Chapter 7 - You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico

By 1957, at the age of just nineteen, Nico was making more money than she could have ever hoped for. Her hourly rate varied anywhere from 80 to 250 francs, with a whole day being worth 500 to 800 francs, depending on the client. It was not uncommon for Nico to be netting over 10,000 francs a month. Yet even at the height of her earning power, the model still played down her looks, later saying of her success, ‘I was tall, I was blonde, and I was dignified. Nothing more is needed to make an effect. It is short people who need tech­nique … I had none.’

Though she had more money and access than she could ever have imagined, the constant focus on appearances did not sit well with the teen. This was the start of what would be a lifelong internal ­battle for Nico. She knew her most valued commodity – her phys­ical features – was what allowed for escape, entry and security. Yet she hated it being the sole quality that she was judged upon, her own possibilities beyond physicality not even being considered. Nico came to detest being called ‘pretty’, as she viewed it as ‘ornamental, useless and a nuisance’. Nico struggled especially with the constant pressure to stay ultra-thin in the competitive fashion industry, later confiding, ‘It is never easy to eat when you are a model. You are hungry but you are frightened you will lose your figure. For a time I took some pills that suppressed the appetite, but they were not correct for the complexion. In the end, I didn’t care and I ate more because I was large anyway and that was a part of my character … I would eat normally or eat nothing. But when I ate, I ate like a sparrow – a big, German sparrow. Sometimes I felt this was the hardest part of my work, either to eat, or not to eat. Is there any other job like that?’ Though she felt unfulfilled and frustrated by the limitations of modelling, she knew it was a platform that could launch her into other arenas. What those were, she was not sure of.

Her early habit of silently taking in her surroundings, of learning not just new languages, but attitudes, customs and characters on the fly, was often perceived as vacant unintelligence, her looks being the only thing, besides the uncommunicative behaviour, that others saw. Nico’s reticent ways often became problematic. Those jealous of or threatened by her – basically anyone not delving beyond first impressions – were quick to note her closed-off personality. It was a double-edged sword, however: the quieter she was, the more it became an inherent trait, which made for people constantly mis­understanding her, thus returning to the beginning of the cycle, over and over and over again, until, in later years, the singer often seemed completely devoid of emotions. ‘Nico was like the Kelippot, empty human shells in cabalistic mythology. Many people … say there was nothing beneath her surface: no love, no interests, no cares,’ wrote one journalist.

David Croland disagrees. Even via a transatlantic phone call, the former model and Factory insider is charismatic and witty, leav­ing no doubt as to why he captured the attention of former girl­friend Susan Bottomly – otherwise known as the Warhol Superstar International Velvet – and legendary photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Croland spent a lot of time with Nico around the time she was shooting Warhol’s Chelsea Girls in the mid-1960s. ‘She was observant, and people don’t get this! She was at heart a poetess. Your looks do get in the way of your progress if you’re that beauti­ful, there’s no doubt about it. People become instantly attracted to you and instantly jealous at the same time. She’s not the best news for any woman if she walks into a room, the way she looked. What I liked most about her, after the initial shock of her extraordinary beauty, was her reserve, her quietness and her way of observing people who were observing her,’ says Croland. ‘She was very, very curious and very quiet. She didn’t spin around; people spun around Nico because of her beauty and her mystery. She was sweet. I liked her shyness. I did not find her aloof, I found her shy.’

*

It was in the summer of 1958 that the opportunity to expand her repertoire arose. While in Rome for a photo shoot, Nico stayed with Italian actress Silvana Mangano.17 It is likely that it was during this visit Nico scored her first role on the big screen in La Tempesta, starring Mangano; Nico has an uncredited part as a blonde girl at a large festival scene. This role was quickly followed by an appearance in Mario Lanza’s final film, For the First Time. Though her character is only on camera briefly, she does get a few lines as the ‘Leader of Admirers in Capri’, who ask Lanza to sing them a song in a village square. Nico’s last uncredited part came at the end of 1958, in Willy Maywald’s German documentary Montparnasse. The ten-minute film focuses on the Parisian district of the same name and features a short-haired Nico in another non-speaking role as a Swedish art student. She is shown sipping coffee in a café for about a minute, before wandering off to a drawing workshop. She is on screen for less than five minutes across all three movies, but it was enough for a new path to emerge.

Though these first films gave Nico a taste for acting, modelling was still the source of her main revenue stream. Throughout 1958, she appeared in a variety of ads and magazine spreads across the continent, under a myriad of different names.18 The inconsistent moniker reflects a teenager still not entirely sure of her personal or professional identity, even though her images were now being fea­tured across Europe. It also illustrates a young woman wanting to get as far away from her German roots as possible.

In 1959, three years after taking on Tobias’s suggestion of chan­ging her name, Nico met someone whom she thought was her namesake. One night at a dinner in Paris, the model leaned over to a handsome dark-haired man sitting next to her and asked his name. Decades later, in an invaluable interview included in Nico: Icon, Nico Papatakis remembered the conversation:

‘Your name is Nico?’

‘Yes, my name is Nico.’

‘You lived in Paris before?

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know a photographer named [Herbert] Tobias?’

Papatakis did not know Tobias. By the time he and Nico met, he was established as a successful club owner in his adopted coun­try of France, where he ran the famed club La Rose Rouge. With his mixed Greek/Ethiopian heritage, the then forty-two-year-old Papatakis cut a dashing figure. He and Nico struck up a romance. ‘From that moment, we were never separated. For two years we chose to live together, Nico and Nico,’ Papatakis said. He recalled Nico once again trying to distance herself from her origins, even when it came to her name. ‘I liked the name Christa,’ Papatakis commented. ‘Isn’t it a beautiful name? She hated it. She would always say, “No! It’s too … it’s so German!”’

In the young woman, Papatakis saw a talent that she had yet to consider. ‘I had spent a lot of time listening to singers, and talking to them, because of La Rose Rouge,’ he later said. ‘I got to the point where I could recognize by their speech if someone could sing. Nico had this deep tone.’ While visiting Manhattan together in 1961, Papatakis asked his girlfriend if she had ever considered singing. ‘She hadn’t thought about it,’ he remembered. ‘So, I took her to a voice teacher in New York.’

Here the timeline of events becomes blurry. Nico said in vari­ous interviews that she arrived in New York in 1959, ‘modeling for [Eileen] Ford’.19 However, Ford Models do not have official doc­umentation available to corroborate the claim that the agency represented Nico. Nico also said that she had been in the ‘same class’ as actress Marilyn Monroe at Lee Strasberg’s famous Actors Studio.20 Already a household name through mega cinema hits such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire and The Seven Year Itch, Monroe was tired of being closely associated with ‘dumb blonde roles’ and wanted to be considered for more serious dramatic opportunities. She enrolled at the prestigious New York institution in 1955, moving from her native Los Angeles to the East Coast to receive private tuition. This was four years before Nico came to New York to (perhaps) work with Ford. It is possible that both of Nico’s claims are true, and that records and dates have been lost over the passage of time; it is also conceivable that she thought positioning herself with both of these iconic entities would help bolster her own reputation.