Willard Maas

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Willard Maas (b. 24 June 1906 - 2 January 1971) was an American experimental filmmaker and poet.

He was the husband of filmmaker Marie Menken. They achieved some renown in New York City's modern art world of the 1940s through the 1960s, both for their experimental films as well as for their salons, which brought together artists, writers, filmmakers and intellectuals.[1] 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."[2]

Maas's 1956 film Narcissus stars Judith Malina (credited as Jody Malin) and Julian Beck, members of The Living Theatre, both of whom perform voice-overs for the film. He also allegedly performed fellatio on DeVeren Bookwalter for Andy Warhol's short film Blow Job (1963), although Warhol claimed otherwise in his memoir Popism: The Warhol Sixties (1980).

In the 1960's, Maas was a faculty member at Wagner College and an organizer of the New York City Writer's Conference there where Edward Albee was a writer in residence.

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.[3]

He and Menken may have been a significant part of the inspiration for the characters of George and Martha in Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?