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COVER STORYMcNally and the Varsity ShowWhen The Varsity Show: A Celebration was published in conjunction with the Columbia250 commemoration in 2004, Terrence McNally ’60, who describes the Varsity Show as “one of the reasons I went to Columbia,” was asked to write the Foreword. “Both my parents were New Yorkers, and one of their springtime rituals was attending the annual Columbia Varsity Show,” he writes. “They thought it to be one of the best shows in town and did not miss a year. They claim they discovered there such soon-to-be-heard-everywhere voices as Rodgers, Hart and Hammerstein. This might have been a slight fudging of the facts on their part, wish fulfillment rather than veracity, but I got the point: the Columbia Varsity Show was the place to be if you wanted to be in on the ground floor of what was going to happen in the American Musical Theatre.” McNally wrote the 1960 Varsity Show, “A Little Bit Different,” about “a group of celebrities of the day who were in darkest Africa making a film.” The extras on this film were cannibals, and each day there was one fewer person at roll call. “We were merciless in our mockery of these celebrities’ foibles,” McNally recalls. He concludes his Foreword by writing, “Just as my parents never forgot ‘their’ Varsity Shows, I will never forget mine. It’s the only theatre poster in my study. You don’t forget the traumas of your college years, but you don’t forget the very great and very real pleasures of them, either.” Alex Sachare ’71
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