Allen Midgette’s unlikely role in Warhol’s world reveals how identity, performance, and perception collided during a pivotal moment in Pop history.
By Oliver Sayers
Actor and artist Allen Midgette—the man who once impersonated Andy Warhol on college lecture tours—passed away at 82 on June 16, 2021, at his home in Woodstock, New York. His representative, Raymond Foye, announced that Midgette died from cardiopulmonary disease.
Early Life And Acting Career
Born February 2, 1939, in Camden, New Jersey, Allen Midgette began studying acting in New York City as a young adult. His first film appearance was as an extra in West Side Story (1961)—a role he accepted after originally auditioning for Tony. Soon after, he traveled to Italy, where he befriended Bernardo Bertolucci, then assistant to filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. Bertolucci cast him in his 1962 debut film The Grim Reaper, and again in 1964’s Before the Revolution in a more significant role as Agostino. Midgette valued this period deeply, as he became one of the few American actors to take part in Italy’s Neo-Realist movement.
Allen Midgette and the Warhol Impersonation
Despite his work in film, Allen Midgette became best known for impersonating Andy Warhol. In 1967, Warhol hired him to appear in his place at the Rochester Institute of Technology for the lecture “Pop Art in Action.” That single visit led to a small lecture circuit in which Midgette posed as Warhol before unsuspecting audiences. According to Warhol’s associate Paul Morrissey, the impersonation played with the public’s uncertainty about who Warhol “really” was—especially since Warhol’s fame outside New York was still emerging.
The stunt drew on elements reminiscent of Dada, quietly questioning how identity is constructed. Initially, Midgette declined the offer, but he accepted after Morrissey told him he’d earn $600. As Midgette later joked in a Gagosian Quarterly interview, he “knew Andy well enough to know he didn’t have to worry about talking too much—because Andy didn’t.”
With compact powder to lighten his complexion and silver spray to alter his hair, Allen Midgette fully adopted Warhol’s look. The black leather jacket, jeans, and sunglasses completed it. He traveled with Morrissey to Rochester, immediately noticing how people treated him as Warhol: distant, impressed, and strangely deferential.
Reception and Revelation
At the lecture, the audience viewed Warhol’s Bufferin commercial before asking questions about makeup, training, and technique. Midgette kept his answers short, knowing that Warhol himself often replied in minimal phrases. The event went smoothly, although some attendees suspected something was amiss. Still, the college paid Midgette and Morrissey $1,200 for the appearance.
Subsequent lectures on the West Coast—at the University of Utah, University of Montana, University of Oregon, and Linfield University—weren’t as convincing. By January 1968, The Chronicle exposed the hoax in an article titled “Phony Warhol Suspected, Film Reveals Hoax on U.” Warhol later commented, “He was better than I am. He’s what people expected. They liked him better than they would’ve liked me.” Midgette agreed, noting that he handled the social interactions more easily than Warhol could.
Identity, Performance, and the Legacy of Allen Midgette
Debates continue about whether Allen Midgette’s impersonation constitutes media manipulation, performance art, or commentary on identity. Midgette disagreed with all those interpretations. To him, it was simply acting. He observed that people projected “Warhol” onto him because they wanted to believe they were seeing the real artist. As he put it in another Gagosian interview, “If you’re being told it’s Andy and everyone else is accepting it, you’ll go along with that. They’re just seeing their own projection of you.”
After the stunt, Midgette’s acting career did not unfold as he hoped. He occasionally reprised the Warhol persona at events and even portrayed Warhol in the 1991 Italian film Suffocating Heat. Yet he remained conflicted, feeling that he helped Warhol gain recognition while receiving little acknowledgment for his own work.