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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by ClueBot III (talk | contribs) at 19:11, 21 July 2016 (Archiving 15 discussions to Talk:Edie Sedgwick/Archives/2013. (BOT)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.


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Bio style

The biography section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia entry. Note particularly the first and second-to-last sentences. I've tagged it accordingly. Jonathan F 00:10, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In response, I have removed what I have always felt was not appropriate for your article.Jay (talk) 05:47, 14 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Where does the "sexual abuse" statement come from? I would suspect that it is "hearsay" and not worthy of being in this article. (I removed it only to find someone put it right back.) If it came from Jean Stein, it should be considered suspect - her whole book was based on hearsay and memories. Jay (talk) 05:39, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Factory Girl

The film "Factory Girl" has Edie saying that her great-great-great uncle was a signer of the Declaration of Independance. Perhaps Edie said that, but then she did not know her history: William Ellery was her 3rd-great grandfather; Robert Sedgwick, 8th child of Judge Theodore Sedgwick and Pamela (Dwight) Sedgwick married Ellizabeth Dana Ellery, daughter of William Ellery and Abigail (Shaw) Ellery; their daughter Henrietta Ellery Sedgwick married Henry Dwight Sedgwick II (her 1st cousin) the son of Henry Dwight Sedgwick (Robert Sedgwick's brother); they had a son named Henry Dwight Sedgwick III (the scholar and writer) who was Edie's grandfather. Jay (talk) 03:35, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"The film "Factory Girl" has Edie saying that her great-great-great uncle was a signer of the Declaration of Independance."
Yes, I think this is true but it was not the name Sedgwick. The gentleman had a child or grandchild who married into the Sedgwick line.
Edie Sedgwick was Sedgwick-made. A lot of the people of Warhol's factory were indeed "factory-made".
The title for the movie could then otherwise have been Factory Maid. --Laurencebeck (talk) 05:49, 17 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Other family history

Did you know that Edie Sedgwick could also claim to be a descendent of Col. Robert Gould Shaw, of "Glory" fame? Her father was the grandson of Susanna Shaw, Shaw's sister, and Robert Browne Minturn. That would make her Robert Gould Shaw's great niece and Susanna's great grand daughter. Talk about an amazing gene pool!

According to one source[1], her family background is even more rich: "She could trace her family history to the Mayflower and claimed a bank account overflowing with money made from her grandfather's invention of the elevator". I have no idea how reliable the source is, though. CrashRiley 17:40, 19 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Edie's grandfather did not invent the elevator; her only relationship to the "elevator" was a distant ancestral cousin who had a plant up the Hudson that specialized in "dumb waiters" and also made elevators. Furthermore, Edie inherited a very small trust fund from her grandfather that never could have susidized her lavish lifestyle. She loved to play the "rich girl" act to the hilt, but she was never rich by any means. The family once bailed her out of her huge debt, and she did use up the small capital in her trust fund. "Factory Girl" wrongly perpetuates the myth that Edie was rich. Jay (talk) 04:00, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Family section is interesting but one-sided in its listing the successful family members, ignoring tragedies in the distant past and, surprisingly, tragedies in her immediate family. R Waldo WCU (talk) 05:56, 27 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I just did some pruning of the "In music" section, removing allusions made by non-notable musicians. It could probably use more pruning still, or, at the very least, a nice crop of references. All I did was Google the artists listed and, if I found no third-party mentions of them within the first several pages of hits, I deleted the corresponding allusion from the list. As stated in WP:IPC: "Exhaustive lists are discouraged, as are passing references to the article subject." Feel free to cross-check my edits, but please provide your rationale on this talk page if you're re-adding something to the list. --Fullobeans (talk) 06:40, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like there has been no mention of the Cult song about her since a 2011 edit--particularly odd given that the song about her was a moderate hit and even has its own Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edie_(Ciao_Baby) ... seems like a pretty obvious candidate to be put back in. 75.69.34.112 (talk) 23:21, 3 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jessé de Forest

Jessé de Forest needs to have the accent over the last "e" in order for the article on Jesse to be brought up. Jay (talk) 17:56, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

 Done In the future, you can easily fix this yourself. Pinkadelica♣ 16:14, 22 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Jessé de Forest
( from the main article) Edie Sedgwick's mother Alice was the daughter of Henry Wheeler de Forest, the President and Chairman of the Board of the Southern Pacific Railroad and a direct descendant of
Jessé de Forest whose Dutch West India Company helped to settle New Amsterdam. Jessé de Forest was also Edie's seventh-great grandfather. --Laurencebeck (talk) 05:20, 18 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Heiress"?

Two editors (or one editor with an unstable IP) (User:31.199.244.145 and User talk:93.44.168.205) are wanting to remove the characterization "heiress" from the lede. The conversation so far, in the form of edit summaries, has been:

  • Remove term, summary "everyone is heir of someone..." (User talk:93.44.168.205)
  • Restore term, summary " "heiress" is commonly used and understood to mean "her dad/family was rich" and that's the meaning here." (User:Herostratus)
  • Remove term, summary "Still, is 'having a rich dad' a 'quality' that should appear in the first line of a bio? It is not an occupation nor an activity." (User:31.199.244.145)

So here we are. So let's talk about this.

