to locate it. Warhol believed it may have been thrown out while he was at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival in France. After admitting that he had misplaced the script, she began demanding money from him. Solanas also began threatening Girodias at his office and pressing him to publish the SCUM Manifesto. In January 1968, she signed a contract for him to publish the manuscript; in the months that followed, she would complain to others that Warhol and Girodias had stolen from her.
Accounts of Solanas before the shooting
According to an unquoted source in The Outlaw Bible of American Literature, on June 3, 1968, at 9:00 am, Solanas reportedly arrived at the Hotel Chelsea and asked for Girodias at the desk, only to be told he was gone for the weekend. She remained at the hotel for three hours before heading to the Grove Press, where she asked for Barney Rosset, who was also not available. In her 2014 biography of Solanas, Breanne Fahs argues that it is unlikely that she appeared at the Hotel Chelsea looking for Girodias, speculating that he may have fabricated the account in order to boost sales for the SCUM Manifesto, which he had published after the assassination attempt.
Fahs states that "the more likely story […] places Valerie at the Actors Studio at 432 West 44th Street early that morning." Actress Sylvia Miles stated that Solanas had appeared at the Actors Studio looking for Lee Strasberg, asking to leave a copy of Up Your Ass for him. Miles said that Solanas "had a different look, a bit tousled, like somebody whose appearance is the last thing on her mind". Miles told Solanas that Strasberg would not be in until the afternoon, accepted the script, and then "shut the door because I knew she was trouble. I didn't know what sort of trouble, but I knew she was trouble."
Fahs records that Solanas then traveled to Margo Feiden's residence in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, as she believed that Feiden would be willing to produce Up Your Ass. As related to Fahs, Solanas talked to Feiden for almost four hours, trying to convince her to produce the play and discussing her vision for a world without men. Feiden repeatedly refused to produce the play; according to Feiden, Solanas then pulled out a gun, and when Feiden again refused to commit to producing the play, she responded: "Yes, you will produce the play because I'll shoot Andy Warhol and that will make me famous and the play famous, and then you'll produce it." As she was leaving Feiden's residence, Solanas handed Feiden a partial copy of an earlier draft of the play and other personal papers.
Feiden then "frantically called her local police precinct, Andy Warhol's precinct, police headquarters in Lower Manhattan, and the offices of Mayor John Lindsay and Governor Nelson Rockefeller to report what happened and inform them that Solanas was on her way at that very moment to shoot Andy Warhol". In some instances, the police responded that "You can't arrest someone because you believe she is going to kill Andy Warhol", and even asked Feiden, "Listen lady, how would you know what a real gun looked like?" In a 2009 interview with James Barron of The New York Times, Feiden said that she knew Solanas intended to kill Warhol, but could not prevent it. A New York Times assistant editor, however, stated that the paper "does not present Ms. Fieden's account as definitive".
Shooting at the Factory
At approximately 4:30 p.m. on June 3, Solanas shot Warhol at his studio, the Factory, located on the sixth floor of the Decker Building in Union Square, Manhattan.
Solanas had visited the premises several times earlier that day seeking Warhol. She told Paul Morrissey, who oversaw the Factory, that she was "waiting for Andy to get money", but Morrissey attempted to have her leave, telling her that Warhol would not be there that day and that she could not stay. Around 4:15 p.m., Warhol arrived and encountered Solanas outside the building. He entered the Factory with assistant Jed Johnson, who had arrived at the same time carrying fluorescent lights from the hardware store, and the three of them entered the building together. Warhol recalled in his memoir Popism:
It was a very hot day, and as Jed, Valerie, and I waited for the elevator. I noticed that she was wearing a fleece-lined winter coat and a high turtleneck sweater, and I thought how hot she must be—although, surprisingly, she wasn't even sweating. She was wearing pants, more like trousers (I'd never seen her in a dress), and holding a paper bag and twisting it—bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. Then I saw that there was something even more odd about her that day: when you looked close, she'd put on eye makeup and lipstick.
Inside the studio were Morrissey, art critic and curator Mario Amaya, photographer Billy Name, and Warhol's business manager Fred Hughes. The phone rang; Warhol answered while Morrissey went to the bathroom, and Johnson went in the back to install the fluorescent lights. While Warhol was on a call with Warhol superstar Viva, Solanas fired one or two shots from .32 caliber Beretta automatic, striking him at close range once.
In the ensuing confusion, Amaya believed the shots had come through a window before realizing Solanas was armed with a revolver "like one of those you see in Dick Tracy." He suffered a minor gunshot wound and retreated to the screening room. Johnson was hiding in Warhol's office when Solanas attempted to enter; as he held the doorknob from the inside, she believed the door was locked. She then pointed the gun at Hughes, who pleaded, "Please! Don't shoot me! Just leave!" As she hesitated, the sound of the elevator distracted her. She appeared about to pull the trigger but instead left when the elevator doors opened and Hughes called out, "There's the elevator. Just take it!"
Solanas left behind a paper bag on a table containing another gun, her address book, and a Kotex menstrual pad. Hughes then called for an ambulance, which took more than twenty minutes to arrive. The shooting occurred one month before New York City's 911 emergency system was introduced.
Warhol superstar Gerard Malanga and artist Al Hansen arrived at the Factory shortly after Solanas fled the building. Hansen later described the scene he encountered:
The doors opened on madness: Mario Amaya jumping around, blood all over his shirt back, someone's legs sticking out behind the far desk, to the right an arm. Fred Hughes and Jed kneeling, holding the someone's hand, tears in his eyes. Mario presenting his bloody back and earnestly asking over his shoulder, 'Did it go in me? Did it go in me?' […]
'Who's the other one'—I nod toward the desk. Dig it, that's how far beyond my comprehension it was. Paul Morrissey said, 'It's Andy—Andy!'—'Valerie Solanis [sic], that ugly dyke, came in with a gun and shot him!'
Holy shit! I jump across to the desk. Fred Hughes: 'He's dying and there's no ambulance. Where are the doctors, the cops?' Andy is laying there the way bad gunshots do, like a sick dog or cat—his eyelids flutter. 'How long since you called?' There's not much blood. No sirens. Billy Linich, crying, stands looking down at him. Jed wipes his forehead tenderly. Andy Warhol with bullet holes in him, laying in his blood on the floor of his studio.
Hansen went in search of help, first inside the building and then on the street, struggling to reach the police due to busy pay phones and unanswered calls. When police finally arrived, he briefed them on the shooting and gave a description of Solanas before returning upstairs. He later recalled the scene inside: "Andy looks as if he's sinking. Jed is still kneeling next to him holding his hand. He could go any minute and there's nothing like a hand to hold at a time like that."
When paramedics arrived, they were reportedly told that an additional $15 (equivalent to $145 in 2025) would be required for them to activate the ambulance siren. The paramedics opted to transport Warhol down six flights of stairs in a wheelchair instead of using the building's elevator.
Hospitalization
As Warhol and Amaya were transported by ambulance to Columbus Hospital, Hughes and Johnson were taken in for questioning at the 13th Precinct police station. They were later released after Solanas surrendered to authorities that evening. Amaya was discharged from the hospital the same day, having been treated for a minor back wound. Meanwhile, Warhol's circle quickly gathered at the hospital to await updates on his condition. Among those present were several Factory regulars and Warhol superstars, including Ultra Violet, Viva, Louis Waldon, Ivy Nicholson, Billy Name, and Jay Johnson, as well as art dealers Leo Castelli and Ivan Karp.