Oh The Things He Knows

Al Franken ’73 has never done things by the book.

Franken, a comedian, writer, actor and political commentator who shifts effortlessly from penning screenplays for the silver screen to cutting up politicians for Comedy Central’s election coverage, defies categorization as an entertainer.

And among Harvard alums to go on to comic stardom, Franken took an unconventional route to fame.

While others such as 2000 Class Day speaker Conan C. O’Brien ’85 cut their teeth writing for the Harvard Lampoon, Franken was rejected from the semi-secret Sorrento Square organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine.

And though O’Brien is a household name, most Poonsters who have gone on to work in comedy do so behind the scenes and are far less recognizable than Franken’s trademark tortoise shell glasses and curly brown hair.

His famous look came accidentally to Franken as a first-year at Harvard.

“I’d never taken a drink of alcohol until my freshman year of college,” Franken says. “My roommate and I split a bottle of scotch and got so drunk and I fell down the stairs and broke my glasses.”

He replaced them with the dark-framed glasses he wears to this day.

While the accident created the appearance that became part of his comedic persona, his success in comedy was no accident.

By meshing together his life-long interests in politics and comedy into an inseparable pair, Franken has forged a unique brand of satire that in many ways has redefined political humor.

With a career that has included starring in his own short-lived primetime television series and feature film to authoring best-selling books, Franken has been one of the most versatile entertainers in recent memory.

And as one the original writers for Saturday Night Live (SNL), Franken’s comedic skill—which has garnered five Emmy awards—helped build a show that is now one of the most celebrated in television history.

Today, Franken will impart his humorous brand of advice and wisdom on a graduating class of Harvard undergraduates ready to begin their own journeys after college with a laugh.

‘Honest Al’

Born in New York City in 1951, Franken spent most of his early life growing up in suburban Minneapolis, where he inherited a love of politics from his parents during the politically-charged 1960s.

Franken remembers his family eating dinner while glued to the nightly news, watching historical moments sch as the Civil Rights Movement unfold.

Despite his future calling, Franken was far from being a class clown, excelling in his studies. And while neither of his parents had gone to college, higher education always loomed in Franken’s future.

His older brother was a “Sputnik child”—a science buff pushed into the field by the 1950s space race—who attended college at MIT. Franken expected to follow suit and enter the science field.

But Franken’s early interest in politics led him to work on Democratic presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey’s campaign, as well as other local campaigns in Minneapolis in high school.

David W. Griffin `73, Franken’s junior high school classmate and Harvard freshman year roommate, says that even in junior high school, Franken would lead the discussions of politics in civics class each week.

As he would do throughout his career, Franken was able to meld his interests in politics with comedy at an early age.

“He ran for class president our seventh grade year and his motto was ‘Never spit in a man’s face unless his moustache was on fire,’” Griffin says.

Franken, or “Honest Al” as he ran, won the election.

The Unconventional Path

When Franken entered Harvard in 1969, he continued his comedic antics. Griffin says he is glad he did not live with Franken after their first year because he would not have gotten any work done.

He particularly remembers playing a game they called “extreme frisbee,” in which he and Franken would throw frisbees at each other as hard as they could in their common room, with each wearing protective clothing.

And while Franken had set his academic sights on science in his first year, he quickly learned the field was not his strong suit, as revealed in a Harvard-sponsored psychology test on career aptitude.

“I took the test and scientist came in at dead last. Number one was camp counselor and jazz musician was second,” Franken says.

Comedian was not a career option on the test—but Franken decided to pursue the profession anyway.

But he did not follow the traditional routes into the entertainment business available at Harvard. He became neither a member of the Harvard Lampoon nor the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, both known for their connections in the entertainment industry.

While the Lampoon—which Franken on numerous attempts failed to become a part of—was famous for producing comedy writers and entertainers, Franken could not reconcile its social club atmosphere with the humor side of the magazine.