First of all, the term heiress. I looked this up, and unless the reference is to genetic inheritance (unlikely), then there are two main meanings for "heiress":

  • A legal meaning: a female person who is named as a beneficiary a given will.
  • A common meaning: a rich woman who has inherited her wealth.

And here's the particulars:

  • Wiktionary, the free dictionary, gives the meaning of "a woman who stands to inherit", with "inherit" having various meanings, the important ones here being "To receive (property or a title etc), by legal succession or bequest after the previous owner's death" or "To receive a characteristic from one's ancestors by genetic transmission."
  • Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, at Heiress gives a definition of "A female beneficiary of an inheritance" wit: that link beginning "A beneficiary (also, in trust law, cestui que use) in the broadest sense is a natural person or other legal entity who receives money or other benefits from a benefactor".
  • Dictionary.com gives "a woman who inherits or has a right of inheritance, especially a woman who has inherited or will inherit considerable wealth."
  • Thefreedictionary.com gives several definitions, all similar: "A woman who is an heir, especially to great wealth", "a woman who inherits or expects to inherit great wealth", "(Law) Property law a female heir", "a woman who inherits or has a right of inheritance, esp. one who inherits great wealth", and (from their thesaurus) "heiress - a female heir" drilling down to "inheritress, inheritrix, heir, heritor, inheritor - a person who is entitled by law or by the terms of a will to inherit the estate of another".
  • Merriam-Webster online gives "a girl or woman who is an heir; especially : a girl or woman who inherits a large amount of money" and "a woman who is an heir especially to great wealth"

OK. So it looks like "heiress" has two main meanings, a legal one ("beneficiary") and a common one ("female scion of a wealthy family").

Well what do you think was the intended meaning here? Maybe a reader will be of the mind "OK, heiress, someone who inherits. 'Inherit' means 'to derive (existing functionality) from a superclass' and is a characteristic of computer programs, so Edie Sedgwick must be a computer program" so we need to guard against that too. Or maybe the meaning was just "inherited her characteristics from her biological parents. In that case, calling her an "heiress" would be similar to calling her a "mammal" or "carbon-based life form", which we can suppose most readers can infer, and so it would be redundant.

Well what do you think is the meaning conveyed, dear reader? If we're at a party and I say "Did you know that Julia Louis-Dreyfus is an heiress?" (she is, you know) and you reply "Oh, she inherited genetic characteristics from both her parents, like every other human? So what?" you know what will happen? Pretty soon you won't be invited to any more parties. Well please don't act that way here either, kthx. Any person facile with English idiom understands which meaning is conveyed here.

OK, then the objection "[I]s 'having a rich dad' a 'quality' that should appear in the first line of a bio? It is not an occupation nor an activity".

Well I'd say say so. Well for one thing Sedgwick didn't really have an occupation, nor an activity beyond just being Edie Sedgwick. Is her class background and her ability to live in material comfort with no need for a job or career (or husband) relevant enough to allude to in the lede? Well yeah I'd say so. She was a rich girl and knowing that is an important part of getting a handle on her.

If we delete "heiress" we leaving just "actress, socialite and fashion model". She wasn't really an actress nor famous as an actress. Her films played a very limited run, and if you're just being yourself with no script (not sure how often that was the case, though) it's not really acting just because someone is pointing a camera at you. People point cameras at me all the time (home movies) but that doesn't make me an "actor", nor would I be an "actor" for encyclopedic purposes if I appeared in community theater productions as a hobby, which is about the level we're talking about here. As to "model", it's not clear that she did much professional modeling and any rate wasn't a famous professional model; she had a fashion sense and had personal notoriety and charisma so people copied her style, but that doesn't make her a model. "Socialite" of course is open to the same objection as "heiress" -- most everybody has at least one acquaintance, and talking to them is socializing, so most everybody is a "socialite" I guess.

So what was she? We're kind of left with "Edith Minturn "Edie" Sedgwick (April 20, 1943 – November 16, 1971) was a carbon-based life form and mammal, who..." which I think leaves something to be desired. Let's not be pedantic paper-shufflers here and so let's restore "heiress" to the lede. Herostratus (talk) 15:46, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

She seems to have been a celebutante before the term was coined. But see, e.g., the opening sentence of Paris Hilton. Sedgwick was famous for being rich and famous. Fat&Happy (talk) 17:10, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Right. Hilton is describe as an "heiress". If it's a term we want to avoid generally (which is possible), we probably ought to have a bigger discussion about that. Meanwhile, no further discussion occurring, I'm restoring the term. Herostratus (talk) 13:07, 3 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

edie sedgwick

edie brickell and the new bohemians had a track on their debut album called "Little Miss S" about edie Sedgwick. from philz1@outlook.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.26.164.242 (talk) 18:03, 14 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bulemia

...Sedgwick developed anorexia by her early teens and settled into a lifelong pattern of binging and purging.

I believe that anorexia is simply not eating enough and that the word the writer wants is bulimia, binge eating and then eliminating what was just eaten either by making oneself vomit it back up or by using a laxative. ☺ Dick Kimball (talk) 12:02, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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