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- Andy Warhol’s prank on Oregon
Andy Warhol’s prank on Oregon
- By Coquille Valley Sentinel Staff
- Published 02/18/2009
- News , Feb 18
- Unrated
Coquille Valley Sentinel Staff
View all articles by Coquille Valley Sentinel Staff
By Finn J. John
It was Oct. 5, 1967, and students were spilling out the doors of the biggest room in the University of Oregon’s Erb Memorial Union. At the front of the room, a man stood with a cigarette in one hand, Ray-Bans on, a shock of white-blonde hair. The students had come to see Andy Warhol talk about his underground films. Warhol was booked for a tour of Western colleges, including the University of Utah, Montana State, Linfield College in McMinnville and the U of O. But they didn’t get Andy.
The man at the front of the packed ballroom at the U of O was actually one of their own — a University of Oregon actor named Allen Midgette, one of Warhol’s cronies at his “Factory” art loft in New York. Warhol, at the time, had never left the Eternal City. Some students grumbled about it afterward – “Warhol,” they said, showed a boring “art film” and gave them answers that were either really, really deep or really, really stupid: “I don’t know how to say what my meaning is
I guess it means to me that I film it, mostly.” “That (why we make films) is one of the big questions. Let’s just say we do it to keep us off the streets.” “All kinds of things — it changes all the time.” (This last was in response to a student asking, “Sir, do you give a damn?” and about what.) The reception was less hostile at Linfield, where, according to Leland John, an art professor from Mt. Angel College who attended, “Warhol” responded to most questions by simply giggling.
When “Warhol” left, rumors started to circulate. They originated at the University of Utah, where “Warhol” started his speaking tour.
A student journalist had sneaked a photo of him, shot from the waist with one of the twin-lens Rolleiflex cameras that were then the hottest news cameras around. Professors who had met the real Warhol and smelled a rat compared the pictures and concluded they were two different people. Rumors of this reached Don Bishoff, then a reporter for the Eugene Register- Guard. “We had an aging hippie working on our copy desk, named Bill Thomas,” Bishoff recalled later. “Somehow he had the number for the pay phone on the wall at The Factory. So I called the number and … Paul Morrissey answered it.” Morrissey, clearly taken by surprise, “hemmed and hawed” and the finally put Warhol on the line.
After some head-scratching about how Bishoff could know it was the real Warhol this time, the “Peter Pan of pop art” confessed. “He (Midgette) was better than I am,” Warhol told Bishoff. “He was what the people expected. They liked him better than they would have liked me ....”
“His explanation of how he sent the guy didn’t make sense,” recalled Bishoff. “I still think to this day he was pulling another Andy Warhol spoof — and proving a point that people wouldn’t know the difference.” (Sources: Eugene Register-Guard and Oregon Daily Emerald archives; personal recollections of Don Bishoff and Leland John) Finn J. John is a columnist specializing in unusual and little-known aspects of Oregon history. He can be reached at finn@uoregon.edu or 541- 514-4631.
It was Oct. 5, 1967, and students were spilling out the doors of the biggest room in the University of Oregon’s Erb Memorial Union. At the front of the room, a man stood with a cigarette in one hand, Ray-Bans on, a shock of white-blonde hair. The students had come to see Andy Warhol talk about his underground films. Warhol was booked for a tour of Western colleges, including the University of Utah, Montana State, Linfield College in McMinnville and the U of O. But they didn’t get Andy.
The man at the front of the packed ballroom at the U of O was actually one of their own — a University of Oregon actor named Allen Midgette, one of Warhol’s cronies at his “Factory” art loft in New York. Warhol, at the time, had never left the Eternal City. Some students grumbled about it afterward – “Warhol,” they said, showed a boring “art film” and gave them answers that were either really, really deep or really, really stupid: “I don’t know how to say what my meaning is
I guess it means to me that I film it, mostly.” “That (why we make films) is one of the big questions. Let’s just say we do it to keep us off the streets.” “All kinds of things — it changes all the time.” (This last was in response to a student asking, “Sir, do you give a damn?” and about what.) The reception was less hostile at Linfield, where, according to Leland John, an art professor from Mt. Angel College who attended, “Warhol” responded to most questions by simply giggling.
A student journalist had sneaked a photo of him, shot from the waist with one of the twin-lens Rolleiflex cameras that were then the hottest news cameras around. Professors who had met the real Warhol and smelled a rat compared the pictures and concluded they were two different people. Rumors of this reached Don Bishoff, then a reporter for the Eugene Register- Guard. “We had an aging hippie working on our copy desk, named Bill Thomas,” Bishoff recalled later. “Somehow he had the number for the pay phone on the wall at The Factory. So I called the number and … Paul Morrissey answered it.” Morrissey, clearly taken by surprise, “hemmed and hawed” and the finally put Warhol on the line.
After some head-scratching about how Bishoff could know it was the real Warhol this time, the “Peter Pan of pop art” confessed. “He (Midgette) was better than I am,” Warhol told Bishoff. “He was what the people expected. They liked him better than they would have liked me ....”
“His explanation of how he sent the guy didn’t make sense,” recalled Bishoff. “I still think to this day he was pulling another Andy Warhol spoof — and proving a point that people wouldn’t know the difference.” (Sources: Eugene Register-Guard and Oregon Daily Emerald archives; personal recollections of Don Bishoff and Leland John) Finn J. John is a columnist specializing in unusual and little-known aspects of Oregon history. He can be reached at finn@uoregon.edu or 541- 514-4631.