Hollywood Star Attacks CRIMSON For Award Given by LAMPOON

Sal Mineo, star of Walt Disney's motion picture, Tonka, called Harvard CRIMSON editors "idiots" for naming him the worst actor of 1959. Quoted in Variety, he said, "Saying that Tonka, where I played an Indian boy in love with a horse, was the worst performance of the year shows no signs of constructive criticism and shows a lack of intelligence and is just not nice these people are just not nice." He added that he would never buy a newspaper put out by "these idiots."

The Harvard Lampoon, which has long sought to associate its name with that of the CRIMSON, is the group which actually made the award. Jeremy J. Johnston '61, former Narthex of the Lampoon, said, "I was the one who nominated him for that award. He actually was the worst actor. But the shouldn't have felt badly, we named Tonka the worst horse."

Quality Not Criterion

Jack Winter '62, President of the Lampoon, admitted that the quality of an actor's performance was not the final criterion in making the awards. "Actually, what we want is publicity. We're willing to give it to any big name actor who will come up here to accept it."

Official Statement

After a hastily called conference of Lampoon editors, they released the following official statement: "It has always been our purpose to laugh with people--not at them. Had we realised that we were inadvertently slurring the name of a hard-working, child-and-horse-loving actor of Mr. Mineo's caliber, it would have been completely beyond the range of possibility for us to have given him this award. As for the confusion between the Lampoon and the CRIMSON, it is quite understandable since the two words sound identical when repeated quickly."

The Lampoon denied having tried for years to identify its name with that of the CRIMSON. When pressed about Lampoon parodies of the CRIMSON and about a letter which the Lampoon sent to President Truman in 1946, offering him an honorary editorship of the CRIMSON, President Winter denied all responsibility. "The Advocate keeps doing things like that," he said.