- Is portrayed by Reg Rogers in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)
- Earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Fordham University (New York City, USA) in 1959.
- Was a 1955 graduate of Fordham Preparatory School in the Bronx, New York City, USA. Was also a member of the Physics Club there.
- While filming a scene in the Manhattan apartment of John Wilcock for Andy Warhol's 25 hour movie Four Stars, Morrissey first met Joe Dallesandro who happened to have friends living in the same building. Morrissey immediately cast him in a scene that would later appear in Loves of Ondine (1967), Dallesandro's first appearance in a Factory film.
- Upon graduation, he enlisted with the United States Army, going through basic training at Fort Benning and Fort Dix, achieving the rank of First Lieutenant.
- In his movie "Trash" Holly Woodlawn was the first transgender actress ever cast. Director George Cukor praised her performance and suggested she should be nominated for an Oscar award, but Gregory Peck said the Academy was undecided over whether to nominate her for Best Actress or Best Actor.
- A film still of Candy Darling from Women in Revolt appears on the cover of the "Sheila Take a Bow" single by The Smiths, the second such instance of a Morrissey film appearing on the cover of a Smiths record.
- In March 1973, Morrissey went to Rome and directed two back-to-back features Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974) starring Dallesandro and Udo Kier. Produced by Carlo Ponti and presented by Andy Warhol, their international success propelled Morrissey out of the Factory and into his first and only attempt at directing a studio film, The Hound of the Baskervilles, co-written by Morrissey, Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore. It was a commercial and critical flop.
- Paul Morrissey was given in 1998 the Jack Smith Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival.
- He moved to the East Village in late 1960 opening the Exit Gallery, a small cinematheque at 36 E. 4th St., where he programmed a mix of underground films and documentaries including Icarus (1960), the first film by Brian De Palma.
- In 1971, Warhol and Morrissey purchased Eothen in Montauk, New York, a 12-hectare oceanfront estate on the Long Island shore for $225,000. Morrissey would sell the estate in 2006 to J. Crew CEO Millard Drexler.
- After the attempt on Warhol's life in June 1968 by Valerie Solanas, Morrissey directed his first solo feature Flesh. Produced for $4,000 by Andy Warhol and starring Joe Dallesandro alongside Maurice Braddell, Geri Miller, Geraldine Smith, Patti D'Arbanville, Louis Waldon, Jackie Curtis, and Candy Darling, the film became a box office hit in West Germany with over 3 million tickets sold.
- Morrissey moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s and returned to independently produced features starting with Madame Wang's (1981), a satire on the LA punk-rock scene, starring Patrick Schoene alongside Morrissey's niece Christina Indri.
- Introduced by poet and filmmaker Gerard Malanga, he first met Andy Warhol in June 1965 at the Astor Place Playhouse where Morrissey was having a retrospective of his work. Warhol, taken by Morrissey's resourcefulness and filmmaking expertise, invited him to the Factory to assist him with his next project Space, filmed at the E. 47th St. Factory in July 1965 and featuring Edie Sedgwick, Danny Fields, Donald Lyons (a friend of Morrissey's from his Fordham University days), and folk-singer Eric Andersen.
- Morrissey's last feature News From Nowhere (2010) made its U.S. debut at Film at Lincoln Center in fall 2010.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content