Actor John Lithgow '67 entertains graduates and alumni at Thursday's Commencement exercises.

Actor John Lithgow ’67 put to rest concerns yesterday that the podium of Commencement’s afternoon exercises—usually reserved for political figures—could not handle an artist.

Lithgow, the first professional actor to ever speak at a Harvard Commencement, entertained and amused an audience of thousands with his yet-unpublished children’s story about a mouse that goes to college.

The light-hearted tale, set at Harvard and dedicated to the Class of 2005, garnered Lithgow a standing ovation and a request to return to the podium for an encore.

In the only reference to the firestorm over University President Lawrence H. Summers’ leadership in yesterday’s afternoon exercises, Lithgow presented the story of Mahalia Mouse as “oil over troubled waters.”

“Your campus was roiled by a bitter, divisive controversy in the last semester of your undergraduate years,” he says. “The book is my cheerful and constructive response to all the turbulence: Mahalia Mouse, you see, studies science.”

Summers, who preceded Lithgow with a more serious speech on Harvard’s global role, joined the crowd in laughter.

Lithgow says he will donate his advance from the book, which has been accepted for publication, to the senior class gift.

As a member of the Board of Overseers—one of the University’s two governing bodies—from 1989 to 1995, Lithgow conceived of and led the push culminating in the establishment of Harvard’s annual Arts First weekend in 1993, and he returns to Harvard each year for the event. Harvard’s Arts First medal, awarded to a University graduate who has made a significant contribution to the arts, is also a brainchild of Lithgow’s.

A well-known advocate of childhood literacy who is currently writing a series of children’s books, Lithgow emphasized the importance of art in society in his speech’s more serious moments.

“I hold the fierce conviction that the arts are indispensable to a healthy society but everywhere I see evidence that support for the Arts is foundering, even under assault,” Lithgow said, to the loudest applause of the afternoon.

“That’s the easiest round of applause I ever got,” he said. “Talk about self-evident.”

Lithgow implored the Class of 2005 to be “creative, to be useful, to be practical and to be generous” and to find ways to mingle art and commerce for the greater good.

Lithgow was still able to poke fun at his non-traditional path to Commencement Day speaker. A history and literature concentrator during his years at Harvard, Lithgow said he kept his Harvard degree a secret while trying to find work as an actor.

“Somehow it never seemed to come in all that handy when I was auditioning for a soap opera or a potato chip commercial,” he said.

When asked back to the podium at the end of his speech, Lithgow sang lyrics from his children’s book “I’m a Manatee” to the amusement of the audience.