Big man back on campus

NEW YORK -- In 1947, in the days before he announced the Marshall Plan at Harvard's commencement, Secretary of State George Marshall was likely fine-tuning his blueprint for rebuilding Europe after World War II.

Last year, in the days before he told Harvard's graduating students that ''our world will not be secure while citizens of whole countries are trapped in oppression and misery," United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan met with the presidents of Yemen and Cyprus and the foreign ministers of Iraq and Malaysia and an Islamic scholar from Senegal.

This year, in the days before he speaks at Harvard's commencement, actor John Lithgow was letting Norbert Leo Butz lick his face in front of 1,400 people a night at the Imperial Theatre on West 45th Street.

Harvard is in for something different today.

Lithgow this afternoon becomes the first actor -- and first arts professional since writer Carlos Fuentes in 1983 -- to deliver Harvard's commencement address. He is taking two days off from playing the preening, prancing, conniving Lawrence Jameson in the Broadway musical ''Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," for which he was nominated for a Tony, to speak at his alma mater's graduation. He remembers that Edwin Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan, spoke at his own commencement in 1967 but not what Reischauer said.

''I am an actor. My intent is to be memorable," Lithgow says. ''I'm going to finish big."

Lithgow stretches his 6-foot-4 frame in an armchair by the window of the West Side apartment overlooking Central Park that he has sublet for his run in ''Dirty Rotten Scoundrels." He was sitting here in March when he got a call from John Reardon, Harvard's associate vice president for university relations. Would Lithgow be Harvard's commencement speaker?

''I was completely dumbfounded," Lithgow recalls.

''We have done nothing in years in the humanities. The feeling was we should move in that area," Reardon says. ''John Lithgow is somebody we consider to be a great and versatile person. Beyond that, he's a great Harvard citizen."

Lithgow has won recognition for his work on the big screen, small screen, and stage. He's been nominated twice for Oscars, in 1982 for his portrayal of the transsexual former football star Roberta Muldoon in ''The World According to Garp" and in 1983 for his role as the hapless banker in ''Terms of Endearment." He's won two Tonys, in 1973 for his Broadway debut in ''The Changing Room" and in 2002 for ''Sweet Smell of Success." He captured three Emmys playing Dick Solomon, professor from another planet, in ''3rd Rock From the Sun."

Lithgow, 59, has also written children's books and recorded children's music. In five days, he'll take off another four days from Broadway, this time to narrate ''The Carnival of Animals" for the New York City Ballet, reading verse he wrote, and to cavort onstage as a dancing elephant.

Lithgow is amiable and charming, his gray eyes softer in person than onstage, where, reflected off an azure-saturated set, they sparkle blue. A former member of Harvard's Board of Overseers and longtime husband of UCLA economic historian Mary Yeager, he is comfortable with academe as well as acting. Being a faculty spouse, he quips, could have qualified him as a consultant on ''3rd Rock." ''I know all the syndromes," he says.

Son of a retired actress and a regional theater producer, Lithgow attended Harvard on a scholarship. After a childhood of small parts in his father's plays, he fell into theater in college even though he'd arrived more interested in painting than performing. By the time he graduated magna cum laude with majors in history and literature, he'd wed his first wife and done everything from Shakespeare to Gilbert and Sullivan. He'd worked with fellow Harvard actors Tommy Lee Jones and Stockard Channing.

''I was such a campus star and got so much positive reinforcement," Lithgow says. ''I was a supernova in the acting game." He calls college ''the most creative years" of his life. ''Anything you wanted to do you could," he says. ''It wasn't entirely confined to theater. I continued doing printmaking and had a whole little Christmas card cottage industry. I was a mask maker for a couple of productions I did. I was just bursting with ideas and energy. And, of course, there were so many other people. I fell in with the music people. Serious opera singers from New England Conservatory. Dancers from the Boston Conservatory. Wonderful instrumentalists right there at Harvard. It was a wonderful ferment."

As an overseer from 1989 to 1995, Lithgow founded Harvard's annual Arts First festival, whose parade he usually leads as grand marshal, and established an annual alumni arts medal whose recipients include Jack Lemmon and Yo-Yo Ma.

''John is one of the least needy people I've met, despite the fact that he's an actor," says Myra Mayman, retired director of Harvard's Office for the Arts. ''He loves his ego, but he's not needy. He's at ease. He's self-confident. And he'll do anything for an audience." He once portrayed John Harvard at a dinner for major donors. ''He wanted to climb down from the balcony in Memorial Hall on a rope," Mayman recalls, ''but nobody would let him."

