Why Are They Here?

A crowd gathers outside despite the cold and the rain. Police officers blockade the street. A door opens and a group of young men file out, dressed in drag from head to toe, covered in glitter, lace, bustiers, bustles, high heels, wigs, and make-up. Catherine Zeta-Jones—Oscar-winning actress and Hollywood luminary, whose per-film paycheck can reach eight figures—smiles.

From either side, Sam Gale Rosen ’06 and Mathew J. Ferrante ’05 kiss her cheeks. A thousand flashbulbs illuminate the dark porch of 12 Holyoke Street; cameras capture this iconographic image for broadcast on television and publication in countless newspapers and magazines, from The Austin American Statesman to The Hindustan Times to this one.

It’s a made-for-television moment, literally. Since the Woman of the Year award’s earliest years, the double-kiss shot has served as the Hasty Pudding’s unofficial icon. In the center, the celebrity, an entertainer whose living depends upon her ability to perform. On either side, two lucky undergraduates dressed in drag, a sham imitation. The shot juxtaposes beauty and the parody of beauty, the academic and celebrity worlds, the fake and the real.

Kind of like the Hasty Pudding itself. The veneer of camp belies the hard work that 57 undergraduates put in to perfect their garush glitter. The Pudding members mock celebrity, but they also worship it, promote it, and feed off of it. The Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ (HPT) show and the Woman of the Year ceremony are themselves a mix of kitsch and professionalism, heartfelt productions hidden by makeup. It started as a joke, but today, the Pudding is anything but.

How We Got Here

The original Hasty Pudding Club gives its name to two distinct entities today, Hasty Pudding Theatricals (the nation’s oldest theatrical troupe) and Hasty Pudding Club (Harvard’s oldest social organization). The Pudding was conceived in 1795 to “cultivate the social affections and cherish the feelings of friendship and patriotism,” according to its charter.

The club always had an element of farce. At the first gathering, 18 (or 21, depending on whose account you follow) members of the class of 1796 gathered in the dorm room of classmate Nymphas Hatch. The group decided that, at every meeting, one member would provide a pot of hasty pudding, an early American snack of corn meal and molasses. According to a 1973 Crimson article, Pudding members added brandy to the traditional recipe. Relative chaos ensued.

At the turn of the century, the club began holding mock debates, deciding cases such as “Dido vs. Aeneas: For Breach of Promise” and convicting administrators and students alike for crimes such as witchcraft (their pudding was too tasty to be true) and seriousness (perpetrated by countless professors and clergymen).

The Hasty Pudding was also Harvard’s first final club. Initiation rites, originally a force-feeding of pudding, became increasingly elaborate. During the 1873 “run,” or punch, the inductees, called “neophytes,” were forced to write long sets of poems and essays, including 50-page comparisons of the relative merits of a classical and mathematical education and another 50-pager on the relationship between chemistry and medicine. Shortly before punch night, the members burned the essays and poems and asked the neophytes to rewrite them.

In 1844, the Pudding members decided that the mock trials had run their course. Lemuel Hayward, Class of 1845, borrowed a plot from a stage play that had been produced in Boston’s Tremont Theatre and created Bombastes Furioso, a “tragicomic opera.” The Pudding’s all-male company cast Augustus F. Hinchman, Class of 1845, in the coveted drag role of Distaffina. The burlesque was staged on December 13, 1844, in Hollis 11 before an audience of Hasty Pudding members.

The production was a success. Hayward told The Crimson he was pleased.

“The play went off splendidly. Distaffina wore a low neck and short sleeves, and on her introducing a fancy dance, the applause almost shook old Hollis down,” he said. “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.”

The productions became increasingly popular, and the organization grew. By the 1860s, the theatricals company was putting up eight shows a season. In 1866, they stopped borrowing plots and music from professional plays and operas, and their shows became solely student-written and student-produced. In 1867, the Pudding staged its first production before a public audience and in 1888 moved to 12 Holyoke Street. The Hasty Pudding Theatricals and the Hasty Pudding Club formally separated in 1925, although they shared membership until the 1970s and shared the 12 Holyoke Street building until 2003, when the social club departed for the greener pastures of Garden Street.

A Star Is Born

Like the club itself, the Woman of the Year ceremony began as a joke.

In 1949, members of the Hasty Pudding Club decided to honor a woman—at the time in short supply on Harvard’s all-male campus—not for her dedication to the theatrical arts, but for her good looks. The members of the society approached Margaret Truman—President Harry’s daughter. Ms. Truman declined.

