“George comes up with things which even as a writer you’ve never heard before,” Vitti says. “The ability to surprise the writers is something George does more than anybody else.”

Meyer friend Johannessen picks up on this note, calling Meyer’s sense of humor “extremely trippy.”“Everything’s sort of backward and particularly George,” Johannessen says of the typical Meyer gag. “Everything’s sort of what you don’t expect.”

Home in His Castle

According to those on the Lampoon with Meyer, his flair for offbeat comedy dates back to his days at Harvard.

“George, from day one, was at a different level of humor” than other Lampoon writers, recalls Steven G. Crist ’78, who also worked for the Lampoon.

“I think for the most part people at the Lampoon were clever and witty, and could do clever parodies and things like that, but George was laugh-out-loud funny,” says Crist. “It wasn’t a formal, studied, essayist sort of humor.”

Johannessen, who has written for television programs including “24” and “Beverly Hills, 90210,” agrees.

“The Lampoon was just not nearly as tripped-out as George was,” he says.

Indeed, Johannessen adds, Meyer “was very unlike anything Harvard had seen before.”

“He was the opposite of all the preppy stuff that was still the scene there 25 years ago,” says Johannessen.

But Meyer was in his element at the Lampoon, and ultimately became President.

“The Lampoon was a refuge for him,” says Owen.

In Owen’s 2000 profile, Meyer was quoted as saying that he was drawn to the Lampoon because “people took humor very seriously” there.

“There was nothing more important on earth than laughing and making other people laugh,” he told Owen.

After graduating from Harvard, Meyer applied and was accepted to medical school—but ultimately he chose not to go. Johannessen says he thinks this was a wise choice.