National Lampoon September 1971

National Lampoon

September 1971

Let's take a trip back in time to September, 1971. The number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 charts is 'Go Away Little Girl' by Donny Osmond, and the top-rated TV show is 'All in the Family'.

The latest issue of National Lampoon is a special issue devoted to 'Kids', and there is some really funny, really offensive material to be perused. 

Let's start with a parody of My Weekly Reader, which every Baby Boomer could relate to. The Weekly Reader was a tabloid newspaper delivered to grammar schools all across the country, and featured articles on a variety of kid-friendly topics. Lampoon staffers George W. S. Trow and Anne Beatts were dead-on with their entirely warped version of the paper.......

Then there was Michael O'Donoghue's 'Children's Letter to the Gestapo', which never would be printed nowadays. The thing is, quite a large proportion of the Lampoon's staff, including executives Leonard Mogel and Matty Simmons, were Jewish.........!? For the Lampoon, there was no such thing as a taboo subject.

O'Donoghue really shows his brilliance with a depraved parody of the bestselling 1955 children's book 'Eloise: A Book for Precocious Grown-ups', by Kay Thompson. 

Thompson's Eloise was a rather snobby little girl who lived in The Plaza Hotel in New York City and made arch comments about the people she encountered in her various adventures. But O'Donoghue places his Eloise in a welfare hotel (!) populated by deviants and criminals..............

Henry Beard and Hugo Flesch contribute a Hardy Boys parody, titled 'Chums in the Dark'.

In 1965 Charles Schulz, the creator of 'Peanuts', produced a book, titled 'Love Is Walking Hand in Hand', that paired illustrations of the comic's characters in association with bromides:

Needless to say, the trite banality of 'Love Is Walking Hand in Hand' was the perfect target for a parody by John Weidman: 'Death Is'.

Let's close out with a 'Foto Funnies', featuring Doug Kenney, a co-founder and editor of the magazine, who would go on to play the character of 'Stork' in National Lampoon's Animal House.

There you have it........transgressive humor from long, long ago...........!