50 Fun Facts About Tom Lehrer

Which party drink did Tom Lehrer say he invented to beat an alcohol ban at a military base?

The Jello shot, by his own account, came out of his Army years of 1955 to 1957, when he was a drafted enlisted man who already held a master's degree.

Which rapper sampled Tom Lehrer's 1953 song The Old Dope Peddler on a 2012 debut album?

2 Chainz used it on Based on a T.R.U. Story, and Lehrer said he was very proud to be sampled sixty years after recording the song.

Which Harry Potter star sang Tom Lehrer's The Elements on The Graham Norton Show in 2010?

Daniel Radcliffe recited every word by heart on the chat show, leaving fellow guests Colin Farrell and Rihanna unsure what to make of the feat.

Tom Lehrer joked that satire became obsolete when which statesman won the Nobel Peace Prize?

Henry Kissinger received the 1973 prize, and Lehrer made the remark that year, though he later called it an off-hand line and not his real reason for quitting.

Which future Broadway composer spent boyhood summers at the same Maine camp as Tom Lehrer?

Stephen Sondheim was a camper at Camp Androscoggin in Wayne, Maine, the boys' camp Lehrer attended as a camper and later as a counselor.

A studio pianist fell off his stool on hearing which birds a Tom Lehrer waltz was about poisoning?

Pigeons were being culled in Boston with strychnine-treated corn in the 1950s, the real practice behind Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.

Which royal's fondness for Tom Lehrer's songs, revealed in a 1957 university speech, launched him in Britain?

Princess Margaret was receiving an honorary music degree from the University of London, and the speech won his five-year-old debut album British distribution.

What did Tom Lehrer do with the lyrics and music of every song he had written, in October 2020?

He made them public domain, telling fans to help themselves and not send money, then gave up his recording and performing rights as well in 2022.

Which rocket scientist, who served Nazi Germany before leading American rocketry, did Tom Lehrer mock in song?

Wernher von Braun reached the United States under Operation Paperclip and ran its rocket programme in the 1960s, just as Lehrer was writing topical satire.

Tom Lehrer's The Elements borrows the Major-General's Song from which Gilbert and Sullivan opera?

The Pirates of Penzance supplied the melody, while the idea of a breakneck list came from a 1941 patter number that rattles off fifty Russian composers.

Tom Lehrer wrote topical songs in the 1960s for the American edition of which satirical NBC television show?

That Was the Week That Was used his songs without him: another singer performed them, to his chagrin, and lines were often cut.

For which 1970s PBS children's series did Tom Lehrer write ten songs, including Silent E?

The Electric Company was aimed at children who had graduated from Sesame Street, and Lehrer was the only one of its songwriters from outside the in-house staff.

Tom Lehrer's surname is the German word for which occupation, one he pursued for most of his adult life?

Teacher is the meaning of Lehrer in German, and he earned the name by giving classes at four American colleges before retiring in 2001.

Which grisly tale did Tom Lehrer begin adapting as a Broadway musical, years before another writer got there first?

Sweeney Todd got as far as a few songs written with Joe Raposo, with the comedian Jerry Colonna lined up to star, before the project fizzled out.

Which sitcom character drunkenly sings Tom Lehrer's The Elements while accepting a university award in 2010?

Sheldon Cooper launches into it in The Big Bang Theory episode The Pants Alternative, one of several television shows to borrow the song.

Which qualification did Tom Lehrer abandon in 1965 after working on it at Harvard, on and off, for 15 years?

A doctorate would have ended a life he loved: Lehrer said he just wanted to be a grad student, and nobody can stay one after finishing the thesis.

Which broadcaster boosted Tom Lehrer's British sales in 1958 by banning ten of his debut album's twelve songs?

The BBC ban worked like an advertisement, and with university newspapers also writing about the songs the record finally sold in real numbers.

About how much did Tom Lehrer pay for the one-hour studio session that produced his 1953 debut album?

$15 covered the whole session in Boston, and Lehrer paid for a first pressing of just 400 copies himself, selling them around the Harvard campus.

Which college sport's rowdy anthems does Tom Lehrer's genteel 1945 song Fight Fiercely, Harvard send up?

Football crowds at Harvard later adopted the joke, and Lehrer was pleased to learn the song had been played at every home game for many years.

Tired of shovelling snow in Massachusetts, Tom Lehrer joined the faculty of which California university in 1972?

UC Santa Cruz took him on at arts-minded Cowell College, where his official title was lecturer in American studies, not mathematics.

Besides mathematics, which subject did Tom Lehrer teach to California undergraduates for nearly three decades?

Musical theater was the main influence on his own songs, and it was his offer to give courses in it that first got him hired out west.

Tom Lehrer revealed in 2020 that his 1950s Army service had been spent at which secretive US agency?

The NSA was so secret then that its very existence was classified, so Lehrer let people assume he had been doing nuclear weapons work.

Which syndicated radio host made Tom Lehrer's songs a staple of his show and introduced his 2000 box set?

Dr. Demento, the on-air name of Barret Hansen, praised Lehrer as the best musical satirist of the twentieth century.

Which producer, later behind Cats and Les Misérables, staged the 1980 London revue of Tom Lehrer's songs, Tomfoolery?

Cameron Mackintosh later put Lehrer on the bill of his 1998 London gala Hey, Mr. Producer!, the satirist's first public performance in 18 years.

The bomber in which 1994 action film sings a line from Tom Lehrer's song Be Prepared?

Speed gives the line to Dennis Hopper's villain, quoting a risqué song that a police commissioner had tried to head off on Lehrer's 1960 tour abroad.

