"I did more than model for him back in the day." - Solange
SOLANGE (Mahogany Reynolds)
Long before Beyonce Knowles' younger sister attempted to crack the dance charts, there was another Solange. Beautiful, talented- but unconnected, this Solange ran away from her broken home in Nowhere, USA - she was 16 and it was 1983. Lying about her age, she ran all the way to New York City. She met an Italian photographer named Rudolfo at Danceteria, literally bumping into him as a girl named Madonna closed the elevator door before he could get in.
Rudolfo gave no last name. Solange lost hers too.
The beginning of a trend: losing stuff.
Rudolfo squired Solange around NYC in high style. He was convinced she could be a big star. She acquired a taste for champagne and pain. Her heart broke a few times. Only a few times, then she began to break them herself.
In 1984, a producer for Dargento, the Italian horror film master discovered her amongst the flotsam and jetsam of the last cocktail party at Warhol's 860 Broadway Factory. She had been pretending to answer the phones. Solange ran away with him to Roma. She met a man named Giacomo from An Eye for an Eye Model Management at a party in Locarno. She began to model. She began to act. With Dargento's help she starred in 23 giallo horror movies in Italy- becoming a minor horror icon.
Films like Rat Attack (her famous line: "Don't move, there's a rat on your back!") and Hypochondria ("The doctor is out -- of his mind!")
Her "biggest" film The Ghoul School was made in and around Milan, Italy and Berlin, Germany.
She was the girl they called when they needed a character named Cocoa or Caramel. She was famous for murdering people in crazy ways: a bar of soap, a wig, a dozen eggs- she found a way. Fiction was not stranger than the truth. Sometimes she played the victim, sometimes the killer. Aficionados called her "Solange Solange" because once was never enough.
At the height of her B-film career she recorded a single with Tinto B. and Daniele Francesconi entitled "Robots are Un-american." It became a kitschy, camp one-hit wonder tune played around clubs in Europe. The music video by Today Versatile featured Solange dancing and lip-syncing her heart out.
In 1991 she met Kevin Cosgrave. Her lifestyle was erratic, migratory. She went through three passports between 1992-1993. She divulged her unique money-making lifestyle to Kevin. He joined in. They traveled from one end of the world to the next. Utah to Guam, Dubai to Denmark. Life was one big violent fabulous party. Until Kevin got sick and Solange had to come down to earth.
But only for a little while...