Search Everything

Login

Send feeback or report a bug here

Send feeback or report a bug here

Willard Maas

Willard Maas

Willard Maas (b. 24 June 1906 - 2 January 1971) was an American experimental filmmaker and poet. He was the husband of filmmaker Marie Menken. The couple achieved some renown in New York City's modern art world of the 1940s through the 1960s, both for their experimental films and for their salons, which brought together artists, writers, filmmakers and intellectuals. According to their associate, Andy Warhol, 'Willard and Marie were the last of the great bohemians. They wrote and filmed and drank -- their friends called them 'scholarly drunks' -- and were involved with all the modern poets. In the 1960s, Maas was a faculty member at Wagner College and an organizer of the New York City Writer's Conference at the college where Edward Albee was a writer in residence. The filmmaker Kenneth Anger indicates that Maas and Menken may have been a significant part of the inspiration for the characters of George and Martha in Edward Albee's 1962 play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Scott McDonald - 'A Critical Cinema: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers' (University of California Press - 1988). Maas died on January 2 1971, four days after Menken had died of alcohol related illness. He was cremated. The Maas/Menken materials and letters are located at the University of Texas (in Austin). A selection of these items is on deposit/loan (in Trust) at the Anthology Film Archives in New York. The Willard Maas Papers - a collection of approximately 500 letters, manuscripts, page proofs, photographs, drawings, play scripts, and film scripts from the period 1931-1967 - is housed at Brown University.

Personal information

Birthday

1906-06-24

Birth Place

New York, New York

Movies and TV shows :

Andy Warhol Screen Tests

Andy Warhol Screen Tests

1965

8.0

Movie
Arabesque for Kenneth Anger

Arabesque for Kenneth Anger

1961

5.7

Movie
Bitch

Bitch

1965

6.0

Movie
Blow Job

Blow Job

1964

4.2

Movie
Narcissus

Narcissus

1958

0.0

Movie
Orgia

Orgia

1967

0.0

Movie
The Geography of the Body

The Geography of the Body

1943

5.4

Movie