For which Greek tragedy did Tom Lehrer write a ragtime title song, deciding a 1957 film of it lacked a hit tune?

Oedipus Rex also let Lehrer tease the fashion for Freudian psychoanalysis, whose best-known complex had made the name familiar across 1950s America.

Which US vice president does a 1965 Tom Lehrer song tease for fading from view under Lyndon Johnson?

Hubert Humphrey gets a song whose title asks what became of him, voicing liberals' frustration at his deference to the more domineering Johnson.

Which country did Tom Lehrer tour in 1960, where he said he was censored and threatened with arrest?

Australia and neighbouring New Zealand heard 33 concerts between them, and a live album from the tour was released in no other country.

Which science fiction author called a 1954 Tom Lehrer nightclub show the best time he ever had at a nightclub?

Isaac Asimov, then a Boston University professor, described the evening in his autobiography and later printed one of Lehrer's lyrics with permission.

Which Russian mathematician gives his name to Tom Lehrer's song about getting ahead in academia by plagiarism?

Nikolai Lobachevsky did nothing to earn it: Lehrer said the name was chosen solely for prosodic reasons and meant no slur on the man's character.

Which old folk song does Tom Lehrer rework verse by verse in the styles of Cole Porter, Mozart and cool jazz?

Clementine changes costume with every verse, and one of the parodies is done in the manner of Gilbert and Sullivan.

Which spectacle does the narrator of Tom Lehrer's song In Old Mexico remember watching on a trip there?

A bullfight is the centrepiece, and the song drops the names of three real Spanish matadors: Belmonte, Dominguín and Manolete.

Tom Lehrer wrote That's Mathematics in 1993 for a video celebrating the proof of which famous problem?

Fermat's Last Theorem drew him briefly out of retirement: the song runs over the closing credits of a Mathematical Sciences Research Institute video.

Tom Lehrer's last public performances for many years came on a 1972 fundraising tour for which presidential candidate?

George McGovern was the Democrats' anti-Vietnam War candidate, and the cause was enough to bring a largely retired Lehrer back to the piano.

Which magazine reprinted two Tom Lehrer songs with cartoon illustrations in 1957, with his permission?

Mad ran The Wild West Is Where I Want to Be in April and The Hunting Song in October, both illustrated by George Woodbridge.

Which British television host used pre-recorded Tom Lehrer songs on his weekly satire programme in 1966?

David Frost had Lehrer tape every segment for The Frost Report at a single performance, then dropped each song into the episode whose theme it fitted.

Tom Lehrer's nostalgic soldier's farewell So Long, Mom is subtitled as a song for which war?

World War III gets its nostalgic send-off in advance, in a number that also takes aim at television news and nods to a 1904 George M. Cohan show tune.

Which Tom Lehrer song about the spread of nuclear weapons did he update for a 1998 London stage comeback?

Who's Next? lists the countries that had the bomb or might soon get it, and by 1998 the roll call needed bringing up to date.

Which record label, founded by Frank Sinatra, released Tom Lehrer's 1965 live album and reissued his earlier records?

Reprise got his back catalogue as part of the deal because Lehrer wanted to wind up the small label he had run himself.

Tom Lehrer's Bright College Days borrows heavily from the signature song of a singing group at which university?

Yale is home to the Whiffenpoofs, whose traditional song Lehrer plundered for his send-up of the misty-eyed college alma mater.

Which woman, married in turn to a composer, an architect and a writer, is the subject of a Tom Lehrer song?

Alma Mahler married Gustav Mahler, future Bauhaus head Walter Gropius and the author Franz Werfel, and composed music of her own.

In Tom Lehrer's New Math, the subtraction of 173 from 342 is repeated in which other numeral system?

Base eight means working in octal, and the song walks correctly through every step of the same subtraction in both number systems.

At which San Francisco nightclub did Tom Lehrer record his final album of topical songs in 1965?

The hungry i, a club that started out in North Beach, had also hosted The Limeliters' 1963 live album Our Men in San Francisco.

On stage in Copenhagen in 1967, Tom Lehrer joked that he might be America's revenge for which piano-playing comedian?

Victor Borge, born Børge Rosenbaum, was the Danish pianist and comedian who had become a radio and television star across North America.

Which element, number 102, was the newest one included in Tom Lehrer's 1959 list song The Elements?

Nobelium was the end of the periodic table when he wrote the song; sixteen more elements have been added since, taking the total to 118.

What was the topic of the last mathematics class Tom Lehrer taught before retiring from academia in 2001?

Infinity made a fitting last lesson for a man who nicknamed his introductory course for liberal arts students Math for Tenors.

Tom Lehrer's The Elements was inspired by a 1941 patter song naming fifty Russian composers, with lyrics by whom?

Ira Gershwin wrote Tschaikowsky (and Other Russians) with composer Kurt Weill for Lady in the Dark, where it launched Danny Kaye's career.

At which Harvard venue did Tom Lehrer give his first public concert in 1950 and record a live album in 1959?

Sanders Theatre hosted the two March nights that became An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, nine years after his debut there as a graduate student.

Which British cartoonist illustrated Tom Lehrer's 1981 songbook, whose subtitle jokes about too few of his drawings?

Ronald Searle, creator of the St Trinian's schoolgirls, shares the billing: the full title promises too many songs by one man and not enough drawings by the other.

At which university did Tom Lehrer teach mathematics from 1962 inside the political science department?

MIT had him lecturing political science students, and its Kresge Auditorium was where the first side of his live album Revisited was taped in 1959.