Candy Goes to Harvard

An exclusive glimpse at the Rabelaisian revelries inside the Harvard Lampoon Castle

"A HARVARD Lampoon party," said Brian McCormick, "is the only place where people who are drunk pretend to be drunk. ' ' This may explain why McCormick, who graduated seven years ago, is among the Lampoon alumni who still haunt the magazine's miniature Castle. On alternate Thursdays the medieval edifice also teems with the latest batch of coed Poonies, baby-faced cigar smokers, and lithe, pastejeweled debauchkas. At last semester's big banquet, John Candy received the annual Get-a-Celebrity-to-Show-Up award. This month there's the Castle's seventy-fifth-birthday bash.

Since 1910, when the oldworld structure, with its imported delft tiles, stained-glass windows, and sixteenth-century wood, was financed by Poonie William Randolph Hearst, it has been the exclusive domain of generations of undergrad wits. Here, twice a year, six or so initiates undergo a prank-filled, sleepless, sodden "Phools' Week."

Founded in 1876, "Lampy" was more than just another Finals Club of Harvard's white-tie elite. Producing the magazine through the years called forth relays of yuksters and hucksters. In the late forties and early fifties, presidents included George Plimpton, John Updike, and Fred "Herman Munster'' Gwynne. Then every Poonie dreamed of working at The New Yorker. Now that humor has mutated from Noel Coward to Ghostbusters, the Lampoon funnels grads to Letterman and Saturday Night Live. (When Updike visited the Castle two days after John Candy, hardly anyone recognized him.)

Part of the shift is economic: the Cosmopolitan parody, the launch of National Lampoon, and its movies Animal House and Vacation have endowed a huge tax-exempt trust which funds all sorts of splashy stunts. In 1976, for example, John Kenneth Galbraith was named "Funniest Professor of the Century" and given a purple-andgold Cadillac. The banquets, however, are paid for with the $120 annual dues and $5 guest fees.

Candy kicked off the evening by announcing, "It's an honor to be at Harvard, the backbone of America's educational system." He paused. "I'm a tit man, myself."

At the cocktail party in the Castle's circular library, the trimmed and tuxed Candy was dandy as the liquor came quicker. He fit right in, trading quips and eyeing all the other guys' dates. He was trundled upstairs to the Great Hall for dinner— sliced ham and steamed potatoes prepped and served by eager young Poonies.

Beneath the dripping candelabra, seventy people squeezed onto benches around the long table. One overzealous server slapped some salad in a cohort's eye. Party poppers exploded like flashbulbs, spewing streamers into food and hair. Each porcelain plate had a different logo: Park Lane Hotel, Wall Street Club. They didn't last long.

"It's banal, but it's fun," yelled a lanky female at Candy ' s elbow. She raised her plate high and dashed it against the baseboard, sending shards and leftovers flying. Most of the women joined in, then the men, and a crowd clambered onto the table, clearing bottles and silverware Rockette-style. "We do get problems with new members from poor backgrounds," admitted one Poonie, "but you just lift their wrist, force them to drop the plate, and they squeal with delight. Somebody's gotta clean up anyway, so a couple more pieces of glass aren't gonna matter. ' '

The shrill cacophony was soon drowned by Motown music, and the party surged to the clear area in front of the fireplace (the massive mantel laden with brassware salvaged by Poonie John Reed during the storming of Leningrad's Winter Palace).

Harvard dean John Marquand, an oversize Lampoon mascot, perched on a giant chair, watching the young uns shimmy-ko-ko-bop below. "Downtown/" cried Candy to the Petula Clark tune. But, despite the men boogying on the mantel, it was a relatively tame Lampoon dinner: no vomiting, no choreography to lip-synched Jackson 5 records, no pie fights, no canisters of nitrous oxide, no Shake 'N Bake rattlesnakes, no pyromania, and no toy trains carting after-dinner mints, just some dessert platters of Yodels, Twinkies, and Ring Dings. Then...

"Steps," the revelers chanted, "steps," and they all filed out into the midnight drizzle to stand on the street stairs and holler. "Make new friends, and keep the old, one is silver and the other gold". . . "Terminal cancer, terminal cancer"... "Oooh-baboo, gonna make a number two!" Pedestrians sipping milk shakes paused to watch. "It looks like a page of GQ,'' said Poonie alumnus Ken Keeler, "but a GQ gone horribly wrong."

The next morning at nine, a woman wearing work clothes and a Walkman surveyed the mosaic of glass, bread, bottle caps, crepe paper, and plate fragments. She's been cleaning up after the banquets for four years. "John Candy was here last night? Really? Did he get drunk? Was everybody drunk? Tell me: do people do this"— she pointed around the room— "when they're drunk? Or are they just acting 'with it'?"

David Handelman