No. 12: To Springfield, With Love

Apu’s Kwik-E-Mart is located at 57 Mount Auburn St. Comic Book Guy has a master’s degree in Folklore and Mythology. And Springfield’s museum curator is named Hollis Hurlbut.

Harvard references abound on “The Simpsons,” television’s definitive animated comedy. And it’s all because of the members of a mysterious “Castle” located on the corner of Bow, Plympton, and Mount Auburn Streets. A semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon churns out comedy writers as efficiently as it prints copies.

Conan C. O’Brien ’85, a former writer for “The Simpsons” and current host of NBC’s “Late Night,” got his start in slapstick at the Lampoon. Famously, he was elected into the organization in his freshman fall and earned the title of President two years in a row—a feat accomplished only twice in the Lampoon’s 129-year history. But despite O’Brien’s high-profile role on-camera, it is mostly behind-the-scenes that Harvard (and Lampoon, we concede) alums spin comedic gold.

Far before Conan’s tenure at the multiple-Emmy-winning cartoon, Harvard alums helped develop and shape the show. Al Jean III ’81 helped craft its first episodes, transitioning “The Simpsons” from a sketch on the Tracy Ullman Show to a cartoon sitcom.

One of the show’s first producers, George A. Meyer ’78, credits the Lampoon with fostering his love of comedy. “At the Lampoon, people take humor very seriously. There was nothing more important on earth than laughing and making other people laugh,” Meyer said in a 2004 New Yorker article. And although no members of the Lampoon would confirm, deny, or supply information, at least 22 “Simpsons” writers graduated from Harvard. For one season, 10 out of 12 “Simpsons” writers were former ’Poonsters/Harvardians, according to the Harvard Crimson.

Successful writers are quick to deny that writing for the Lampoon guarantees a job; the path to the upper echelons of comedy writing is still rocky. “No one would hire a bad writer from Harvard over a talented one from somewhere else,” Michael L. Reiss ’81, former executive producer of “The Simpsons,” told The Crimson in 2000.

But if the connections aren’t enough reason for aspiring comedy writers to attend Harvard, the inspiration certainly is. Allegedly, Bass Professor of Government Michael Sandel is the physical model for Mr. Burns. Whether Burns possesses the same propensity for moral reasoning is questionable, as Homer Simpson’s infamous boss graduated from Yale.