Vassar College in popular culture

Jane Hathaway (center, portrayed by Nancy Kulp), a character from The Beverly Hillbillies, graduated from Vassar.^[1]

Three Vassar Girls Abroad cover, by Elizabeth Williams Champney

Vassar College has been featured in many books, movies, and television shows. This is a partial list of references and fictional alumni.

• Martin Geldhart, Vassar professor of landscape architecture in The Substance of Fire
• Holly Goodhead, character from Moonraker and its novelization
• Miss Jane Hathaway, a character in The Beverly Hillbillies, graduated from Vassar.^[1]
• Erica, the main protagonist of the Academy-Award nominated film An Unmarried Woman (1978), went to Vassar
• Three Vassar Girls Abroad, a book series by Elizabeth Williams Champney about Maud Van Vechten, Barbara Atchison and Cecilia Boylston (current students)
• Katherine "Kitty" Montgomery, character played by Susan Sullivan on Dharma and Greg
• Olive Snook, character played by Kristin Chenoweth on Pushing Daisies; attended on a jockey scholarship
• Georgina Tuskin, character in Susanna Kaysen's memoir Girl, Interrupted
• Lilly Kane from Veronica Mars attended Vassar in a second-season dream sequence; in the actual storyline, she had been murdered three years earlier.
• Two young men in Terrence McNally's Off-Broadway play Some Men portray gender studies majors from Vassar College.
• In the 2007 movie Georgia Rule starring Lindsay Lohan, Felicity Huffman, and Jane Fonda, Lohan's character mentions future plans to attend Vassar.
• Nanny's Grandma from the book The Nanny Diaries by Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin says, "You know, I don't remember having a single conversation like the ones you describe when I was at Vassar."
• Heidi Holland, main character of The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein
• In the 1990 book American Psycho, the character Timothy Bryce tells a story about a sexual encounter he had with a "Vassar girl."
• In Miss Congeniality, Benjamin Bratt introduces Sandra Bullock to Beth, an undergrad at Vassar, doing a paper on law enforcement.
• Two old ladies in The Dark Tower, the seventh and final book of the series of the same name, by Stephen King
• Principal Willoughby, from the Nickelodeon cartoon Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
• Characters from the 1963 novel, The Group, by alumna Mary McCarthy
• Cricket Feldstein, from Hamlet 2, an ACLU attorney who holds a degree in French.
• Betsy Ann Fitzgerald, from The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
• Kathy Lacey, from Gentleman's Agreement, a high-status New Yorker portrayed by Dorothy McGuire.
• Marian Stevens, from Robin and the Seven Hoods, a mob daughter, portrayed by Barbara Rush
• Selena St. George, from Dolores Claiborne, an alcoholic journalist portrayed by Jennifer Jason Leigh
• The Simpsons has referenced Vassar several times. In "Lisa Gets an 'A'," Lisa is upset after her entire school finds out that she cheated on an exam. Her rarely tactful father, Homer, responds with, "Aw, don’t worry about the test... Maybe Vassar will still take you." In the episode "The PTA Disbands," Lisa is upset that her school is on strike. She says she won't be able to get into an Ivy League school, and adds, "At this rate, I probably won't even get into Vassar." Homer responds, "I've had just about enough of your Vassar-bashing, young lady!"
• Elizabeth Vaughan, the central character of the musical If/Then, as well as her friend Lucas^[2]
• In the WB series Gilmore Girls season 2 episode 21 ("Lorelai's Graduation Day"), Lorelai Gilmore says, "I was supposed to go to Vassar" before she got pregnant and could not attend college.^[3]
• In the NBC series Friends season 2 episode 20 ("The One Where Old Yeller Dies"), Richard is leaving for a basketball game and Monica yells, "Go Vassar!"^[4]
• Catherine Meyers, First Daughter of the United States in the HBO series Veep, majored in film studies at Vassar.
• Grace Gummer (Vassar grad), daughter of Meryl Streep (Vassar grad), played a journalist (Vassar grad) in the HBO series The Newsroom.
• In the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman season 2, episode 5 ("Chickens"), director Kelsey Jannings describes why she took the job directing a major film for the sake of her daughter: "Indie darling daughters don't go to Brown, okay? They end up at cute, little pat-on-the-back factories like Vassar, and then they move back in with their indie darling mothers and make weird puppet shows with their tampons and get a profile in New York Magazine, and the horrible cycle continues."^[5]
• In HBO's Silicon Valley, Jared Dunn mentions he received a B.A. in economics from Vassar.

References