The following number comes as the last sheet of a stapled collection of skit numbers, beginning with an economics version of “Dear Officer Krupke” from West Side Story, already posted. That number was written about 1962 and My Fair Lady ran on Broadway from 1956 through 1962, so this too could have been written sometime around 1962 as well.
_____________________________
FINALE
(To the tune of “With a Little Bit of Luck”
from My Fair Lady)
Oh we are all perpetually students
Because the army we would like to shirk
Oh we are all perpetually students
But with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck
We will never have to go to work
With a little bit, with a little bit
With a little bit of bloomin’ luck
The men upstairs harass us with their prelims
To write the answers always makes us fret
The men upstairs harass us with their prelims
But with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck
We will pass them all without a sweat
(Repeat Chorus)
Ingersoll and Earhart pay us money
And the reason we don’t understand
Oh Ingersoll and Earhart pay us money
But with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck
They’ll increase it by another grand
(Repeat Chorus)
Oh we have spent long years in these damn workshops
Hearing all the young professors shout
Oh we have spent long years in these damn workshops
But with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck
They’ll have pity and they’ll let us out
(Repeat Chorus)
The MIT men get the best job offers
The Harvard men get all the business dough
The MIT men get the best job offers
But we just never get the luck, we just never get the luck
All that’s left for us is Chicago
We just never get, we just never get
We just never get the bloomin’ luck
Oh everybody thinks that we are madmen
And we have no say in policy
Oh everybody thinks that we are madmen
But with a little bit of luck, with a little bit of luck
We will publish in the J-P-E.
No final Chorus
Source: Harvard University Archive. Papers of Zvi Griliches. Box 129, Folder “Faculty Skits, ca. 1960s.”
Image Source: Stanley Holloway (center) as Alfred P. Doolittle from the Broadway presentation of My Fair Lady. At left is Gordon Dillworth and at right, Rod McLennan. From Wikimedia Commons.