Spotlight, Streetlight

YOU CAN'T BE too knowing to be in a Pudding show," Mark O'Donnell said at the gala opening of his Tots in Tinseltown. One wonders about those in the Pudding. A homogenous mass composed of the adolescent suet of the land, the Pudding remains in its 1930's mold even today. In the oak-panelled room, the chic play pool under hanging metal-shaded bulbs. They dress in vests and slick their hair back, but these kids' costumes aren't just dress-up. Anyone passing at night on Holyoke St., looking in through the lighted arched windows, can see that they finger their cues smoothly. They know how to play this game.

The Hasty Pudding's oh-so-gentlemanly sport has gone on with only minor interruptions (World Wars I and II) almost as long as the ruling elite have sent their sons to Harvard. Though similar clubs have gone under or underground this one has come back from the squelchings of '69 and years like it with resiliency. The secret of the Pudding's longer shelf life seems to be the consummate social artistry of its Theatricals. These continuing efforts at a form of culture which, after all, involves an audience, an outside world, make the club more palatable to theatre-chair radicals while giving members some sense of the shape and purpose of their anachronistic act.

Opening night of a Pudding show is class. Livery and lingerie are de rigeur and the shine of diamonds mingles with the sheen of vaseline. Though not the well-sifted company of Strawberry Night--the showing to which only members of clubs are invited--still, everyone who should be here, is here, smahshing, absolutely dahshing, spectacle, the 'Asty's opening night. Champagne glasses litter every ledge; empty bottles cover the pool table (draped with a white cloth for the occasion). Everyone waves the bubbly with reckless dash over the floor or other people. The stuff flows freely; those present have paid $12.50 apiece for this status, but there is no cash in sight. All the green paper-work has been taken care of beforehand, cleaned out of the way, so no one will have to think about it this evening.

No one thinks much at all, in the roar and glitter. On the street outside a crowd has gathered, attracted by the klieg lights swooping over Cambridge, and by Robert Blake, Man of the Year. Blake, who says he's "never won nuttin' like dis before", leans out the window and waves to his teenage fans. After a while he is pulled back inside, and the window shut. Those within have paid to laugh; serious adulation is out of place.

Besides, the show is starting. Usherettes in mascara and Shalimar sell programs and herd the audience into the theater. Most of these socialites' names can be found under "publicity" in the back of this 71-page PR job, accompanied by a picture--in true Freshman Register style. The lights go down, a spot comes up on stage and Blake blunders into it like an oversized moth. He "doesn't quite know what to say," but the producers, practiced in this sort of thing, can say it all. Having been expertly guided through his performance, the star of Baretta stumbles offstage. The composer and director are exhibited next; Judy Haskell '51, as the first woman to direct an HPT show is something new, and slightly progressive. Very much "the thing", and treated as such. She is given a hand by the producers and the audience and "welcomed to Harvard." Certainly Haskell had never been to this Harvard when she was an undergraduate. A turn and she descends the ramp as the clapping becomes restive. The the music comes up, the curtain rises on the tots and tinsel onstage, as the shimmering house adjusts its trappings of tails and trains, waiting to be amused.

If they find themselves funny, they should not be disappointed with the show. Mark O'Donnell, taking his cue from the stuffed crocodiles over the Pudding's mantel, manages to change a repugnant beast and a vicious sport into a joke. Tots in Tinseltown mocks elitism, the quest for social position and the opportunist money-grubbing that buys such status. O'Donnell's game is played by the Peabodies and the Woolworths, who cavort on stage, singing "We went and bought ourselves a lot of mystique..." The audience--Pudding members, patrons, and impressionable followers--love it. They clap and laugh at the lyrics thrown in their faces: Where the action is high-paced A million dollars can go to waste We've embraced its lack of taste Hey Whaddya say Lets all be tots in tinseltown today. On the Pudding's stage, this Hollywood 1930's parody becomes description of present reality.

Kitty, Preston, and the rest of the chorus stand sweating in the spotlight as the audience applauds. The curtain falls and everyone moves en masse--despite the home-grown quality of these aristos, they do everything in a foreign language--to the bar. People begin looking for the Right People.

Outside, a group of kids from the boondocks of Southie have been waiting two and a half hours for their heartthrob, Blake, to emerge. Now they besiege the well-guarded door: "Please just tell Mister Blake t' go t' the' window, just tell him there's a lotta kids out here wanta see him 'n take pichas, please..." The door is shut on their pleading. "Are you going to tell Blake he's got fans outside?" an uninitiated bystander asks. The tall toothy club member playing footman at the door raises his Aryan eyebrows. "Are you kidding?" he laughs shortly, a watchdog bark. Kitty would never have made it through that door.

ACT TWO PICKS up the pace with a barrage of catchy tunes and amusing lyrics, culminating in the traditional male chorus line. The audience, now thoroughly soused, responds with vigor, pounding, clapping, as the legs pump up and down on stage. Tired by the heat and drink, scattered industrialists sleep through the climax. The pageant comes to a close soon after, with a patriotic song extolling the virtues of materialism and the values of the Pudding: Lets all stay home Because in other lands People have to earn their pay. But in our motherland... Lets all be tots in tinseltown today. An open invitation for the elite that can buy it, to the ignorance and irresponsibility that O'Donnell naively calls "the innocence of the Pudding." Cheering. the onlookers wave champagne bottles.

The apres-gala orgy, consecrated by custom, begins. Sloshing up the stairs, one of the producers of the event mutters to a crepe-dressed mannequin: "We're running out of champagne, for God's sake, where'd it all go to?" Blake, who has had just about all of the Pudding's hospitality he can hold, leaves, with a few companions. The kids are still waiting on the sidewalk across from the Pudding. It's 1 a.m. and a policeman is telling them to move on, go home, but they scatter, regroup and wait huddled in the circle of the streetlight. When Blake appears they cheer and crowd around him. "I touched him! Sign mine too!" They drift off chattering excitedly down the street, elated by having stuck it out, having won.

The lights blaze on in the warm pool room and upstairs where the crocodiles smile. But it's nice out on the street; the klieg lights are off and the darkness is refreshingly cold. Too much Pudding leaves a sickly-sweet taste, like cheap champagne.