Time and again Lithgow's Harvard career has intersected with controversy. The year he graduated, striking maintenance workers picketed the ceremony, joined by several members of Students for a Democratic Society. The year Lithgow was top vote-getter in an overseer election to fill five seats -- besting fellow winners Elizabeth Dole, then Secretary of Labor, and South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu -- the ballot included a controversial slate backing divestment from apartheid-ruled South Africa. Today's graduation follows the controversy over President Lawrence Summers's remarks about women and science. Lithgow's also met alumni convinced he participated in the 1969 student takeover of University Hall. He was in England then, on a Fulbright scholarship, studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. ''They even picture me in the corner with my sleeping bag," he says.

After London, Lithgow worked for a year at Princeton's McCarter Theatre, which his father ran, then headed to New York, where, for a sobering two years, he landed no acting jobs, not even in commercials.

''You go into the profession, and you're one of 100 people auditioning for a shaving cream commercial. It was traumatic," he says. ''One of the great burdens of going to Harvard is the burden of expectations. You're not really allowed to fail if you go to Harvard. Or you're far harder on yourself if you do."

In those two years Lithgow did some directing, worked at a radio station, and drove a taxi for two days before quitting because sitting behind the wheel for hours was no place for a tall man. He avoided mentioning Harvard. ''It's not necessarily the strongest card in your suit if you're an actor," he says. ''Basically you're hired by people who do not want you smarter than they are."

Lithgow's physique and face have proven remarkably malleable. Standing straight, he's imposing. Slouching, he becomes a big bungler. His jaw set, he's stern, sinister, scary. His face contorted, he's comic. ''It's a pleasant, anonymous face." he says. ''That's the strongest weapon you have as an actor, because you don't know which way it's going to go."

The invitation, in late 1994, to star in a sitcom came as Lithgow fretted he'd ''fallen into a slight rut" of being typecast as a villain in action movies. With ''3rd Rock," he not only did comedy but was also home in Los Angeles for five years, instead of on movie sets for months at a time, when his youngest two children were still home. He's been a Red Sox fan since executive producer Tom Werner became co-owner of the team in 2002, a year after ''3rd Rock" ended.

Ian, 33, Lithgow's son from his first marriage, graduated from Harvard in 1994, his daughter, Phoebe, 22, finished Harvard last year, and son Nate, 21, attends New York University. Taped to the mirror of Lithgow's theater dressing room is a picture of his first grandchild, Ian's daughter, Ava, born April 18.

Lithgow takes the podium as a veteran commencement speaker, having delivered the humorous Ivy Oration at his own Class Day ceremonies in 1967. He's also addressed three high school graduations -- Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School in Manhattan in 1985, Brewster Academy in New Hampshire in 1997, and the Brentwood School in Los Angeles in 2002. For the first two, he uncovered an anecdote -- a prank pulled, a romance tried, a quirk expressed -- for each senior.

''I wrote a long doggerel poem that included all their names. It was like setting off a whole bunch of firecrackers. One after another heard their names in a poem," he says. ''Since then -- I would say maybe 10 times -- adults have come up to me and said, 'You included my name at my high school commencement.' They've been able to quote the actual poem."

He promises not to do the same with Harvard's 1,600 graduating seniors. He also pledges not to mention Marshall, as Annan did last year and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo did in 2003 and the former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan did in 2002 and Reischauer did back in 1967.

''I am so alarmed at the state of our country and the world, of course. Everybody feels this terrific malaise, and I'm certainly not the person to comment on it," Lithgow says. ''Perhaps that's exactly why they came to me -- to turn our attention to something else because everything else is such a bummer."

JOHN LITHGOW: HIGHLIGHTS OF AN ACTING CAREER
Broadway

''Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," 2005 (Tony nominee)

''Sweet Smell of Success," 2002 (Tony winner)

''M. Butterfly," 1988-90 (Tony nominee)

''Requiem for a Heavyweight," 1985 (Tony nominee)

''The Changing Room," 1973 (Tony winner)

Television

''3rd Rock From the Sun," 1996-2001 (Emmy winner 1999, 1997, 1996; Golden Globe 1996)

''Amazing Stories," 1986 (Emmy winner)

Film
''Kinsey," 2004

''Shrek," 2001

''A Civil Action," 1998

''The Pelican Brief," 1993

''Cliffhanger," 1993

''Ricochet," 1991

''The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai," 1984

''Footloose," 1984

''Terms of Endearment," 1983 (Oscar nominee)

''The World According to Garp," 1982 (Oscar nominee)

SOURCES: American Theatre Wing, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Internet Movie Database