No One Makes Hasty Pudding Anymore

NO ONE MAKES hasty pudding anymore. We can thank the boys over at 12 Holyoke St. for that, if nothing else. A vile combination of corn meal, Lutmeg, giner, eggs, water, milk, molasses and butter, the stuff used to be whipped up in the late 1700s by Harvard undergraduates to supplement the rather gross fare of the pre-Central Kitchen era. In those days, the story goes, you might catch a glimpse some night of students bearing a steaming kettle of this poison on a pole to wherever the Hasty Pudding Club was assembled for the evening. Everybody would then fill themselves to the accompaniment of mock trials staged by club members. Fortunately, both the College cusine and the Hasty Pudding have matured, although at times both still seem rather half-baked.

The building at 12 Holyoke St., which today houses both the Hasty Pudding Club and Theatricals, dates back to the 1880s. The decor, what there is of it, is simple: a few chairs and tables in every room. Posters and photographs from old Pudding shows blanket the walls. Many of the posters show a large investment of time and talent. Some are done in beautiful pastels and others in oil. Those from the early twentieth century display a marked Toulouse Lautrec influence.

A distinctly preppy atmosphere permeates the place. Only the Faculty Club can claim more vests, ties, and jackets per square inch of club floor space. Long hair is rare. Pudding men tend to look more like Cleveland Jaycees than undergraduates or "theater people."

THE MODERN Hasty Pudding Club is the result of mergers with several other organizations. Today the line between the eating club and the Theatricals is anything but distinct. The Theatricals uses its own stationery and does not impose club membership as a prerequisite for stage work. Women, to whom the Club was just recently opened, may be surprised to learn that the Theatricals will have them as stagehands and ticket sellers, but not on stage. As one Theatricals member put it: "A couple of other Ivy theatrical groups tried to put women on the stage but it just didn't work out. With everybody in drag you can go with old, hackneyed stuff and still get laughs. In an all-male cast, certain things are bound to be funny."

This womanless ("hairy legs") tradition dates back to the first Pudding production of December 13, 1844 in Hollis 11. That first production was a direct steal from a stage play which had run in Boston at the old Tremont Theatre. Lemuel Hayward '45, together with a few of his colleagues, agreed that the mock trials had run their course. (The most popular of them had been called Dido vs. Aeneas: for Breach of Trust). And so Bombastes Furioso, the first in a long line of Pudding preparations was born. The play included one female character named Distaffina. "Madam" Augustus F. Hinchman '45 took the role. As Hayward later recalled:

"The play went off splendidly--Distaffina more a low neck and short sleeves, and on her introducing a fancy dance, the applause almost shook old Hollis down. Another member of the Club lived in the rooms across the entry, and there we had the pudding after the play, the actors kept on their dresses and poor Distaffina was nearly bothered to death by her admirers."

For years the Pudding continued to "borrow" from the legitimate stage. The results were mostly theatrical bastards. Although a few hearty souls urged a return to the mock trial genre, the progressives prevailed and within five years after the first performance of Bombastes, all traces of the trials had disappeared. The early plays were rehashed again and again. Between 1844 and 1860 there were at least six performances of Bombastes, four of something called Slasher and Crasher and two of My Wife's Come.

Eventually, the Pudding, becoming a bit more daring and creative, began to write its own shows and, later, music. The 1855 production of Tom Thumb setwords to music, although it remained for Owen Wister '82, to write the first real musical--the first musical comedy in the United States. It was also the first of many Pudding dishes to tour, playing Boston, New York and Philadelphia. The question of the first truly "original" Pudding show is open to debate although the Class of 1867's claim is the earliest, and hence the accepted one.

Originally all Pudding shows were performed by and for Pudding Club members only. But with the later, larger productions this changed. Tom Thumb marked the first public performance of a Pudding show, although the practice didn't solidify into tradition until well after the Civil War.

After the debut of Bombastes, shows continued to be performed in the Yard. Stoughton 29 and 31 became the permanent domain of the Theatricals until 1876 when it was driven, after a fire scare, to an isolated frame house near Memorial Hall.

The rooms there were small, bleak and lighted by clumsy bronze, sphinx-shaped gas jets. The floors were filthy and uncarpeted, furnished with nothing save a piano out of tune from dampness and abuse. By 1888, however the Club and Theatricals occupied its present quarters at 12 Holyoke St. with its spacious rooms and ample theater.

THE PUDDING BUBBLED into the twentieth century, turning out a few good shows and many more atrocious ones. One can draw an historical line separating the "modern" and "pre-modern" Pudding eras at World War I. In the spring of 1917, Robert Sherwood '18 had his Barnum Was Right hip-deep into rechearsals with opening night a bare fortnight away. The show was abruptly cancelled and the entire cast marched off to war. Several received decorations for bravery. One of the principle characters and six chorus "girls" gave their lives. Sherwood himself left to serve in the Canadian Black Watch.

