Robert Heide, Caffe Cino Playwright and Warhol Collaborator, Dies at 91

Robert Heide, a playwright associated with the birth of the Off Off Broadway movement and a collaborator with Andy Warhol, died on Dec. 17 at a Manhattan nursing home. He was 91. His spouse, John Gilman, said the cause was complications of dementia. Mr. Heide was best known for his 1965 play "The Bed," notable at the time for depicting a homosexual relationship; Warhol restaged the play and intercut scenes of it into his film "Chelsea Girls." Mr.

Heide also wrote the script for Warhol’s film "Lupe" and acted in Warhol films including "Batman Dracula" and "Camp." He was a fixture of the Caffe Cino milieu and the broader downtown cultural scene. David Allison Crespy called him "one of the most articulate raconteurs of Cino history," and Stephen Bottoms wrote that "The Bed" bridged Beckettian absurdism and the New York avant‑garde’s focus on banal observation.

Contemporary accounts noted the play’s minimal action — two men in white boxers on a small bed, long pauses and the repeated use of a rock song — and Life and the Village Voice paid attention to the work and its makers. Born Robert William Heitke on May 9, 1934, in Irvington, N.J., he studied theater at Northwestern University, took classes with Stella Adler and later changed his name.

For more than 60 years he lived in the same rent‑controlled Christopher Street apartment; Mr.

Key Topics

Culture, Robert Heide, Caffe Cino, The Bed, Andy Warhol, Chelsea Girls