Party Girl: Sylvia Miles, 1924

Party Girl: Sylvia Miles, 1924–2019

“It would be immodest to say I’m terrific fun, but I am — I have a good time.”

*****

Sylvia Miles passed away recently at 94, after a good, long life full of movies and parties. She was the epitome of New York cool, the #1 Partygoer in Manhattan. She was synonymous with the sort of decadent mid to late century New York City social scene that only lives on today in photos, and of course the memories and stories of those who lived it.

She was so effortlessly cool in Midnight Cowboy, while also masterfully revealing her character's sadness and insecurities.

Her Oscar-nominated supporting performance in the only X-rated film to ever win an Academy Award, Midnight Cowboy (1969), is so extraordinarily memorable, especially when you consider she only had somewhere around ten minutes of screen time to make such a lasting impression. Seeing that film when I did, as a young college student becoming more obsessed with cinema by the day, was a seminal moment, and Miles's aristocratic man-eater was unlike anything I'd ever seen onscreen before. Or since, really.

No one did Hungry AF better than Sylvia in Midnight Cowboy.

She was an absolute force of nature, in her films and in real life. Her connections to Warhol and the Factory scene are legendary, and her work in Paul Morrissey's Heat (1972) is as astonishingly powerful as anything she ever did on film.

Sylvia, about to devour costar Jon Voight, Midnight Cowboy.

It's sad to lose one of the last mavericks to outlive the era in which she rose to prominence. She was a New Yorker, dammit, through and through. They don't make 'em like Sylvia Miles anymore. They never really did, actually. She was a true original.

Tempting fellow Warhol scenester Joe Dallasandro in Heat.

Sylvia and Joe had an unexpected but delicious chemistry.

Heat, indeed.

A candid moment.

Rest in peace, Ms. Miles.

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