An Article
The following article was transcribed by Glenn Abernathy (thank you Glenn) and taken from the Hasty Pudding Theatricals publication from 1962. The magazine is put out by the theatrical Section of Harvard University by students. For the presentation of Peace Decorun, 114th Production, the staff had selected Piper Laurie as Woman of the Year and invited her and her new husband to the awards ceremony.
"Wednesday, February 28th, was par for wintertime Boston: cloudy, slushy, and generally unatractive. And the grey gloom started to overcome Rawle, Benson and Co., as they stood in the goo of the runway at Logan Airport and watched everybody (except Piper Laurie) get off the plane she was supposed to be on. It looked like it had happened again.
The Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year ceremony originally scheduled for the twenty-first, had been postponed when Miss Laurie became ill. That was all right. But then, on the twenty-eighth, her flight to Boston had been cancelled. And now, apparently, she had missed her rescheduled flight. People kept coming down the ramp, people who didn't look at all like Piper Laurie, and the welcoming committe kept stand there in the slush. The flow of passengers stopped. The boys waited a few more minutes, then picked up their flowers and started to leave, Rawle wondering the while how to break the news to the frenzied throng back in Cambridge. He could see them now (figuratively speaking), standing in the slough in front of the Pudding, dancing in the streets, such as they were, to the music of Harry Marshard's band, especially provided for the occasion. It was, in a word, too much.
But then, miraculously, the down-hearted troupe saw someone emerge from the plane, someone who answered to the description of Piper Laure: same hair, same eyes, same mannerisms. You guessed it-- the stewardess. 'She'll have to do', said Rawle, 'Grab her!'. Grab her they did, but as they hustled her off to the waiting limousine, they could make out her muffled words: 'The real one's still in the plane....' They all rushed back, and there, sure enough, were Piper and her new husband (Joe Morgenstern), not at all ruffled. Well it's anybody's guess why they took so long to disembark, but it really isn't terribly important.
From then on, things improved. Everybody at the airport took pictures of everybody else and Benson gave flowers to Miss Laurie and publicity man John Barker gave flowers to her agent Peggy Walters and somebody gave flowers to the stewardess and they all piled into the limousine (which was still waiting) and splashed back to the Pudding. Amid general hubbub they passed under bright festoons of bunting and through the crowd of assembled members and special guests (that means girls) into the auditorium. There Rawle, framed by myriad television movie cameras and surrounded by a forest of gladioli, got the ceremony underway with a short talk asserting the serious nature of the Woman of the Year award and outlining Miss Laurie's career. (For the past six years Miss Laurie and Hollywood had been more than one, while she worked in New York television, and the legitimate theater. For her television performances, she received nominations for two of the coveted Emmy awards. Last year she returned to Hollywood to play the female lead in The Hustler; her performance has won her a nomination for an Academy Award for the best performance by an actress.
Then Rawle asked Piper Laurie to join him on the stage. There presented the award, Miss Laurie seemed to take it as a true tribute. Then, Pudding President J. Clark Grew gave her a shiny brass replica of the Pudding Pot, a traditional part of the ceremony. Joseph Morgenstern, Piper's husband and a drama editor for the New York Herald-Tribune, joined her on the stage to accept a wedding present from the Club (a rolling pin). The couple then took seats in the audience, which turned its attention to lighter matters.
The Krokodiloes, Harvard's singing group affiliated with the Pudding, divested itself of early afternoon frogs, and began the entertainment by singing "Now I Know", a song from H.P.T. 112. Krokodilo Dick Tucker then sang "Body and Soul", a song originally written for the Pudding Show but turned down as 'too draggy'. The Kroks did an encore and then Peter Gesell sang "My Friend the Jug" from this year's show. Rawle and Chips Janger joined Gesell for the last item on the agenda, a spoof of The Hustler, a movie about a traveling pool shark named Fast Eddie who comes up against tough pool competition in the ample form of Minnesota Fats and tough moral competition with a modified con-man named Bert. Eddie eventually grows up, overcomes his propensity to lose, and thrashes Fats soundly. In the skit, Eddie (Rawle) wants a piece of Fats (Gesell), but can't seem to get it. Bert (Janger) explains by telling Eddie that he is a born loser, and the audience tends to agree, as Eddie keeps feeling the table and Fats keeps straightening his tie and sinking all the balls. But Eddie, a very determined guy, rips off Fats' fastidiously fashioned suit, and seems about to get his piece---when, alas, the curtain intervenes. Not so funny on paper, but, oh what acting.
By now everybody was getting pretty hungry, so those lucky enough to be invited for lunch, moved upstairs to the lounge. The Kroks improved impromptu on their downstairs performance, everybody ate heartily, and afterwards. Mr. and Mrs. Morgenstern answered all kinds of questions. The rest of the afternoon Miss Laurie spent touring the Loeb Theatre, and having cocktails with certain Pudding members. She and her husband returned to New York the next day. It was all great fun."