The Harvard Lampoon

The Harvard Lampoon

The Harvard Lampoon building on the night of its 100th Anniversary celebration. Designed by Edmund M. Wheelwright.
Categories	Humor magazine
Year founded	February 1876 (1876-02)
Based in	Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.
Language	English
Website	harvardlampoon.com

View of the Harvard Lampoon Castle

The Harvard Lampoon is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Overview

The Harvard Lampoon publication was founded in 1876 by seven undergraduates at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts who were inspired by popular magazines like Punch (1841) and Puck (1871).^[1][2]The Harvard Lampoon is the world's second longest-running continually published humor magazine (after Nebelspalter).

The organization also produces occasional humor books (the best known being the 1969 J.R.R. Tolkien parody Bored of the Rings) and parodies of national magazines such as Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated. Much of the organization's capital is provided by the licensing of the "Lampoon" name to National Lampoon, begun by Harvard Lampoon graduates in 1970.

The Lampoon publishes five issues annually. In 2006, the Lampoon began regularly releasing content on its website, including pieces from the magazine and web-only content. In 2009, the Lampoon published a parody of Twilight called Nightlight, which is a New York Times bestseller.^[3] In February 2012, the Lampoon released a parody of The Hunger Games called The Hunger Pains.^[4][5] It is also a New York Times bestseller.^[6]

Lampoon's Ibis Mascot c.1888

The Lampoon is housed a few blocks from Harvard Square in a mock-Flemish castle, the Harvard Lampoon Building.

The Lampoon is known for its bacchanalian parties, which can result in smashed plates and furniture.

Lampy posing in an image from an 1886 Lampoon

History

The 1885 Lampoon staff includes several notables, such as philosopher G. Santayana and newspaperman W.R. Hearst

Title Dingbat from an 1886 Lampoon

The Harvard Lampoon was first published in 1876 by seven founders including Ralph Wormeley Curtis, Edward Sandford Martin, Edmund March Wheelwright, and Arthur Murray Sherwood,^[7] (father of Robert E. Sherwood).^[8] The first issue of the Lampoon was a single copy, nailed to a tree in Harvard Yard. In its earliest years the magazine focused primarily on the satirization of Harvard and Boston Brahmin society.

As the Lampoon began to gain notoriety on campus, the society moved from offices in Hollis Hall, to addresses on Holyoke and Plympton streets respectively. These collections of rooms rented by the trustees of the Lampoon were famous not only for their beer nights, but also with the regularity that the Lampoon spent the profits made on each magazine for these beer nights. "It was a good night when the Lampoon could afford coal and beer, and they often had to choose between one or the other." Pranks abounded in the early years, some more destructive than others." William Randolph Hearst was expelled from Harvard after sending a pudding pot used as a chamber pot to a professor.^[9]

A Lampoon graduate from 1887, Archibald Cary Coolidge, professor of architecture at Harvard College, was chosen as the architect of Randolph Hall, one of the colleges newest dormitories. Legend has it that when designing Randolph, Coolidge purposefully made the dormitory recessed further back from Mt. Auburn Street than was at first designed, purchasing for himself the land the Castle now stands on. The design of the castle was given to Edmund March Wheelwright, then city architect of Boston.

The Lampoon and its sensibility began to branch out away from the Harvard campus in the early 1960s, and soon became an especially important expression and feeder system of American humor and comedy since that time. In 1961, Mademoiselle offered the Lampoon staff an honorarium to produce a parody of their own magazine for the traditionally lower-selling July issue. The project boosted Mademoiselle's summer circulation along with the Lampoon's ever tenuous cash flow, and the magazine renewed its association with the Lampoon for a follow-up parody in July 1962, and a third parody issue (of Esquire) in July 1963. The magazine also produced a 70-page spoof of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels in 1962 titled Alligator, which was subsequently released by Random House. These projects proved popular, and led to full, nationally-distributed parodies of Playboy (1966), Time (1968), and Life (1969), and later, Cosmopolitan in 1972 and Sports Illustrated (1974).

An important line of demarcation came when Lampoon editors Douglas Kenney and Henry Beard wrote the Tolkien parody Bored of the Rings. The success of this book and the attention it brought its authors led directly to the creation of the National Lampoon magazine, which spun off a live show Lemmings, and then a radio show in the early 1970s, The National Lampoon Radio Hour, which featured such performers as Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Chevy Chase.

Writers from these shows were subsequently hired to help create Saturday Night Live. This was the first in a line of many TV shows that Lampoon graduates went on to write for, including The Simpsons, Futurama, Saturday Night Live, Late Night with David Letterman, Seinfeld, Friends, The League, NewsRadio, The Office, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation and dozens of others. An old copy of the magazine was shown in the fourth-season finale of NewsRadio, and referred to as the "nefarious scandal sheet."

Cartoon by philosopher G. Santayana, Harvard class of 1886

Masthead of The Harvard Lampoon

Lampoon alumni include such comedians as Conan O'Brien, Andy Borowitz, B. J. Novak, Greg Daniels, Michael Schur, and Colin Jost. Etan Cohen wrote for Beavis and Butt-Head as an undergraduate member. In 1986 former editor Kurt Andersen co-founded the satirical magazine Spy, which employed Lampoon writers Paul Simms and Eric Kaplan, and published the work of Lampoon alumni Patricia Marx, Lawrence O'Donnell and Mark O'Donnell. The Lampoon has also graduated many noted authors such as George Plimpton, George Santayana, John Updike, and William Gaddis. Actor Fred Gwynne was a cartoonist and president of the Lampoon. Famous Boston lawyer Bradley Palmer acted as treasurer for the Lampoon.

