#Socialite studio movie#
In the 24 hours after the movie aired, the federal AIDS hotline received a record 189,251 calls. In March 1992, ABC aired a television movie based on her life, starring Molly Ringwald. During Gertz's time as an activist, she was voted Woman of the Year by Esquire magazine and received the Secretary's Award for Excellence in Public Service from the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The scripts and correspondence are housed at the Library of Congress in the Tony Schwartz Collection. In 1989, Gertz's foundation, Love Heals, along with Martin Himmel Health Foundation, hired Tony Schwartz to create public service announcements on AIDS awareness. Gertz and her parents also founded The AIDS groups Concerned Parents for AIDS Research and Love Heals. She became an AIDS activist, appearing on numerous television shows and also speaking with teenagers on the subject of safe sex. I want to tell them: I'm heterosexual, and it took only one time for me. I want to talk to these kids who think they're immortal. I could be one of them, or their daughter. She stated:Īll the AIDS articles are about homosexuals or poor people on drugs, and unfortunately a lot of people just flip by them. She hoped to educate others about AIDS and dispel the myths and misconceptions surrounding the disease. In 1989, Gertz chose to publicly share her story and did an interview with The New York Times. They had their first and only sexual encounter in 1982. He was a bisexual bartender whom Gertz met at Studio 54 when she was 16.
Gertz later found out that she had contracted HIV from a 27-year-old man named Cort Brown. A bronchoscopy revealed that Gertz had AIDS. Two weeks later, she developed pneumonia.
Gertz was never tested for AIDS because doctors did not consider her to be in a "high-risk group" for the disease. She was hospitalized and underwent testing to determine the cause of her illness. In summer 1988, Gertz developed a persistent fever and chronic diarrhea. She attended the Horace Mann School, and later studied art at Parsons The New School for Design. She was the only child of Jerrold Gertz, a real estate executive, and his wife Carol, the co-founder (with Adriana Mnuchin, wife of Robert Mnuchin) of a woman's clothing store chain, Tennis Lady. Gertz was born in Manhattan and was raised in an apartment on Park Avenue.
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