“I think you were supposed to show up in a tuxedo at the first event and I didn’t,” Franken says. “I was very much in a ’60s ethic and the Lampoon still had a lot of preppiness to it. It was sort of a clash.”

So instead of spending his time at the Lampoon castle, Franken began putting on shows in Dunster and Currier House, and the Loeb theater.

He particularly remembers a show he put on in Dunster House called “Nixon.”

“It was about everything that was happening both at Harvard and the war and the administration,” Franken says. “I had a character who was called ‘Ira Irate.’ It was modeled after the prototypical SDSer. It was a very successful show.”

Franken’s satire of radical students came from his own experience of the ’60s political scene at Harvard.

Franken participated in several marches on Washington during his college years—but only gained an arrest for hitch-hiking his way down in New Jersey.

“I always felt that the more radical elements at the school took themselves incredibly seriously or were very melodramatic and self-indulgent,” Franken says.

He instead characterized himself as “a more moderate strategic-minded liberal antiwar activist.”

His political observations became the basis of his maturing comedic routine.

By his senior year, Franken and his future SNL co-writer Tom Davis—who had performed in Minneapolis comedy clubs with Franken during high school—traveled to New York almost every weekend to do stand-up at various comedy clubs.

At one point, Franken took Yiddish while at Harvard just so he could tell jokes on a comedy route through resorts in the Catskills.

Any academic diligence Franken had possessed in his first year at Harvard had disappeared by the time he was a senior.

“I spent less and less time studying as my career at Harvard progressed,” Franken says. “By my senior year Tom was actually living with me in Dunster House. He just stayed on a futon in the living room and I snuck him food. I was sort of already out the door.”

From St. Nick to SNL

Franken’s comedy pursuits at Harvard propelled his career in professional comedy—although he did have a bumpy start.

When he and Davis moved to Los Angeles from Cambridge after graduation, they subsisted on a diet of rice and beans, while working at odd jobs.

The comedy duo even resorted to dressing up as a Santa Claus and Winnie the Pooh for the North Hollywood Sears.

“It was hard to be Santa all day,” Franken says. “Winnie the Pooh was pretty awful too because it was this big costume and you looked through the honey pot and these kids would just slam themselves into you.”

But in July 1975 he and Davis were hired to write for a new comedy show, Saturday Night live—and the rice and beans diet ended.

Franken, who says his “youthful arrogance” made him realize the show would be a hit, quickly developed political sketches as a staple of SNL.

“Al was probably one of the first people to be interested in it per se—not political figures and their sex lives but trying to write sketches about things that were going on,” says James M. W. Downey `74, one of Franken’s co-writers.

But despite the show’s successful start, Franken was not completely satisfied with his new job, according to Davis.

“When we didn’t get in the cast that year he wanted to go back to L.A.,” Davis says.

Davis convinced him to stay, though, and the comedy duo would write ‘Franken and Davis’ skits, waiting for weeks until there was a spare moment on the show for them to perform them.

It was not until 1980 that Franken left SNL with most of the other original writers to pursue a career in the movie industry.

“We thought that was the end of the show,” Davis says. “NBC was like ‘Oh no, the show is going on without you.’”

It turned out Franken and Davis needed SNL as much as SNL needed them—within five years, after writing a screenplay that was never produced, Franken was back in New York City writing and performing for SNL.

Stuart Steps Up

Franken’s work after his return to SNL in 1985 focused on his life-long strength of political humor.

Franken’s friends say the show’s success at political satire came from his memorable parodies of politicians.

“When Al is more known for doing his impression of a candidate than the candidate is, that’s something,” said Dave Mandell ’92, who worked with Franken at SNL and Comedy Central. “Say what you want about the great stand-ups of our time, whatever comedian you love, has that comedian ever mentioned the Congressional Quarterly [in his comedy]?”

But beyond his political impersonations, Franken was best known for his role as Stuart Smalley, a 12-step program junkie who gave motivational advice.

