Severn Darden

Background

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he attended the University of Chicago. Darden’s offbeat and intellectual sense of humor, appropriate for someone who attended the University of Chicago and in fact a major element in the style of The Second City at that time, is evident throughout his work.

One example of his offbeat humor is the way he squeezed the phrase "Know thyself" into the seven-character limitation of a New Mexico license plate: NOYOSEF.

Darden appeared in various movies and television series. His best performance is probably in the comedy The President's Analyst; there he has a major role as Kropotkin, a Soviet agent with a laid-back persona (much like Darden's own). An early film, "LUV" (1967) (based on the play of the same title by Murray Schisgal), in which he played a junk dealer, also starred Jack Lemmon, Peter Falk, Elaine May, and Nina Wayne.

One of his earliest TV roles was on Car 54 Where Are You? in the episode "Toody and the Art World" in which he played the artist Karpathia.

He also played a stuffed shirt toy manufacturer in an episode of The Monkees and Dr. Herb Chisholm in a 1976 episode of the NBC situation comedy The Practice. He appeared in "Never Con a Killer," the pilot for the ABC crime drama The Feather and Father Gang, in 1977. He played the cold-hearted Kolp in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes, and a highly respected, but befuddled college dean, in the 1985 comedy Real Genius.

In 1986, he was featured in the Off-Broadway improvisational sketch comedy show, Sills & Company, directed by Paul Sills.

After triple heart bypass surgery, he lived in semi-retirement in Los Angeles before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1992. He died there of congestive heart failure at age 65. His interment was at Lake Lawn Park and Mausoleum in his hometown of New Orleans.

The Metaphysics Lecture

This was ostensibly given by Prof. Walther von der Vogelweide, a reference to the famous medieval poet of the same name. An announcer introduces it as A Short Talk on the Universe, and then Darden continues: "Now, why — you will ask me — have I chosen to speak on the Universe, rather than some other topic. Well, it's very simple: there isn’t anything else!" The lecture is loaded with digressions.

Oedipus

This was another Prof. Walther von der Vogelweide lecture (with the assistance of the rest of the Second City cast). The subject was "free will and necessity in the light of...Oedipus Rex", or "what would have happened to Oedipus if he had read the book before going on the journey". The professor plays the role of Oedipus and refuses to perform the acts that would lead to his fate, but finds that despite his apparent agency the other characters respond in ways that produce the same results.

In the first scene, Oedipus encounters his father Laius, knowing that if all goes according to the book the two will get into a brawl, and he will commit the serious sin of killing his own father. Aware of this, Oedipus is very deferential to Laius, only to find that the father is extremely touchy and hostile to anything that smacks of sycophancy. Despite Oedipus' continued deference and protestations, Laius becomes increasingly angry until he suddenly suffers a fatal heart attack.

In the next scene, the Sphinx energetically tries to wheedle him into answering her riddle correctly, which Oedipus does not want to do. At one point she says, "Think of the power—of the glory—". He responds, "I don't need power and glory, I'm a full professor."

In the final scene, Oedipus prepares to gouge his eyes out. At the last second, he stops when he realizes that the tragic choices were actually forced on him against his will. He explains all this to the crowd, ending with "It's not my fault!" The crowd agrees, and his eyes are saved. The professor ends the sketch by saying, "So you see, my dear students, the lesson that we learn from this is that Man has free will, but tragic poets do not, and Art is not Nature."

Football Comes to the University of Chicago

This sketch was originally developed for the Compass Players and revisited for Second City. It satirized the university and its students, presenting a possible explanation for the failure to introduce football. A typical coach teaches "Football 202" and struggles with the intellectual students. Darden plays Morgenstern, a student who states his field is the "history of arithmetic". After the coach mentions the football positions called "ends", Morgenstern asks where the beginnings for those ends are, because ends must have beginnings, according to Aristotle. The coach presents the football, and Morgenstern declares, "It's a demi-poly-tetrahedron."

Recordings