Rinehart (Harvard)
The cry of Rinehart! (more fully Oh, R-i-i-i-n-e-HART!) was a part of Harvard University student and alumni culture in the early decades of the 20th Century.
The cry references an unknown undergraduate's call, from ground to dormitory window, for John Bryce Gordon Rinehart (1875-1954; Harvard class of 1900). His cry of "Oh, R-i-i-i-n-e-HART!" drifting across Harvard Yard was inexplicably and spontaneously taken up by hundreds of students and echoed from the open windows of dormitories surrounding the quadrangle.
For the next forty years or so, cries of "Oh, R-i-i-i-n-e-HART!". described as "Harvard's rebel yell" could be heard at random times and around the world, wherever Harvard men traveled or congregated, sometimes signalling the start of merry revelry.
John Barrymore mentioned The "Rinehart!" cry in the 1939 movie The Great Man Votes. The call was included by journalist George Frazier in his 1932 song "Harvard Blues" (music by Tab Smith), recorded in 1941 by Count Basie and included on the compilation The Count Basie Story, Disc 3 - Harvard Blues (2001, Proper Records).
| “ | Rinehart, Rinehart / I'm a most indiff'rent guy / Rinehart, Rinehart / I'm a most indiff'rent guy / But I love my Vincent Baby / And that's no Harvard lie. | ” |
Thomas Pynchon describes the cry in Against the Day:
| “ | "Popular fellow, this Rinehart," Kit remarked. "A Harvard pleasantry from a few years back," explained Scarsdale Vibe, "which shows no sign of abating. Uttered in repetition, like this, it's exhausting enough, but chorused by a hundred male voices on a summer's evening, with Harvard Yard for an echo chamber? well . . . on the Tibetan prayer-wheel principle, repeat it enough and at some point something unspecified but miraculous will come to pass. Harvard in a nutshell, if you really want to know." | ” |
Read more about Rinehart (Harvard): Origin, Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the word rinehart:
“There were times when I felt that I could bear no more. It was the Emergency Ward which almost broke me. I stood one night beside a man who had been caught in a flywheel, and whose body felt like jelly. I wanted him to die quickly, not to go on breathing. Oh, stop breathing. I can’t stand it. Die and stop suffering. I can’t stand it. I can’t.”
—Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958)