Tony Midnite
American female impersonator, costume designer, activist, and book reviewer
Tony Midnite (September 20, 1926 – August 31, 2009) was a female impersonator, costume designer, activist, and book reviewer.
Early life
Midnite was born Tony Murdoch on September 20, 1926 in Texas.
He worked in the defense industry at Hunter's Point Navy Yard near San Francisco during World War II. After seeing a female impersonation show at the legendary Finocchio's in San Francisco around 1948, he became a performer himself, starting in Galveston, Texas, transitioning to Hollywood, California, then making his way to Chicago.
Career
Midnite had begun performing with the traveling Jewel Box Revue, America's first racially-inclusive traveling revue of female impersonators. He took a hiatus, however, in 1951 to move to Chicago. His mentor, Stanley Rogers, was the costume designer for the Jewel Box; when Rogers retired, Midnite took over the post. He also opened his own costume design studio in Chicago in 1953 in the basement of the Lorraine Hotel at 411 South Wabash Ave. in the city's Rush Street nightclub area. Though he was having throat troubles in the mid-1950s which caused him to step back from performing for a time, he was nevertheless photographed in full glamour drag regalia in 1955 and 1956 by celebrity and theatrical photographer Maurice Seymour, who stars sought "because of his ability to portray them as they appeared to the audience 100 feet away. He could retouch the photos, enhance their appearance...keep the illusion going."
Midnite eventually performed and designed costumes for four years at Club 82 in New York City.
“Tony Midnite” enters the record as american female impersonator, costume designer, activist, and book reviewer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tony, Midnite and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q84861365. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926, 2009, 1948 and 1951.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tony Midnite” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.