A People’s History of… Doug Kenney
It’s been said that if the mountain will not come to Muhammed, Muhammed must go to the mountain. Doug Kenney went to a mountain. Unlike Muhammed, he fell off.
But the dissimilarities don’t end there! Kenney could read and write, he never married an 9-year-old, and he was from Ohio.
Yet the two do share one commonality that will no doubt lead future historians to believe one influenced the other: laughter.
Segue with us now to December 10, 1946… Estelle “Stephanie” Kenney (née Karczewski) and husband Daniel “Harry” Kenney welcome a second son, named after General Douglas MacArthur, which was the style at the time. Baby Douglas was the middle child, preceded by brother Daniel Vance and superseded by sister Victoria. In true biopic fashion, Daniel died young and full of promise, leaving Doug with an inferiority complex that wasn’t helped by drugs or Catholicism.
Doug grew up in Chagrin Falls, a Cleveland suburb that prided itself on delivering on its name. The embodiment of the American wise-ass, Doug was smarter than just about everyone he encountered in Chagrin Falls. He was aware of a larger world outside of Ohio, had a sense of humor without a laugh track, and possessed a wit most people could only envy. Naturally, he was a reviled outcast.
Following six years at Gilmour Academy, a Catholic preparatory school for boys in nearby Gates Mills, Kenney was accepted to Harvard University. He planned to reinvent himself as an all-American golden boy. To that end, he joined the Signet Society, the Spree Club, and — nestled inside the fifth most phallic building in the world — The Harvard Lampoon.
The Harvard Lampoon was founded in 1876 by undergraduates Ralph Wormeley Curtis, Edward Sandford Martin, Edmund March Wheelwright, and Arthur Murray Sherwood. Enriched by their diversity, the group thought it would be quite the lark to ripoff popular magazines Puck and Punch. The primary difference being that the first issue of The Harvard Lampoon was nailed to a tree, which impeded reading it on the toilet.
A hundred years of ironically inbred drunken tomfoolery followed before Mademoiselle magazine offered to pay the staff under the table for a parody in place of their usually lackluster July issue. The parody was a hit and Mademoiselle slipped them another undisclosed amount for a follow-up in July 1962. A third parody — this time of Esquire — arrived the next summer. This string of hits filled the Lampoon’s coffers well beyond the usual amount needed for shit-faced revelry and provided the capital for national distribution.
Then came Doug. Soon after his arrival in the fall of 1964, Kenney met fellow Lampoon writer Henry Beard. Beard looked like one of the professors while Kenney seemed even more out of place than usual, but the pair immediately connected. To quote Jack Kerouac describing unrelated people, “Two keen minds that they are, they took to each other at the drop of a hat. Two piercing eyes glanced into two piercing eyes — the holy con-man with the shining mind, and the sorrowful poetic con-man with the dark mind.”
Shortly thereafter, the Boomer Turks took control of the Lampoon and leveraged its resources to produce a new parody. This time their target was Playboy. Predictably, the project was beyond controversial. A number of alumni harumphed. Several swooned. At least one monocle was dropped in a tiny glass of champagne.
And of course it was the biggest success the Lampoon had ever had. Though, admittedly, the story really could have worked out in Kenney and Beard’s favor either way.
Henry Beard graduated in 1967, leaving Kenney on his own to deliver the next big thing. Kenney took aim at Time and the project was another runaway success. Kenney’s style resonated with his generation. Not all of them, granted. Some Baby Boomers supported Nixon and actually volunteered to go to Vietnam. But there was a segment of their generation that was legitimately cooler than any who had come before. They burned their draft cards, fought for racial equality, and made it their business to piss off the Archie Bunkers of America. Most of them later overdosed or gave up their values in exchange for better weed, but there was a time — it was called the seventies — when they were ironically the antithesis of “OK, Boomer.” It’s true. This happened. There are many pictures.
Anyway, Kenney was one of the few people in the humor sphere who had his finger on the pulse of what was called “sick humor.” Which was good because he damn sure didn’t have any job prospects.
