While the Lampoon—which Franken on numerous attempts failed to become a part of—was famous for producing comedy writers and entertainers, Franken could not reconcile its social club atmosphere with the humor side of the magazine.

“I think you were supposed to show up in a tuxedo at the first event and I didn’t,” Franken says. “I was very much in a ’60s ethic and the Lampoon still had a lot of preppiness to it. It was sort of a clash.”

So instead of spending his time at the Lampoon castle, Franken began putting on shows in Dunster and Currier House, and the Loeb theater.

He particularly remembers a show he put on in Dunster House called “Nixon.”

“It was about everything that was happening both at Harvard and the war and the administration,” Franken says. “I had a character who was called ‘Ira Irate.’ It was modeled after the prototypical SDSer. It was a very successful show.”

Franken’s satire of radical students came from his own experience of the ’60s political scene at Harvard.

Franken participated in several marches on Washington during his college years—but only gained an arrest for hitch-hiking his way down in New Jersey.

“I always felt that the more radical elements at the school took themselves incredibly seriously or were very melodramatic and self-indulgent,” Franken says.

He instead characterized himself as “a more moderate strategic-minded liberal antiwar activist.”

His political observations became the basis of his maturing comedic routine.

By his senior year, Franken and his future SNL co-writer Tom Davis—who had performed in Minneapolis comedy clubs with Franken during high school—traveled to New York almost every weekend to do stand-up at various comedy clubs.

At one point, Franken took Yiddish while at Harvard just so he could tell jokes on a comedy route through resorts in the Catskills.

Any academic diligence Franken had possessed in his first year at Harvard had disappeared by the time he was a senior.

“I spent less and less time studying as my career at Harvard progressed,” Franken says. “By my senior year Tom was actually living with me in Dunster House. He just stayed on a futon in the living room and I snuck him food. I was sort of already out the door.”

From St. Nick to SNL