A year later, the members of the Pudding made an overture to Sharman Douglas, a celebrity socialite to rival Paris Hilton, the debutante daughter of the American ambassador to Britain, and one of Princess Margaret’s closest friends. The club announced that Douglas had been voted its “Woman of the Year” because “[she has] done more for international goodwill than many a diplomat fully equipped with striped pants and portfolio.” Douglas declined as well.

Nicholas Benton ’51, the president of the Theatricals, tried again in 1951in an attempt to bring more publicity to the show Buddha Knows Best. Instead of aiming for a debutante, the members decided this time to court a celebrity with ties to the Pudding.

The production’s stage manager and director, David B. Aldrich ’52, asked his stepmother, Gertrude Lawrence. At the time, Lawrence was an eminent film and Broadway star who had just appeared in the popular film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. The stepmother and wife of Pudding members, Lawrence accepted enthusiastically.

For the first Woman of the Year ceremony, she arrived at the Pudding, watched a production of Buddha Knows Best, was awarded a Hasty Pudding Pot, and had dinner and drinks with the company. The event was a roaring success; “She stayed until one in the morning!” Benton says today.

The Woman of the Year award—notably not the Actress of the Year award—was originally designed as a ruse to bring an eligible debutante to the blue-blooded club. While that failed, press attention began before anyone accepted the Pudding’s offer. In 1949, The New York Times reported on the club’s failed attempt to recruit Margaret Truman. The next year, the paper printed the Pudding’s 1950 letter begging the pleasure of Sharman Douglas’ company, advising the young socialite that the “well-bred” from Harvard’s “bluest-blooded band” had “more pep and flavor” than the British men she had been dating.

Fifty-four years later, members of the national media come out in droves to catch a glimpse of the chosen ones at ceremonies that now extend to men as well as women. People magazine, Entertainment Tonight, Extra, and Access Hollywood all sent reporters and photographers to cover Catherine Zeta-Jones’ reception of her pot last week. News outlets as far away as India write reports on the Hasty Pudding, bringing the iconic image of the Woman of the Year flanked by undergraduates in drag to breakfast tables across the world.

Rain on Their Parade

Late on the night of February 9, Alexandra L. Gaudiani ’05 drove to Logan Airport to pick up Catherine Zeta-Jones; her husband, fellow Oscar-winner and Pudding honoree Michael Douglas; and her personal assistant.

“When she got off her plane she was really tired, and she was great even though she wanted to pass out,” says Gaudiani, who manages the Man and Woman of the Year events. “She did the Welsh or British kiss on both cheeks.”

At 7:30 the next morning, it was sleeting. Gaudiani, HPT Producer Romina Garber ’06, and Press and Publicity Manager Claire G. Friedman ’07 had to make a decision. Like Zeta-Jones, they were undoubtedly tired. Since intersession, all three had worked 12-hour days at the Pudding on both the Man and Woman of the Year awards and on Terms of Frontierment, the Pudding’s 157th show. The sleet posed a problem.

Afraid that adverse weather would ruin the parade, they decided to cancel the spectacle for the first time in its history. In its place, they staged a “photo op” on the porch. The traditional parade could be taken or left, but the executives of the show knew they could not get away without the traditional kiss on the cheek.

“We had to figure out a way to get the photograph of the Woman of the Year—the kisses on the cheek. We needed to recreate that, to keep the colorful theme without the parade. And the press ate it up. It went really well. I saw that picture all over the place,” says Friedman.

The press has become part of the Woman of the Year institution. Friedman and Gaudiani spent an entire year ensuring that the Pudding show is well-publicized and that the celebrity arrives. “Everything that we do has been the same,” says Friedman. “This is our 157th show, and we’ve been doing Woman of the Year since 1951. And I feel like there are people who come every year to take pictures. I’ve had reporters who’ve been covering this event for 30 years.”

(Phyllis Karas, a stringer for People magazine who has covered the event for years, says there was one thing different about this year’s ceremony: “Never in my life have I had to submit my questions in advance for the Woman of the Year.” Apparently Zeta-Jones has a touch of diva in her.)

At 2:45 p.m., Cambridge police officers closed Holyoke Street between Mass. Ave. and Mt. Auburn Street. Hundreds of Zeta-Jones’ fans stood on their toes behind police tape barricades to catch a glimpse of the star, grumbling that they could not see her close up.

Photographers and members of the press pooled directly in front of the steps of 12 Holyoke Street. At 3 p.m., Zeta-Jones emerged from the Pudding’s front doors surrounded by members of the cast of Terms of Frontierment dressed in their finest. Ten brief minutes later, Zeta-Jones ducked back into the building. It was time for her to focus on the Pudding.

