Douglas C. Kenney

Douglas Clark Kenney (December 10, 1947- August 29, 1980) is the co-author of Bored of the Rings. He was a creative mastermind at, and a co-founder of National Lampoon. His family sent him to Harvard where he spent most of his time doing drugs and writing for the school's satirical newsletter, The Harvard Lampoon. He enjoyed it greatly and it seemed to be all he could do. So he convinced his friend Henry Beard who also wrote for the newsletter to join him in releasing a nationally syndicated version. A magazine that was satirically anarchic in the vein of WASP and Irish-Catholic humor. He died falling of a cliff in Hawaii.

Doug Kenney was one of the innovation visionaries of what was eventually called the "new wave" of comedy during the 1970's. This extremely dark, irreverent and anarchic brand Kenney used as the basis to collectively found the National Lampoon with fellow satirists Henry Beard and Robert Hoffman. Beard was practicing law and Hoffman was practicing business before Kenney convinced them to abandon such “realistic goals” for a life in comedy.

Their pointed wicked nihilistic style later went to influence countless innumerable other productions and affiliates in the biz of comedy, such as "Saturday Night Live"—that actually bought out much of the talent from the Lampoon. Lorne Michaels tried to convert Kenney as well, but Doug stuck to his guns—refusing to work for someone else and feeling betrayed that all the talent he worked so hard to recruit was jumping ship.

Thomas Carney of The New Times summed it up best when he was tracing the origin of such a landmark in comedy history: "The National Lampoon was the first full-blown appearance of non-Jewish humor in years--not anti-Semitic, just non-Jewish. Its roots were WASP and Irish Catholic, with a weird strain of Canadian detachment. . . . This was not Jewish street-smart humor as a defense mechanism; this was slash-and-burn stuff that alternated in pitch but moved very much on the offensive. It was always disrespect everything, mostly yourself, a sort of reverse deism."

Kenney had been harvesting his own uniquely personal style of humor all his life. He was born in West Palm Beach, Florida of a rather privileged upbringing. The family moved to Mentor, Ohio in the early 1950's before settling in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. His older brother was the real prodigal son.

Kenney lived in Chagrin Falls from 1958-1964 and attended Gilmour Academy, a Catholic boys prep high school in nearby Gates Mills, Ohio.

While he was a student at Harvard, Kenney spent pretty much all his time indulging in leisure. He didn’t really find what he really wanted to do with his life in class. He wrote for the school’s satirical newsletter, The Harvard Lampoon. He met his soon-to-be “partner in crime and comedy” Henry Beard. The two began making light of such things as Life, Time, and eventually… J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

Their latter, entitled Bored of the Rings, sold over three-quarters of a million copies. They were best-selling authors before they were college graduates. Kenney decided he wanted to keep doing what he doing—the magazine and the book, but on a global scale. And so, Kenney, Beard, and Rob Hoffman to launch the National Lampoon following their graduation from Harvard. They got the money for such a class from Matty Simmons, Chairman of the Board of Twenty-First Century Communications, and the world premiere of the National Lampoon first appeared on newsstands in April, 1970. It featured a sultry woman and a horny duck on the cover. The duck was an attempt at giving the Lampoon a logo.

Bored of the Rings was forgotten for a while until the live-action saga by Peter Jackson hit the screen. And the rest, as they say… is history.

==External links ==poon history.

• National Lampoon