But Barnum didn't die and it was revived in 1920 with a bigger budget--$12,000--unheard of until that time. The next production, Westward Ho! tipped the scales at $16,000, although it ended up several hundred dollars in the red due to extravagance and poor management. Since then the Pudding shows have grown larger and more expensive. This year's Bewitched Bayou is budgeted at a healthy $60,000.

The history of the Pudding is rife with little known, tasty and insipid tidbits. Today's Pudding players would no doubt rather forget 1875's The Mischievous Nigger starring Anthony Snow in the title role. The story of 1914's road tour of Legend of Loravia is one of the funniest things to come from the Pudding--certainly far more humorous than most of the shows. One evening an informal party was held backstage before curtain time and everyone had a bit too much of his or "her" favorite beverage. As Roger S. Hewlett '33 recounted it: "When the curtain arose disclosing the 'picture'--hero in a tree, cast kneeling before it on the ground--their plight soon became evident. The hero fell headlong from the tree and lay prone on the stage, and when rescue came in was found that the chorus was sound asleep to a man. The curtain redescended immediately."

When Fireman Save My Child played New York in 1929 it flopped so badly that a segment of the Harvard Alumni in New York demanded that the Pudding and its show steer clear of that city in the future. But the following year's production was so good that the alumni begged the Pudding to come back. The Pudding, perhaps a bit indignant at the previous year's rough treatment, refused.

Like most old Harvard organizations, the Pudding can claim its share of famous alumni. J.P. Morgan '89 was a terrible business manager. Humorist Robert Benchley '12 was "dazzling" as the hairdresser Mayme O'Brien in The Crystal Gazer. The young Frankling Roosevelt '04 a mere stage hand, found his niche in history as the President of The Crimson. Most of us know Archibald Cox '34 as Solicitor General and University troubleshooter in the Pusey years. Few could today visualize him as a chorus girl in Pudding on the Ritz 40 years ago.

More recently the Pudding has hatched a basketful of alumni who have continued their theatrical pursuits professionally. Alan Jay Lerner '40 wrote the music for two consecutive shows. Jack Lemmon '47 was president of Hasty Pudding Theatricals. In 1946, he starred in something call The Proof of the Pudding and was compelled to perform under a pseudonym, reputedly because he was then on academic probation. And anyone who has seen Lemmon as Daphne on the screen in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot will recognize the appeal of the role for Lemmon--the quintessential Pudding part.

Even Herman Munster once graced the Pudding stage. Fred Gwynne '51 found fame and fortune as TV's pathetic Frankenstein after stints in three Pudding shows. Erich Segal '58 authored The Big Fizz which he recalls today as little more than one large soap bubble. "I refused to write those typically gross Pudding jokes," he says. "So the guys adlibbed the most incredible raunch you can imagine."

Over the years, through bad shows and worse, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals has become talented in at least one area--self-promotion. As the Pudding has aged it has branched out, trading on its name and Harvard affiliation to reap ever greater unwarranted prestige. Be assured that when the Pudding publicists tell you that their is the world's third oldest theatrical organization, they want it translated as third best. By shrewdly playing up this single fact to the uninitiated, it can raise its stock without raising its standards.

The publicity engine runs smoothest in the Pudding's absurd Man and Woman of the Year Awards. By bringing such luminaries as Liza Minelli, James Stewart and Paul Newman to Harvard, the boys at 12 Holyoke have arranged a can't miss mechanism geared to shower headlines on wheat and chaff alike.

PUDDING PREOCCUPATION with publicity began paying dividends long ago and in grand fashion. When the 100th show Here's the Pitch, billed as a "Gay '90s extravaganza," opened in 1947, Newsweek and Life each devoted a full page to the event. "The club began when undergraduates gathered in each other's room to put on mock trials," Life reported. "By 1844 they had developed real theatricals."

It is overly generous to call some of the Pudding's past productions "theatrical" in any meaningful sense. While one can hardly expect undergraduate talent to produce a West Side Story every year, the Pudding has traditionally reveled in insipid humor of the bawdy bathroom variety with acting bad enough to make a stone cry.

It seems unlikely that the winds of change will ever blow through the Hasty Pudding Theatricals. Perhaps the most positive thing that can be said about the shows is that they are unique. They have obviously attracted a devoted following. Says one Theatricals member: "The same people come year after year and its like a ritual with some people. Some even want a special seat. And when the show hits New York one lady buys up two dozen seats every year so that all her friends can have a big night out. It's unbelievable!"

I wonder if she eats hasty pudding.