The Roast

The Woman of the Year ceremony, an event designed to popularize the HPT show, now arguably overshadows it. “Even my roommates think that the Hasty Pudding is just about the Man and Woman of the Year,” says Friedman. “That gets so much attention that people don’t even realize that the show is the main staple of the Hasty Pudding, that we put on this musical.”

But the relationship is symbiotic: the celebrity receives publicity for winning the Hasty Pudding award; the Hasty Pudding receives publicity for receiving the celebrity. The most lasting image of the Hasty Pudding, the photograph of the Pudding members kissing the Woman of the Year’s cheeks, encapsulates the situation. The Pudding members and the celebrity are captured together in public, but the personal bonds forged behind the scenes are the ties that bind.

After the photo shoot, Zeta-Jones and her entourage moved into the Hasty Pudding’s theater, with its chipping plaster, peeling paint, and ancient creaky seats. Members of the press lined a wall as friends and family of the cast took their seats. When Zeta-Jones walked to hers, she smiled and preened for the flashing cameras.

Gale Rosen and Ferrante read a short toast to Zeta-Jones and invited her onstage for the traditional roast, a staged presentation during which cast members mercilessly tease the honoree. Ferrante and Gale Rosen, assisted by members of the cast, joshed Zeta-Jones for her less illustrious roles—in The Adventures of the Young Indiana Jones and her position as T-Mobile’s spokeswoman. They made her speak Welsh, sing alternate lyrics to one of the songs from Chicago, re-enact a scene from Entrapment, perform silly dance moves, and swordfight with former Pudding Producer Nicholas H. Ma ’05.

Zeta-Jones threw herself into the roast with unexpected enthusiasm, correcting Gale Rosen and Ferrante’s pronunciation of her name (Zeta has a long ‘e’) and quipping when they tried to catch her off-guard.

“Sam and I were completely and utterly not in control of the roast. She was in the driver’s seat, and Sam and I were just getting dragged along and were going to have to keep up,” Ferrante says.

At one point, Zeta-Jones pulled Ferrante and Gale Rosen off stage and rumpled their hair to show her acting “skills.” She sang, she tap danced, she sword-fought, and 20 minutes later, she was presented with a small brass hasty pudding pot for her lasting contribution to the world of entertainment.

“[My husband] said ‘Just give it back to them, honey! What they give to you, just give it back to them,’” Zeta-Jones told reporters at a press conference afterward.

The public spectacle and the press spectacle of the Woman of the Year award take approximately two hours from start to finish. But Zeta-Jones spent the whole day in Cambridge. The real Woman of the Year event is designed to give Pudding members as much private face time with the recipient as possible.

At noon, Zeta-Jones ate lunch with the six-person executive board and the graduating members of the HPT. Following the private press conference and media interviews, Zeta-Jones attended a “company seminar,” a question and answer session with the entire undergraduate company.

Garber describes the seminar as “the heart and soul” of the Woman of the Year day. “That’s what they’re here for,” says Garber. Members of the HPT asked Zeta-Jones questions about her career, her life, her family, her advice, to which she gave candid replies.

Past Man of the Year recipient Kevin Kline, for instance, says the company seminar was his favorite part of the day and the part of his award experience that he remembers most. “It was amusing, entertaining,” Kline says.

And following the seminar, Zeta-Jones ate dinner with the cast. The Pudding executives toasted the company and the Woman of the Year (Zeta-Jones enthusiastically and personally toasted back, Ferrante said) and the Krokodiloes serenaded her. The after-party usually gives Pudding members another opportunity to talk with the Woman of the Year, but Zeta-Jones could not attend because of time constraints.

Most of Zeta-Jones’ day was spent in the company of this tightly knit group of 57 Harvard undergraduates. “We got to sit at a table with Catherine Zeta-Jones,” gushed Maggie F. Shipstead ’05, one of the show’s authors.

“She was just a very cool person. We interacted very naturally—we talked about Canada,” says John P. Blickstead ’06, an author and cast member.

The Love-In

Zeta-Jones follows in an illustrious line of Hollywood heavy hitters, including Julia Roberts, Katharine Hepburn, and Meryl Streep. All came to Harvard for a gaudy photo-op, a gaudy production, and a gaudy brass pot—and ended up spending the day with Harvard students. Somehow, the Hasty Pudding has created an award that celebrities consent to and even enjoy winning.

This is perhaps because the purpose of the award —whether to honor a brilliant actress sincerely, to allow the Pudding members to interact with a celebrity, or to create publicity for the Hasty Pudding—has never been entirely clear. While the award is certainly a work of levity, it attracts the most serious of thespians. In 1967, Bob Hope was made the first honorary member of the Hasty Pudding (the following year, Paul Newman was officially named Man of the Year). But the award was treated as a joke; The Crimson reported on the 1967 Woman of the Year award, saying, “The club is giving Miss [Lauren] Bacall the award ‘in recognition of her great acting skill and feminine qualities.’”

