Behind the glamorous and often tragic lives of Andy Warhols muses

Earlier this year, Anthology Film Archives in the Lower East Side hosted a screening devoted to Naomi Levine.Touted by some as Andy Warhol’s “first female superstar,” Levine performed in many of the pop artist’s early underground movies, like 1963’s “Tarzan and Jane Regained… Sort Of” and 1964’s pornographic “Couch.” Like many of Warhol’s actors, she took off her clothes for his camera.Levine didn’t care about fame, and never became famous, which is maybe why she doesn’t even get a mention in Laurence Leamer’s new book, “Warhol’s Muses: The Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine” (G.P.

Putnam’s Sons, out May 6).She doesn’t fit with its thesis.“Warhol’s Muses” is the latest entry in a long line of books and movies about the artist and his band of misfits.

Like many, it portrays Warhol as a leech who used and manipulated others for the sake of his art and celebrity. But here, Leamer focuses on Warhol’s women: the ever-evolving coterie of glamazons who accompanied him to parties, appeared in his films, and “helped turn the Pittsburgh-born son of Eastern European immigrants into international artist Andy Warhol.” “They would raise his social cachet dramatically and bring him the publicity and public adulation he so desired,” Leamer writes.Warhol called these women his “superstars.” They included rebellious heiresses like Edie Sedgwick, bohemian artists like Christa Päffgen, a.k.a .Nico, and gorgeous outsiders like the trans icon Candy Darling.

They helped the shy, awkward, gay Warhol meet rich buyers and gave him a sheen of glamour.And then, per Leamer, he cast them aside when they proved no longer useful.In 1964, Warhol was a successful commercial artist.

But his “fine art” — the paintings of Campbell’s soup cans and Brillo boxes — wasn’t selling, and his movies had barely made a blip. Then he met Jane Holzer, a 23-year-old socialite living in an Upper East...