Radcliffe College - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• All About Eve is a film whose script references Radcliffe three times.
  • Addison (George Sanders) says during Karen's introduction, "(voice-over) Nothing in her background or breeding should have brought her any closer to the stage than row E, center... however, during her senior year in Radcliffe, Lloyd Richards lectured on drama. The following year Karen became Mrs. Lloyd Richards."
  • Margo (Bette Davis) says to Karen (Celeste Holm), "Please don't play governess, Karen. I haven't your unyielding good taste. I wish I could have gone to Radcliffe too, but father wouldn't hear of it. He needed help behind the notions counter. I'm being rude now, aren't I? Or should I say, ain't I?".
  • Lloyd (Hugh Marlowe) tells Karen, "That bitter cynicism of yours is something you've acquired since you left Radcliffe!" Karen replies, "The cynicism you refer to, I acquired the day I discovered I was different from little boys!"
• In Electra Glide in Blue, the intellectual hippie girl is arrested at one point for knowing a murder investigation suspect referred to as a "Radcliffe hippie".
• The 1970 movie Love Story, and the Erich Segal novel it was based on, feature Jenny Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw) as a Radcliffe music student with whom wealthy Harvard student Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O'Neal) falls in love.
• Brenda Patimkin of Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus attends Radcliffe.
• The Woody Allen movie Manhattan includes a pedantic character who attended Radcliffe. Additionally, Judy Davis's character in Allen's film Husbands and Wives claims she wrote her senior thesis at Radcliffe on Bauhaus architecture.
• The dating website OkCupid coined the adjective "Radcliffy" to describe characteristics stereotypically associated with women who go to Harvard University.
• In The Simpsons television episode "Monty Can't Buy Me Love," Homer says the Loch Ness monster has eluded everyone, including Peter Graves. Mr. Burns (a Yale University graduate) retorts: "Peter Graves couldn't find ugly at a Radcliffe mixer".
• One of the two main characters in the 80s Beauty and the Beast—Catherine Chandler played by Linda Hamilton—is a Radcliffe graduate. Throughout the series, "Radcliffe" is her boss's nickname for her.
• The main character in Valley of the Dolls, Anne Welles, is a Radcliffe graduate.