So Kenney, Beard, and fellow Harvard grad Rob Hoffman decided to start their own national humor magazine, a… “national lampoon,” if you will. Attorney Hoffman struck a deal with Weight Watchers Magazine publisher Matty Simmons that would make the three friends millionaires several times over before the end of the decade and they were off to change the face of American comedy.
But what does that mean in TL;DR terms?
O.K. —
The Harvard Lampoon begets National Lampoon.
National Lampoon begets The National Lampoon Show.
The National Lampoon Show begets Lemmings.
Lemmings begets The National Lampoon Radio Hour and Saturday Night Live.
Saturday Night Live begets Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Mike Meyers, Dana Carvey, Chris Farley, David Spade, Norm MacDonald, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, and Amy Poehler.
Phew.
And the talent for The National Lampoon Show comes from Chicago’s Second City — simultaneously a comedy troupe and a training program.
Second City begets SCTV.
SCTV begets This Is Spinal Tap.
This Is Spinal Tap begets The Simpsons and, stylistically, The Office, Parks & Recreation, and Arrested Development.
Yeah, once upon a time a magazine could have that kind of influence. Once upon a time, a magazine — an actual paper-and-staples magazine — was the medium of choice for a person with the vision of Doug Kenney. Think of that.
But, to be perfectly straight with you, the first year of National Lampoon was nothing to get excited about. Without a singular target for ridicule, the magazine struggled to find an identity apart from Harvard and lobster food fights in the castle.
It’s important to note here that, even though Kenney was the editor-in-chief, National Lampoon succeeded — Doug Kenney succeeded — because of Henry Beard. For there to be a National Lampoon, a Lemmings, a Saturday Night Live, an Animal House, a Caddyshack, or even arguably a David Letterman or a Larry David, there first had to be the partnership of Kenney and Beard. Behind every great man is another great man. Usually an even greater one. Sometimes several.
But everything comes back to Kenney, and not just because this is a profile about Doug Kenney. No one thought like Kenney. No one wrote like Kenney. No one was able to capture what Kenney did so effortlessly.
Kenney codified a voice we still use to this day. The way he thought has become the way we think, as comedy writers and as fans. It’s not exactly cynicism. Harold Ramis described it as the comedy of the outsider; the unwelcome guest. Cynicism stems from giving up. Everyone who knew Doug Kenney said he was lost, but he never gave up searching. He wasn’t cynical. He was honest and he was determined and he had no time for anything that wasn’t what he was looking for. Anything that was held as unjustifiably cherished or safe was fair game. That was the soul of the Lampoon style — the Doug Kenney style.
Kenney used to brag that he created a sense of nostalgia in a certain type of American male. His National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook was one of the most well-executed and well-received projects associated with the brand and led directly to National Lampoon’s Animal House. Released in 1978, Animal House was the Star Wars of comedy films: an unprecedented smash hit that came out of nowhere and changed the industry in that everything after it was preoccupied with recreating it.
Kenney’s own attempt at recreating Animal House was 1980's Caddyshack. Directed by Harold Ramis, Kenney’s co-writer on Animal House, Caddyshack was nothing but a coke-fueled mess before a tag team of editors stepped in to salvage something releasable. Cobbling together a story to connect all the ad libbed footage, the post-production crew sealed up the many, many cracks in the movie with the now beloved dancing gopher.
Kenney despised that gopher and felt like his class struggle satire had been drowned by a stupid puppet that didn’t even look like a real animal. He hated it so much, in fact, he disowned the final film and took off to Hawaii to dry out.
He never came back.
But forty years later, he’s never left.
Fifty years ago, Doug Kenney started something. A magazine. We’re starting one today. We’d like to think Doug would be proud, but we know he wouldn’t be.
He might even say… it’s a futile and stupid gesture.
(That’s a National Lampoon reference.)
But he’s dead so it’s not like he can stop us.
Here’s to Doug.
