Career
He is best known for appearing in a series of films in the mid-1960s by Andy Warhol, whom he claimed to have met in 1961 at an orgy. Ondine: "I was at an orgy, and he was, ah, this great presence in the back of the room. And this orgy was run by a friend of mine, and, so, I said to this person, "Would you please mind throwing that thing out of here?" And that thing was thrown out of there, and when he came up to me the next time, he said to me, "Nobody has ever thrown me out of a party." He said, "You know? Don"t you know who I am?" And I said, "Well, I don"t give a good flying fuck who you are.
You just weren"t there.
You weren"t involved..""
In later years, Ondine supported himself by showing Warhol films and delivering a lecture on his days as a Warhol "superstar" on the college circuit. He died of liver disease in Queens, New York, in 1989 at the age of 52.
He is portrayed in the film I Shot Andy Warhol by Michael Imperioli. "You can"t enjoy what he"s doing to your psychology if you"re so weak that you become paranoid, and there are people who tend to do that.
Otherwise, if you had any intellectual integrity at all, you would just feel his love, and you would enjoy it like it was better than a theater performance because it was really live." - Billy Name.