The character was turned into the feature film “Stuart Saves his Family” in 1995.

And Franken did not just stick to SNL, branching out to co-write the successful drama, “When a Man Loves a Woman,” about an alcoholic woman and her husband.

He was also featured as a commentator for CNN’s coverage of the 1992 and 1996 Democratic National Conventions, as well as the host of Comedy Central’s Indecision ’92.

And in recent years, Franken has become a successful humor writer, melding his comedic talent and political interests into the best-selling political satires Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Why Not Me?

But Franken’s successful career has also seen its share of failures. His attempt at a prime time television show in 1998—”Lateline”—was cancelled after only a few weeks on the air.

Franken says the show, which was a political parody of a nightly news program, was not given a fair shot by the network.

“I really felt that NBC didn’t give us a chance—they kept moving us around and made it hard for people to find it,” Franken said. “I still have a bitter taste in my mouth.”

Behind the Laughter

But friends say it is not Franken’s list of accomplishments or his few failures that define him or his career.

“The best thing about Al is he doesn’t waste time,” Mandell says. “There’s a lot of comedy writers who will talk about the philosophy of comedy and what you’re trying to achieve until you want to kill yourself. Al and I would talk about what the piece was and then he was just very happy to start writing.”

Mandell, who says he owes his career to Franken, describes the key factor that has made Franken successful for so long as a “built-in fearlessness.”

“As a performer, Al’s not afraid to look stupid, he’s not afraid to be ugly, he’s not afraid to go over the audience’s head,” Mandell says.

But Wendell Wilkie `73, a high school friend and college roommate, says it is Franken’s “big heart” that not only makes him a great comedian, but also a great person.

“He’s smart and he’s serious and probably unlike a lot of people in the

industry he has a lot of common sense,” Wilkie says. “If you were in a small crowd it’s not as if he is the wise-cracking, smart allecky life of the party.”

More than anything, though, Franken’s friends say that he is a good friend, as well as husband and father.

Wilkie and Griffin say they keep in touch with Franken by telephone and whenever Franken is in Minneapolis, the three get together.

“He’s very true to Minnesota, to his roots and his friends,” Wilkie says. “He’s maintained his ties to the Twin Cities in a remarkable way.”

Franken met his wife, Frannie, at a Simmons-Harvard mixer the first weekend of his freshman year—and they have been together ever since.

“The first girl he asked to dance was his future wife,” Griffin says. “He’s really a very trustworthy mate and friend. He’s also a very sincere person.”

Franken says his children are the most important part of his life.

“Being a father is the thing that I’m sort of most proud of,” Franken says. “You have a lot of responsibilities in your life...but your primary responsibility in your life if you have kids is to be a good parent,” he says.

With a Grain of Salt

Currently, Franken is promoting his latest book, Oh, the Things I Know, which gives advice to graduating seniors.

Franken says he decided on the project after picking up some books offering graduates advice, including Anna Quindlen’s A Short Guide to a Happy Life, and they made him “want to throw up.”

He recounts in a mockingly serious voice how Quindlen writes of an encounter with a wise homeless man who tells her to “look at the view, young lady.’”

“It was like ‘Oh Jesus,’” Franken says. “The guy really didn’t say look at the view. He said, ‘Feed me.’”

Franken says the graduating seniors should not buy into the “fraudulence of success” that some advice books preach.

And while Franken would not share the details of his Class Day speech, he is no stranger to the Class Day podium.

He spoke as a graduating senior at the event nearly 30 years ago, and according to friends, managed to mix in Marilyn Monroe jokes and a jab at the Class Day speaker that year, playwrite Arthur Miller.

Most likely, Franken’s speech this year will be a combination of the earnest seriousness and satire that characterized him even then—mixed with a healthy dose of the parental advice and worldly wisdom he has gained since the last time he held the spotlight in Tercentenary Theater.

—Staff writer Anne K. Kofol can be reached at kofol@fas.harvard.edu.