Willard Maas

Born: 1906-06-24

Willard Maas (b. 24 June 1906 - 2 January 1971) was an American experimental filmmaker and poet. He was the husband of filmmaker Marie Menken. The couple achieved some renown in New York City's modern art world of the 1940s through the 1960s, both for their experimental films and for their salons, which brought together artists, writers, filmmakers and intellectuals. According to their associate, Andy Warhol, 'Willard and Marie were the last of the great bohemians. They wrote and filmed and drank -- their friends called them 'scholarly drunks' -- and were involved with all the modern poets. In the 1960s, Maas was a faculty member at Wagner College and an organizer of the New York City Writer's Conference at the college where Edward Albee was a writer in residence. The filmmaker Kenneth Anger indicates that Maas and Menken may have been a significant part of the inspiration for the characters of George and Martha in Edward Albee's 1962 play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Scott McDonald - 'A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers' (University of California Press - 1988). Maas died on January 2 1971, four days after Menken had died of alcohol related illness. He was cremated. The Maas/Menken materials and letters are located at the University of Texas (in Austin). A selection of these items is on deposit/loan (in Trust) at the Anthology Film Archives in New York. The Willard Maas Papers - a collection of approximately 500 letters, manuscripts, page proofs, photographs, drawings, play scripts, and film scripts from the period 1931-1967 - is housed at Brown University.


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Blow Job

as The Giver (uncredited)
Released: 1964-07-16

Andy Warhol directs a single 35-minute shot of a man's face to capture his facial expressions as...

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Arabesque for Kenneth Anger

as uncredited
Released: 1961-12-29

Filmed at the Alhambra in Spain in just one day, according to Marie Menken. Arabesque for...

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Andy Warhol Screen Tests

as Self
Released: 1965-11-28

The films were made between 1964 and 1966 at Warhol's Factory studio in New York City. Subjects...

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The Geography of the Body

as Body
Released: 1943-01-01

A quotation from Aristophanes, "The desire and pursuit of the whole is called love," precedes...

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Bitch

as uncredited
Released: 1965-01-01

“Andy Warhol called Marie Menken and Willard Maas ‘the last of the great bohemians,’ and, in...

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Orgia

as Himself
Released: 1967-08-04

A fragment of an abandoned, long work concerning St. Teresa of Avila. A sexual orgy symbolizing...

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