Education: Persistence

In making its 1950 “awards” last month, the Harvard Lampoon pitched one of its curves to Actress Elizabeth Taylor. She got the Lampoon’s “Roscoe” for “gallantly persisting in her career despite a total inability to act.” In Boston last week, as Actress Taylor was boarding a plane for Hollywood, a delegation of Poonsters marched up with a small brass band. This time, they announced, the Lampoon was giving her the “Fabian Fall Award” as the actress who had “shown the most improvement as a result of a previous receipt of the ‘Roscoe.’ ” Actress Taylor accepted a 25-lb. bronze bust. “This is very kind of you young men,” she said.

Next day she learned how doggedly the Lampoon persists in its career of humor. The “Fabian Fall” bronze had disappeared from the sanctum of the Lampoon’s ancient rival, Harvard’s daily Crimson. It was, in fact, a bust of a former Crimson president who died in office in 1909. At week’s end, it was back in the Crimson’s sanctum.