Celebrities often visit the Lampoon to be inducted as honorary members of the organization. Honorary members include Tony Hawk, Bill Cosby, Robin Williams, Elon Musk, Tracey Ullman, John Cleese, Jay Leno, Winston Churchill, Aerosmith, Adam Sandler, Billy Crystal, Ke$ha, Hugh Hefner, Ezra Pound, Kurt Vonnegut, the cast of Saturday Night Live, Sarah Silverman, and John Wayne.

It is disputed whether the etymology of "Lampoon" in the English language stems first from the Harvard Lampoon.

Rivalry with The Harvard Crimson

The Lampoon has a long-standing rivalry with Harvard's student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, which repeatedly refers to the Lampoon in its pages as a "semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization which used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine".

1886 example of Crimson-teasing by Lampoon editor T.P. Sanborn

A noted event in the history of the Lampoon–Crimson rivalry was the Crimson's 1953 theft of the Lampoon Castle's ibis statue and presentation of it as a gift to the government of the Soviet Union.^[10][11]

On September 27, 2011, the Lampoon stole the Harvard Crimson President's Chair, and had it used as a prop on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.^[12] On June 2, 2015, the Lampoon again stole the Harvard Crimson President's Chair, this time, pretending that it was the Harvard Crimson's editorial staff, they took the chair to Trump Tower to endorse now-President Donald Trump.^[13]

Notable members

• Edmund March Wheelwright (American Architect) – City Architect of Boston. Architect of the Harvard Lampoon Castle. Descendant of the Boston Wheelwright family
• John Brooks Wheelwright – American Poet. Co-founder of the Lampoon. Marxist, a founder-member of the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in the United States
• Ralph Wormeley Curtis – American painter and graphic artist in the Impressionist style
• Frederick Lewis Allen – editor of Harper's Magazine and also notable as an American historian of the first half of the twentieth century. Author of Only Yesterday
• Edward Sandford Martin – first literary editor of Life Magazine
• Thomas Parker Sanborn – American poet. The eldest son of abolitionist, social scientist, and memorialist of American transcendentalism Franklin Benjamin Sanborn. Model for the protagonist of Santayana's novel The Last Puritan
• Roger Sherman Hoar – Science fiction author under the nome-de-plume Ralph Milne Farley, , senator, and assistant Attorney General
• William Randolph Hearst – American businessman, politician, and newspaper publisher. Member of the U.S. house of Representatives. Known for the media empire Hearst Communications
• John Reed – American journalist, poet, and socialist activist. Remembered for his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World. One of only three Americans buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis
• Charles Hopkinson – American portraitist
• Elliot Richardson – American lawyer and politician. As U.S. Attorney General, he was a prominent figure in the Watergate Scandal, and resigned rather than obey President Nixon's order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox
• George Santayana – Philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist
• Archibald Cary Coolidge – Scholar in international affairs, a planner of the Widener Library, a member of the United States Foreign Service, and editor-in-chief of the policy journal Foreign Affairs
• John P. Marquand – American writer
• William R. Huntington – American architect and Quaker representative to the United Nations
• George Howe (architect) – American architect and educator, and an early convert to the International style
• Ernest Thayer – American writer and poet who authored the poem "Casey" (or "Casey at the Bat")
• Robert E. Sherwood – American playwright, editor, and screenwriter. Author of There Shall Be No Night. Speechwriter for Franklin D. Roosevelt. Pulitzer Prize winning author of the biography Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History
• Harold Weston – American modernist painter whose work included impressionism, realism and abstraction
• Nathaniel Choate – American painter and sculptor who served as vice president of the National Sculpture Society
• Curtis Guild Jr. – American journalist, soldier, diplomat and politician from Massachusetts. 43rd Governor of Massachusetts. Descendant of John Guild and David Cobb
• Winthrop Ames – American theater director and producer, playwright and screenwriter. Known for his production of Shakespeare on Broadway
• F. Van Wyck Mason – American historian and novelist
• Herbert Eustis Winlock – American Egyptologist
• Robert Hoffman (businessman) – Co-founder of The National Lampoon
• Frederic Jesup Stimson – United States ambassador to Argentina
• George Plimpton – American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor
• Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan – United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1966 to 1977
• John Updike – American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only three writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once
• William Gaddis – American novelist. Author of the novels The Recognitions, J R and A Frolic of His Own
• Fred Gwynne – American actor, artist and author
• Kurt Andersen – American Novelist
• Douglas Kenney – American writer and actor. Co-founded the National Lampoon in 1970
• Henry Beard – Co-founder of the National Lampoon
• James Murdoch – British-born Australian-American businessman, the son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch
• Carter Burwell – American film composer (Fargo, Being John Malkovich, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)
• Conan O'Brien – American television host, comedian, writer, and television producer
• Colin Jost – American actor, comedian, and screenwriter (Saturday Night Live)
• B.J. Novak – American actor, screenwriter and producer (The Office)
• Andy Borowitz – American writer, comedian, satirist, and actor
• Lawrence O'Donnell – producer and writer for the NBC series The West Wing, American television pundit, and host of The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
• Justin Hurwitz – Academy award-winning composer (La La Land)
• Robert Carlock- American television writer and producer, (30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt)
• Michael Schur – American television writer and producer (The Office, Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine)
• Hayes Davenport - American television writer and producer, host of Hollywood Handbook podcast
• Geneva Robertson-Dworet - American screenwriter (Tomb Raider, Captain Marvel)
• Michael J. Arlen – American writer. Author of Exiles and Passage to Ararat (winner of the National Book Award). Longtime staff writer and television critic for The New Yorker

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Harvard Lampoon

• The Harvard Lampoon
• Hathi Trust. Harvard Lampoon (1876- )