Donyale Luna

Birth and childhood

She was born Peggy Ann Freeman in Detroit, Michigan, to Nathaniel A. and Peggy Freeman (née Hertzog). She was the youngest of three daughters. In January 1965, her mother fatally shot her father in self-defense as he was reportedly abusive.

Despite the parentage stated on her birth certificate, she insisted that her biological father was a man with the surname Luna and that her mother was Indigenous Mexican and of Afro - Egyptian lineage. According to Luna, one of her grandmothers was reportedly a former Irish actress who married a black interior decorator. Whether any of this background is true is uncertain. Luna's sister later described her as being "a very weird child, even from birth, living in a wonderland, a dream". She would routinely create fantasies about her background and herself.

As a teen, she attended Cass Technical High School, where she studied journalism and was in the school choir. It was during this Time that she began calling herself "Donyale". She was later described by friends and classmates as being "kind of a kook".

Modeling

After being discovered by the photographer David McCabe, she moved from Detroit to New York City to pursue a modeling career. In January 1965, a sketch of Luna appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. She became the first black model to appear on the cover of a Vogue magazine, the March 1966 British issue, shot by photographer David Bailey.

According to the New York Times, she was under exclusive contract to the photographer Richard Avedon for a year at the beginning of her career.

An article in Time magazine published on April 1, 1966, "The Luna Year", described her as "a new heavenly body who, because of her striking singularity, promises to remain on high for many a season. Donyale Luna, as she calls herself, is unquestionably the hottest model in Europe at the moment. She is only 20, a Negro, hails from Detroit, and is not to be missed if one reads Harper's Bazaar, Paris Match, Britain's Queen, the British, French or American editions of Vogue.

By the 1970s, however, Luna's modeling career began to decline due to her drug use, eccentric behavior and tendency to be difficult. A designer for whom Luna once worked said, "She [Luna] took a lot of drugs and never paid her bills". Fellow model Beverly Johnson later said, "[Luna] doesn't wear shoes winter or summer. Ask her where she's from—Mars? She went up and down the runways on her hands and knees. She didn't show up for bookings. She didn't have a hard time, she made it hard for herself."

Luna appeared in a nude photo layout in the April 1975 issue of Playboy; the photographer was Luigi Cazzaniga.

Acting

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Luna appeared in several films.

She appeared in several movies produced by Andy Warhol. These included Screen Test: Donyale Luna (1964), in which critic Wayne Koestenbaum described Luna as "pure Diva, presenting a delicious mobile excess of mannerism"; camp (1965), and Donyale Luna (1967), a 33-minute color film in which the model starred as Snow White.

In the 1969 Federico Fellini film Fellini Satyricon, she portrayed the witch Oenothea, "who", according to one commentator, "in a trade-off with a wizard long ago ended up with fire between her legs. And it's real fire too, because Fellini shows us a scene in which a long line of foolish-looking peasants wait with unlit torches at Oenothea's bed. When their time comes, each devoutly places his torch between her legs to her sex, and, Poof."

Luna also appeared in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, the Otto Preminger comedy Skidoo (in which she was featured as the mistress of crime boss "God", who was portrayed by Groucho Marx), and the documentary Tonite Let's All Make Love in London.

Luna starred as the title character in the 1972 Italian film Salomé by director Carmelo Bene.

Racial identity issues

Journalist Judy Stone, in a 1968 New York Times profile of Luna, described her as being "secretive, mysterious, contradictory, evasive, mercurial," emphasizing her diverse heritage, which included Indigenous Mexican, Indonesian, Irish, and notably, African ancestry. Harold Carlton, writing for London's Sunday Times Magazine, acclaimed Luna as representing "the completely New Image of the Negro woman," suggesting that fashion was poised to subtly influence historical perceptions by celebrating and elevating the beauty and stature of the African heritage.

When Stone asked her about whether her appearances in Hollywood films would benefit the cause of black actresses, Luna answered, "If it brings about more jobs for Mexicans, Asians, Native Americans, Africans, groovy. It could be good, it could be bad. I couldn't care less."

Romantic relationships

In the mid-1960s, Luna was married to an actor for 10 months. Later she reportedly was engaged to the Austrian-born Swiss actor Maximilian Schell, to an unnamed Danish photographer, and to Georg Willing, a German actor who appeared in European horror films (such as 1970's Necropolis) and with The Living Theatre.

Around 1969 Luna was also romantically involved with German actor Klaus Kinski. They posed together in several photographs. The relationship ended when Kinski asked her entourage to leave his house in Rome. He was concerned that their drug use could damage his career.

Luna married the Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga. In 1977 they had a daughter, Dream.

Death

At the age of 33, estranged from her husband, she died in a Rome clinic in the early hours of 17 May 1979 of an accidental heroin overdose. She left behind her 18-month-old daughter, Dream.