I sort of enjoyed the "Chicago Enquirer" as a part of the
December issue. I'm not sure if I would like the publication on a
permanent basis, but perhaps it will grow on me.
You might want to add another omitted U of C graduate who inhabited show business, namely the late Severn Darden, X'50. He was in at least two films, The President's Analyst (1967) and Fearless Frank (1967). [His Filmography lists fifty films (www.checkout.com/movies/artist/filmography/0,7702,973668,00.html)... Kins Collins] The latter was less well known, but had a bit of charm for those of us who love the city of Chicago. Severn did a lot of colorful things, like walk around campus wearing a cape and drive around campus in an antique Rolls Royce. [I will say more of this... Kins Collins]
For a time he had a program on Radio Midway called "The Poets' Hour." He was in at least one play in Mandel Hall. I believe he once got into Rockefeller Chapel after hours, was found out, and when finally apprehended, hollered, "Sanctuary!" [There's much more to the story than this. I will say more later. Also there is the "Governor of Louisiana" story to tell... Kins Collins]
James A. Lessly, PhB'50 St. LouisUniversity of Chicago Magazine Online
Severn Darden, one of the original members of the Second City Company, and also a college friend of my teachers Seth Benardete and Allan Bloom, had a comic routine about "The Metaphysician" that I heard once on a record. For this skit Darden had created a persona called something like "Jacob Von der Vogelfeinder," who had a ridiculous German accent and an exaggerated Germanic academic manner. At some point in this skit he spoke about "unemployed philosophers", and he explained, parenthetically, that an unemployed philosopher is a philosopher who happens not to be thinking about anything at the moment. On that principle, a *self*-employed philosopher must be one who thinks for himself. And, by that standard, would any self-respecting philosopher take employment as a philosopher for somebody else? In any event, that is what I am: a self-employed philosopher.
Among my teachers, the ones who had the greatest impact on my thinking
were F.S.C Northrop, Allan Bloom, Seth Benardete and Hannah Arendt.
Northrop is not read much these days, but about 40 years ago reading his
"The Meeting of East and West" is what made me conscious of my
philosophical vocation. I read the Republic with Bloom when he had just
completed his translation, and when I finished I realized that I had not
known how to read before. If Bloom taught me to read, Benardete taught
me to read slowly. It was in his classes that I first experienced the
possibility of thinking with a text, of using the reading of a text to
think about the questions that the author was thinking about.
-- Lance Fletcher
(http://www.freelance-academy.org/aristotle/Arist294a)
... If parodies are included, there is also Severn Darden as Prof. Walther von der Vogelweide, lecturing on fate and free will in an old (50's?) Second City routine. A line I remember, after the Sphinx promises Oedipus power and glory if he solves the riddle, is his reply: 'Who needs power? Who needs glory? I'm a full professor.'
-- Ed Menes, Loyola-Chicago.
Severn Darden Biography
Severn Darden was born in New Orleans, educated at Mexico City College, and given his first professional acting opportunity at Virginia's Barter Theatre. A charter member of the Compass Theatre, the improvisational group that would later evolve into Second City, Darden distinguished himself as an "intellectual" monologist, effortlessly weaving allusions to Freud and Kant into his hilariously nonsensical ramblings. From 1963's Goldstein onward, Darden worked in films as a character actor and sometimes writer/director. He chalked up quite a few eccentric characterizations in films like Dead Heat on a Merry Go Round (1966) and They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). He was at the top of his form in The President's Analyst (1967) as Kropotkin, a gay Soviet counterintelligence agent who turns out (much to his own surprise) to be one of the film's heroes. The peripatetic Severn Darden settled down long enough to appear as a TV-series regular on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1977; as Popesco), Beyond Westworld (1980; as Foley) and Take 5 (1987; as psychiatrist Noah Wolf).-- Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
(http://www.checkout.com/downloads/movies/artist/info/0,8575,973668-i,00.html?src=v_artist_info&mode=WebImages&start=1)
Severn Darden
Though Severn Darden left behind some delightful film performances (most notably in "The President's Analyst" and a delicious bit in "Hopscotch"), nobody who knew Severn felt that his genius expressed itself more fully than in his performances at Second City and in association with Paul Sills's various projects.
