The appearance of cast members from the television show "Saturday Night Live" in front of the Harvard Lampoon castle yesterday afternoon attracted a crowd of nearly 500 to the Lampoon's "First Annual Symposium on Humor and Office Furniture Clearance Sale."

Three of the actors in the show, the producer and one staff writer, in town to promote the show's new record, "LSD," left most of the clowning to Lampoon staff members.

The event, which one Lampoon staff member called an afternoon of "sophisticated humor," included a "panel discussion" with a piece of wood, jokes about Nicaraguans, quadraplegics and killer bees, and the dropping of a stuffed dummy from the fifth floor of Claverly Hall.

Last Pratfall

The prank involving the dummy was billed on posters for the event as "Chevy Chase's last pratfall." Chase, no longer with the show, did not come to Cambridge, but he served as the butt of many of the afternoon's jokes.

One Lampoon member offered Chase a "facsimile of a totally bogus check" for $115 if he would rejoin Saturday Night Live. "Chevy, we think you are worth almost every penny of it," he said.

The organizers of the event had to order TV cameras, which were filming the antics, from the stage when they completely blocked the crowd's view of actor Dan Ackroyd cutting a chair in half with a chain saw.