Tom Lehrer, song satirist, dies at 97
He cut his first record in 1953, 'Songs by Tom Lehrer,' which included 'I Wanna Go Back to Dixie,' lampooning the attitudes of the Old South, and the 'Fight Fiercely, Harvard,' suggesting how a prissy Harvard blueblood might sing a football fight song.
After a two-year stint in the Army, Lehrer began to perform concerts of his material in venues around the world. In 1959, he released another LP called 'More of Tom Lehrer' and a live recording called 'An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer,' nominated for a Grammy for best comedy performance (musical) in 1960.
But around the same time, he largely quit touring and returned to teaching math, though he did some writing and performing on the side.
Lehrer said he was never comfortable appearing in public.
'I enjoyed it up to a point,' he told The AP in 2000. 'But to me, going out and performing the concert every night when it was all available on record would be like a novelist going out and reading his novel every night.'
He did produce a political satire song each week for the 1964 television show 'That Was the Week That Was,' a groundbreaking topical comedy show that anticipated 'Saturday Night Live' a decade later.
He released the songs the following year in an album titled 'That Was the Year That Was.' The material included 'Who's Next?' that ponders which government will be the next to get the nuclear bomb ... perhaps Alabama? (He didn't need to tell his listeners that it was a bastion of segregation at the time.) 'Pollution' takes a look at the then-new concept that perhaps rivers and lakes should be cleaned up.
He also wrote songs for the 1970s educational children's show 'The Electric Company.' He told AP in 2000 that hearing from people who had benefited from them gave him far more satisfaction than praise for any of his satirical works.
His songs were revived in the 1980 musical revue 'Tomfoolery' and he made a rare public appearance in London in 1998 at a celebration honoring that musical's producer, Cameron Mackintosh.
Lehrer was born in 1928, in New York City, the son of a successful necktie designer. He recalled an idyllic childhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side that included attending Broadway shows with his family and walking through Central Park day or night.
After skipping two grades in school, he entered Harvard at 15 and, after receiving his master's degree, he spent several years unsuccessfully pursuing a doctorate.
'I spent many, many years satisfying all the requirements, as many years as possible, and I started on the thesis,' he once said. 'But I just wanted to be a grad student, it's a wonderful life. That's what I wanted to be, and unfortunately, you can't be a Ph.D. and a grad student at the same time.'
He began to teach part-time at Santa Cruz in the 1970s, mainly to escape the harsh New England winters.
From time to time, he acknowledged, a student would enroll in one of his classes based on knowledge of his songs.
'But it's a real math class,' he said at the time. 'I don't do any funny theorems. So those people go away pretty quickly.'
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In 1994, Neil told Nick News, "When I started building the railroad, I built it so that my son and I could have something to do together, especially when we found out how disabled Ben was physically... Ben has taught me you never give up. You can't say, 'This is too hard.' It can't be too hard. There's so many kids with challenges that are so great, and yet they just keep trying. So if I come up against something that's hard to deal with, I can handle it, and it's because of him." Eminem is a skilled Donkey Kong player. In 2010, he reportedly scored quite near the top 30 high-scores in the world. In 2011, he told Rolling Stone that his interest in the arcade game was heightened by the documentary The King of Kong, which was about Donkey Kong champion Steve Wiebe. At the time, Eminem dreamed of beating his record. Before his Riverdale days, Cole Sprouse was putting his archaeology degree to good use. He told Live with Kelly and Ryan, "I had traveled around the world, and I was part of a couple of excavations. And then, I had a job in Brooklyn in some dingy lab in a basement in Williamsburg. And I was just bagging artifacts like a treasure goblin. But, then I came back around [to acting]." He also told Vogue that he found "some spooky stuff" on archeological digs. He said, "I found an old ceramic theatrical mask of Dionysus in Bulgaria, a little Hellenistic settlement." Susan Sarandon co-founded the ping-pong social club franchise SPiN in 2009. She reportedly got involved in the brand after attending one of Jonathan Bricklin and Franck Raharinosy's ping-pong parties. She hired them for a birthday party for her then-partner, Tim Robbins. Shortly after, her relationship with Tim ended, and she started dating Jonathan. So, she became a co-founder and investor in the club idea that Jonathan and Franck developed. Hillary Wolf is most well-known for playing Megan McCallister in the Home Alone franchise, but that's not the only impressive thing she's done! She's been doing judo since age 7, and she competed for the US at two Olympic games — Atlanta in 1996 and Sydney in 2000. Before his music career took off, Jack White worked in upholstery. However, while it stopped being his main focus, he's continuously operated an upholstery shop on his property. You can see some of his furniture designs here. And finally, Old Hollywood actor Hedy Lamarr was an inventor. In 1941, she patented a frequency-hopping technology. Her invention was a forerunner to Bluetooth, GPS, and secure wi-fi. She didn't go to college, and she reportedly started inventing as a hobby because she wasn't interested in drinking or partying like many of her Hollywood peers. Her other inventions included an upgraded traffic light and an Alka-Seltzer-like tablet that turned water into soda. In the documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, she said, "Inventions are easy for me to do. I don't have to work on ideas. They come naturally." What's your favorite hard-to-believe celebrity fact? Let us know in the comments!