Severn's specialty was to play a German-accented professor who had expertise in everything. (The character was sometimes called Dr. Valter Von der Voegelwide, which Severn told me was the name of a medieval minnesinger. Whatever that is.) A topic would be solicited by the audience, and then he would be interviewed on that subject. Being sufficiently well-read to have a smattering of knowledge about a wide range of subjects, Severn was equipped to not only parody the various disciplines, but also to take on the workings of the academic mind.
I saw him at the University of Chicago in 1976 give an extermporaneous speech in which he stated that, since colors tend to fade in sunlight, it follows that the natives of tropical countries are very fair skinned. He asked if there were any questions. A black student rose and said, "Professor, I find your theory very interesting, but I was born and raised in a tropical country and you can see I have a very dark complexion indeed. How do you account for this?" Without pause or hesitation, Severn replied, "you must have led a very sheltered childhood."
In addition to academic foolery, Severn could be a very affecting actor. One of the greatest scenes in the history of Second City was "First Affair," a father-daughter scene with Barbara Harris. As part of the lecture I do on the history of Second City, I have run this scene dozens of times and always find something new in it. It has the depth of a first-rate one-act play, and Severn and Barbara give performances of astonishing depth and subtlety, the kind of work too rarely seen today in improv, when speed and noise are so highly prized.
Nichols and May may have been improv's brightest stars, but among improvisers, Severn was a thing apart -- possessing a comic mind of stunning individuality, he was in many ways THE Second City player. At his memorial, Mike Nichols said that whenever he was depressed, all he had to do to cheer up a bit was to recall one line from Severn's lecture on zoology -- "Of motion, the oyster has but a dim racial memory." Not many people could have made a joke that elegantly constructed.
Contributed by Jeff Sweet (from Taipei Eclectic Science Fiction Improvisational Theatre Sports Workshop)
Darden, Paul Sills, and Second City
Making theater that mirrored the human image and reflected the consciousness of the community is exactly what the Compass Players did. The troupe consisted of actors and volunteers who were excited by the idea of satirical cabaret theater that would enlighten and inspire its immediate community. Sills served as director to an ensemble that included Severn Darden, Elaine May, Barbara Harris, and Mike Nichols, the acclaimed film and theater director, who would later remark, "I wouldn't be in the theater if it were not for Paul." The actors also participated in workshops led by Spolin, who briefly returned to Chicago at the urging of Sills and Shepherd. The audience could expect process, not perfection, as they watched the players onstage building scenes and characters before their eyes. The result, when it worked (and it often did), was spectacular.
Sills requires his actors to be completely devoted to the present and to rely only on that nebulous faculty, intuition. To keep his players open and responsive to the present, he uses the Spolin games. To keep the intellect out of the games, Sills makes his students talk and move in slow motion or speak in gibberish in the hope that they can duck their intellects and stay focused in the present and, from there, get to a shared place where a greater reality unfolds, whose roots reach into the firm ground of human relationships and community. Paul Sand, a Second City alumnus, would later provide the title of Jeffrey Sweet's book when he said of Sills, "all he wants is something wonderful right away." Sills, who often refers to his work as "side-coaching," once told The New York Times, "There no technique. You just need a little respect for the invisible.."
COMPASS IMPLODES
By the close of the 1950's the Chicago Compass seemed to implode; Shepherd and others
scattered to New York, St. Louis, and elsewhere to form other Compass groups. But before the
Compass closed its doors, it revolutionized American theater. Its comedy was sophisticated
and challenging; professors from the University of Chicago would often merrily watch
themselves being parodied on stage. Severn Darden, considered by his peers one of the most
gifted comedic actors ever to grace a stage, once delivered a mock lecture, "Some Positive
Aspects of Anti-Semitism," in the guise of prominent psychologist and Chicago professor Bruno
Bettelheim. Yet even if the content of some of the scenes was esoteric, the ones that clicked did
so because they captured the awkward, embarrassing, amusing essence of human relations.
Sills's next endeavor, The Second City, established with Bernard Sahlins and Howard Alk, also
would use the revue format, with the audience participating in the shaping of the performance.
Of all the theater companies in the history of American theater, The Second City is perhaps the best known. The original troupe, consisting of Roger Bowen, Severn Darden, Andrew Duncan, Barbara Harris, Mina KoIb, and Eugene Troobnick, with musician Bill Mathieu, had its first performance in December 1959. The company was an instant success and Chicago became the first city of comedy. The revue later played to great fanfare on Broadway, and other branches were established, most notably in Toronto, where Gilda Radner, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, and others cut their teeth.
-- from "New Actors Workshop - Second City Lives On", original here.
