Cookie Mueller

Cookie Mueller studied at Catonsville High School. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is go-go dancing, literary activity and journalism. Employment is recorded with John Waters, Goldin and East Village Eye. Works named in the authority record are Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, Polyester and Underground U.S.A.

• Name — Cookie Mueller • Birth Name — Dorothy Karen Mueller • Born — 2 March 1949 • Birthplace — Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. • Died — 10 November 1989 • Place of death — New York City, U.S. • Occupation — * Actress • writer • Years Active — 1969–1989 • Partner — Sharon Niesp (1973–1981)

Cookie Mueller grew up with her parents Frank Lennert Mueller (d. 1984) and Anne (Sawyer) Mueller (d. 1995, aged 82) in the Baltimore suburbs in a house near the woods, a mental hospital and railroad tracks. She was nicknamed Cookie as a baby: "Somehow I got the name Cookie before I could walk. It didn't matter to me, they could call me whatever they wanted." During her childhood Cookie, along with her parents, brother Michael, and sister Judy, took road trips across the country: In 1959, with eyes the same size, I got to see some of America traveling in the old green Plymouth with my parents, who couldn't stand each other, and my brother and sister, who loved everyone. [Cookie's brother Michael actually died in an accident on March 20, 1955.] I remember the Erie Canal on a dismal day, the Maine coastline in a storm, Georgia willow trees in the rain, and the Luray Caverns in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia where the stalagmites and -tites were poorly lit. Mueller had many pets as a child, including many turtles (one named Fidel), a dog named Jip, snakes, and tadpoles. Cookie began to write at age 11, when she wrote a 321-page book about the Johnstown flood of 1889. She stapled it together, wrapped it in butcher paper and Saran wrap, and placed it on the shelves of a local library in what would have been its proper place. The book was never seen again. With a swath of pivotal events in Mueller's life—including her brother's death at age 14, the result of climbing a dead tree, which collapsed on him in the woods near their home—she pursued writing, and in high school hung out with the hippie crowd. One of Mueller's idiosyncrasies as a teen was that she constantly dyed her hair: "'Whenever you're depressed, just change your hair color,' she [her mother] always told me, years later, when I was a teenager: I was never denied a bottle of hair bleach or dye. In my closet there weren't many clothes, but there were tons of bottles." Mueller took a job at a Baltimore men's department store and saved enough funds to head to Haight-Ashbury, where she continued the hippie lifestyle. Mueller traveled across the country, living with groups of vagrants, and settled in places such as Provincetown, Massachusetts; British Columbia; San Francisco; Pennsylvania; Jamaica; and Sicily.

Mueller wrote the health column "Ask Dr. Mueller" for the East Village Eye and later served as art critic for Details. Mueller's books, How to Get Rid Of Pimples (with photos by David Armstrong, Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar) (1984, Top Stories #19-20); Ask Doctor Mueller (1996), a collection of her writings; Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black (1990), a memoir; and Garden of Ashes (Hanuman Books, 1990) are cult classics. Other works include the novella Fan Mail, Frank Letters, and Crank Calls (Hanuman Books, 1988) and several collections of short prose. Mueller wrote the introduction to her husband Vittorio Scarpati's book, Putti's Pudding, which collected drawings he made while dying of AIDS-related pneumonia.

Mueller was in a relationship with Sharon Niesp, an actress, singer and Provincetown fixture. She later married the Italian artist Vittorio Scarpati, who died of AIDS in September 1989.

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1970 — Multiple Maniacs — Cookie Divine / Cavalcade patron / Jesus follower • 1972 — Pink Flamingos — Cookie • 1974 — Female Trouble — Concetta • 1977 — Desperate Living — Flipper • 1978 — Final Reward — Veronica • 1979 — Seduction of Patrick — Short • 1980 — Underground U.S.A. — Betty (a barmaid) • 1981 — Subway Riders — Penelope Trasher • Polyester — Betty Lalinski • 1982 — Smithereens — Karen, in horror movie sequence • Tempest — New Year's Eve Party Girl • 1983 — Variety — Woman in bar • 2000 — Downtown 81 (a.k.a. New York Beat Movie) — Second go-go dancer — (final film role)