Makeup Beat

I enjoyed working with Janice many times and always thought she was amazing in front of the camera and a lot of fun on the set. In fact I did one of her first photo tests before she went off to Europe to become a success. Much later I cast her in the Elite promo calendar I produced in 1986 as a blue Krishna/Indian Prince standing on sandals of nails, with a monkey on her shoulder…and she made all it work beautifully.

According to best seller “Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women” by Michael Gross:
“Janice Dickinson was one of the brashest, wildest supermodels ever. As the child of a violent, pedophiliac father and a pill-popping mother, Janice Dickinson grew up hearing her father’s “You’ll never amount to nothing!” Determined to become a raging success, Janice Dickinson went to New York City and began calling modeling agencies. It was the 1970s, and the ideal models were blond “girls next door” like Cheryl Tiegs, but Janice Dickinson was a self described “bigged lipped Polish-mutt.” She was turned down by Eileen Ford ~ “Those lips!” ~ but ended up going to Paris after Lorraine Bracco told her photographer boyfriend that she liked Dickinson’s look. Janice Dickinson became a huge success in Europe, and returned to New York City in 1978. It was the era of Studio 54 and Dickinson partied with the likes of Truman Capote, Andy Warhol, and John Belushi. She seduced the most famous ladies’ men, drank every drink and snorted or inhaled every drug.
Dickinson took revenge on Ford by signing with her agency and then jumping ship to Elite when she became established in the US. On her way out the door, she reportedly told Ford, “It’s me, big-lipped Janice. I’m going to Elite. I don’t like you, I’ve never liked you.”
Although Janice helped John Casablancas to put ELITE MODELS on top in New York, unfortunately the drugs took their toll ending her career and forcing her into rehab.

Now clean and sober, a Mom of two with one and a half failed marriage’s, Janice decided to add author to her resume’…
In 2002, Janice Dickinson wrote her own best seller
No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World’s First Supermodel.
(I stayed up all night reading this book cover to cover…and loved it!)
“My father was a tall, slim, handsome man with a thick head of silver hair, buzzed flat, and gunmetal gray eyes. People liked Ray. He had an easy smile. A pleasant laugh. He was a good storyteller, a good listener, popular with the neighbors. But I didn’t often see that easy smile. Or hear that pleasant laugh. I saw, instead, the way his eyes changed color when he got angry, the whites glowing red. Or the way he balled up his big, freckled fists when he came after me, like a bull in heat. I hated him. I hated his eyes; his hair; that acrid breath; the wife-beater, Fruit of the Loom T-shirts. I hated him with every fiber of my being.
I hated my mother, too; hated her because she was numbed into oblivion with the pills she’d been prescribed for an old back injury. She would come home at the end of the day, floating, and she stayed aloft with the help of those lovely pills. She would glide through the house on a cushion of air, in slow motion, unaware, unseeing, her voice soft, her mind elsewhere, always smiling this benign Hare Krishna smile — like she was At One With God or something; which she was, I guess, at least chemically.”

A second book, Everything About Me Is Fake…And I’m Perfect, was followed by her third and latest book, Check Please – How To Pick Up Boys And Dump Them When You’re Done.

After being a judge on America’s Next Top Model, and a participant in The Surreal Life, Janice’s popularity parlayed into her own series, The Janice Dickinson Show, that continues to be a big success today. I’m so proud of her courage and determination. She will always be the worlds FIRST SUPERMODEL to me.