Sandra Bullock came to Cambridge Wednesday to collect Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year Award after parading down the streets in a convertible with men in drag and being roasted by members of the Hasty Pudding Club.
Throngs of students and others filled the streets of Cambridge and hung out their windows to catch a glimpse of Miss Congeniality, as male actors in short skirts and makeup flanked the starlet.
“I’m wicked excited,” said 15-year-old volunteer Jessica Jantti as she handed out cartons of pudding to the crowd of hundreds. Jantti said she and other volunteers from the Hillsdale, N.H. dairy company Echo Farm handed out 1,200 cartons of pudding during the 20-minute parade.
After the parade, Bullock had to endure a dating-themed roast at the Hasty Pudding Theater by two members of the theatrical club who poked fun at her less critically acclaimed movies such as Speed 2: Cruise Control and Hope Floats, made her ride a stationary bicycle and made her sing in front of the packed auditorium.
Bullock sang alternate lyrics to the melody of “Sandra Dee,” from Grease, during the roast. Even though she grew up in a musical environment with opera singers as parents, she said singing was the “most humiliating” thing she had to do during the onslaught of teasing.
“I hate having to sing,” Bullock said. “I don’t have it in me. I don’t have a gift. I don’t have talent.”
Harvard senior and Hasty Pudding Theatricals President Clare Putnam asked Bullock to use a Harvard student in a muscle suit to show how she would pick up a guy in a bar.
“I need some alcohol,” Bullock said when she saw the buffed up undergraduate. “I usually play really helpless in a bar and they come to me.”
She then had to dance with the actor to “Love Potion Number 9” – a song that is also the name of one of her early 1990s flops.
After Bullock agreed to ride a stationary bicycle on the stage, Harvard sophomore John Blickstead, co-host and vice-president of the cast, answered his cell phone.
“There’s a bomb on the bike,” he said and then told Bullock to keep riding. She could only stop if she did an impression of Hugh Grant, the co-star of Bullock’s latest film, Two Weeks Notice, he said.
Bullock got off the bike after she flipped her hair and said “bugger” several times in a British accent.
Many jokes were made about her choice to make Speed 2: Cruise Control.
Bullock said the next sequel could be called, “Speed 3: How Many Tablets?”
“Today was truly fun and more embarrassment than I need in this lifetime,” Bullock said, “and I apologize for Speed 2.”
The Hasty Pudding Club is a theater group at Harvard that writes and performs its own plays. The group presents Man and Woman of the Year awards to performers who have made a “lasting and impressive contribution to the world of entertainment,” according to the group’s website.
With the Woman of the Year Award, Bullock joins a who’s who list of Hollywood’s A-list actresses, including Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn, Meg Ryan and Michelle Pfeiffer.
The society got its name in 1795 from a founding rule that said each member in alphabetical order had to provide a pot of hasty pudding for the meetings.
The group describes its annual show as “a no-holds-barred burlesque, with men playing both the male and female roles.”
Bullock received a gold-engraved pudding pot along with a $5,000 gift basket filled with platinum, diamond emblazoned earrings, a $600 Britesmile gift certificate and a pink cashmere scarf, among other items.
Robert Downey Jr. was selected as the 2004 Man of the Year and will be honored Thursday.
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