No, it was fictional. Sorry. Were you hoping to apply?
shareThat's too bad. I was hoping for some adult education. I'd study really hard with the rest of the student body, but I'd still squeeze in some extracurricular activities.
shareThis movie was screaming to be a slasher flick and I'd diffently think about doing the misses infront of the school.
shareI read somewhere that the author of the book (from which the movie was made) took the title by combining Harvard and Radcliffe (which used to be the "girls" version of Harvard).
shareMaybe they should have called it "The Hardcliffe Experiment."
shareI still have the original novel around here somewhere... In the manner of many stories, it was advertised as based on a composite of true events allegedly going on at certain colleges. Even had references and psychological creds as I recall. In any case, if you can find it, it's interesting enough read, and even has a postscript about the 4 main students' post-grad lives (I'll spoil it for you if you like: The 2 main couples marry and move in with another married Harrad couple, where the partners still continue their version of fidelity, until pregnancies are desired. So the women stick with their husbands and somewhat miraculously don't have birth-control failures that leave the infants' paternities in doubt and somehow have jobs (Imagine THAT getting past an employer) and it's assumed they live happily after the last paragraph. I'd LOVE to see an update-- "Harrad Marriages, Forty Years Later."
"Shake me up, Judy!"
Thanks for the details of the novel. I see paperback copies are available on Amazon for a nickel (plus the inevitable $4 in postage), but what fun is that? I'll probably come across it eventually during my travels to thrift stores and sidewalk sales, which will make it feel like a more "authentic" read.
This era holds a lot of appeal to me because it appeared very experimental and a tad sleazy and yet, in hindsight, innocent and ultimately naive. I suspect there may have been the possibility of the novel resembling real-life instances at certain colleges throughout – it is a big country, after all – but that word "composite" seems very problematic to me. If, in the novel, the couples wanted to have children with their own spouses (and they actually stuck to the plan), that would suggest there were limits to their experiment.
I would also love to see a follow-up four decades later, which would probably resemble a horror story complete with descendants and lawyers battling over estates and general disarray during family reunions.