The roasts were often brief and the Men and Women of the Year often left shortly after the production. Past Crimson articles refer to the awards as “slick p.r.” and “publicity stunts”; in 1973, Crimson arts writer Dwight L. Cramer ’74 wrote, “The publicity engine runs smoothest in the Pudding’s absurd Man and Woman of the Year Awards.”

But even the Pudding members at the first Woman of the Year award remember the ceremony as an intimate and informative experience. Gertrude Lawrence invited 40 members of the Pudding company to see her star in a production of The King and I; the members donned black tie and attended the opening night at the Chivot Theatre in Boston. David T. Owsley ’51 remembers how some members stayed for four hours. “I sat with Mrs. Hammerstein and Mrs. Rodgers,” he recalls.

Many Pudding members of the HPT’s class of 1951 heeded Lawrence’s advice and went into the theater. Owsley, who played Dr. Mendoza in the cast of Buddha Knows Best, described the Hasty Pudding as a “great preamble” for the careers of several members of the cast. Fred H. Gwynne ’51, a three-year HPT cast member and the President of The Harvard Lampoon, went on to become Herman Munster in the popular eponymous television program. David A. Hays ’52, who designed the sets for Buddha Knows Best, designed the sets for the original 1956 Broadway production of Eugene O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which won the 1957 Tony Award for Best Play.

While the Woman of the Year ceremony is still a ribald event, the HPT treats the award with reverence. For them, the Man and Woman of the Year visits are “icing on the cake”—a phrase repeated by several current Pudding members—a chance to appreciate and connect with a consummate professional, and a chance to have that professional appreciate their production. Ferrante describes the Woman of the Year ceremony as the event that “makes the company a family.”

“Joan Cusack had no idea and wasn’t a great sport,” Ferrante says. But most Women of the Year, Zeta-Jones included, participate with enthusiasm. And the Pudding members value these personal experiences with the celebrities.

“One of the hallmarks of a family is that you’ve spent so much time together that there are things that only you and 53 other kids share,” says Ma. “Sarah Jessica Parker elected to ask about me at the seminar personally my freshman year when I was sick. She blew me a kiss. As a freshman guy, that’s a pretty phenomenal thing. It gives this group of people a shared experience that seems, on the surface, perhaps kind of insignificant. But it anchors it.”

Some of the celebrities even keep in contact with the Pudding after the event. Jamie Lee Curtis, who won the Woman of the Year in 2000, for instance, took a Polaroid picture of herself wearing Hasty Pudding underwear and sent the photograph back to the HPT; the picture now sits in the business office.

Curtis, who personally returned a phone call asking for a comment on her Woman of the Year experiences, said their sense of humor sets the Pudding’s ceremonies apart.

“There’s a certain iconographic status that being a Man or Woman of the Year gives you. It’s a very specific zeitgeist,” she told FM. “I think anybody will look back and say, ‘That was a really big time in my life.’ The Hasty Pudding is just a really wonderful career marker.”

But given the popularity of the Man and Woman of the Year awards—popularity founded on the awards’ history, humor, and uniqueness—the production on which the vast majority of Pudding members labor can sometimes be lost in the shuffle.

The production is enormous; the HPT takes its farce extremely seriously. Work begins in March, when the executive board of the HPT helps to select the authors, who work on the story and script during the spring and summer. In the fall, the show is cast and developed; professional contractors help to create costumes and sets, to coach the singers, and to ready the orchestra. The entire HPT company stays at Harvard over intersession break for marathon 14-hour rehearsals. The Woman and Man of the Year happens almost as an afterthought, the roast written late at night in the weeks before the celebrities’ arrivals.

And yet members of the Pudding say that if it weren’t for the roast, the show and the Theatricals would not be what they are today. “Nobody wants to perform to an empty audience,” says Ma.

The internationally recognized award, the only event for which the University allows its buildings to be filmed, helps Harvard as well. “Harvard’s associated with the Hasty Pudding and the Hasty Pudding’s associated with Harvard. It’s a bunch of teenagers and people in their early twenties who devote hundreds and hundreds of hours to producing a farcical show. It’s a testament to both organizations that it’s gone on as long and as successfully as it has,” Ma says. “It’s college students at their best–bringing in wonderful people and making a wonderful production.”

It started as a joke. It’s now an institution.

—Jamie E. Greenman, Jennifer P. Jordan, and M. Aidan Kelly contributed to the reporting of this story.