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Hugh Nanton Romney Jr. (born May 15, 1936), known as Wavy Gravy, is an American entertainer and peace activism best known for his role at Woodstock, as well as for his hippie persona and countercultural beliefs.
Romney has founded or co-founded several organizations, including the activist commune the Hog Farm, and later, as Wavy Gravy, Camp Winnarainbow and the Seva Foundation. He founded the Phurst Church of Phun in the 1960s, a secret society of comics and clowns that aimed to support the ending of the Vietnam War through political theater, and has adopted a clown persona in support of his political activism, and more generally as a form of entertainment work, including as the official clown of the Grateful Dead.
As Wavy Gravy, he has had two radio shows on Sirius Satellite Radio's Jam On station. A documentary film based on his life, , was released in late 2010 to generally positive reviews. Romney was awarded the Kate Wolf Memorial Award by the World Folk Music Association in 1992.
Romney entered Boston University Theater Department in the late 1950s under the G.I. Bill, and then attended the Neighborhood Playhouse for the Theater in New York City.
In 1958, he began reading poetry regularly at The Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village in New York City, where he eventually became the cafe's entertainment director, befriending musicians such as Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, and Dave Van Ronk. He lived with Bob Dylan upstairs at 116 MacDougal Street.
After moving to Sunland, a suburb in the San Fernando Valley, north of Los Angeles, Romney was evicted from his one-bedroom cabin after the landlord discovered that a large group of assorted pranksters and musicians were staying there. Two hours later, a neighbor informed Romney that a nearby hog farm needed caretakers after the farmer had suffered a stroke, and Romney accepted an offer to work at the farm in exchange for rent. Local people, musicians, artists, and members of other communes began staying at the mountain-top farm. In his book Something Good for a Change, Gravy described this early period as a "bizarre communal experiment" where the "people began to outnumber the pigs".
Throughout the mid-1960s, both Romney and his wife, Bonnie Beecher, were employed in Los Angeles. He worked for Columbia Pictures teaching improvisation skills to actors. Beecher was a successful television actress, appearing in episodes of The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke, , and The Fugitive.
By 1966, the Hog Farm had coalesced into an entertainment organization providing light shows at the Shrine Exposition Hall in Los Angeles for music artists such as the Grateful Dead, Cream, and Jimi Hendrix. Beginning in 1967, the collective began traveling across the country in converted school buses purchased with money earned as extras in Otto Preminger's feature film Skidoo (1968).
The Hog Farm relocated to the Black Oak Ranch in Laytonville, Mendocino County, in Northern California in the early 1990s.
Romney called his group the "Please Force," a reference to their non-intrusive tactics at keeping order, e.g., "Please don't do that, please do this instead". When asked by the press—who were the first to inform him that he and the rest of the Hog Farm were handling security—what kind of tools he intended to use to maintain order at the event, his response was "Cream pies and Soda syphon" (both being traditional clown props). In Gravy's words: "They all wrote it down and I thought, 'the power of manipulating the media', ah ha!"
Romney made announcements from the concert stage throughout the festival. He later wrote in his memoir that "the reason that I got to do all those stage announcements was because of my relationship with Chip Monck sic. Chip built the stage at Woodstock."
At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum's psychedelic tribute to the 1960s "I Want To Take You Higher", Romney's sleeping bag and tie-dyed false teeth were displayed. He and Paul Krassner appeared there on the last day of the exhibit on February 28, 1998.
Romney, as Wavy Gravy after the first Woodstock, has been the Master of Ceremonies of, and the only person to appear on the bill of all three Woodstock festivals: the original festival in 1969, the 25thanniversary Woodstock '94 festival in 1994, and the 30thanniversary Woodstock '99 festival in 1999. On the morning of the 20th Anniversary of the Woodstock Festival, he and author Ken Kesey were interviewed on Good Morning America, live from the Bethel concert site, where he discussed his experience as the MC of the event.
He began exploring collage in the early 1960s, and his first works were created in the period where he lived above the Gaslight in Greenwich Village; he has stated that he was inspired by a Max Ernst collage he saw at the Bitter End, when he opened for Peter, Paul and Mary. His collage work includes larger pieces done for celebrities in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Browne was able to have an acoustic guitar and performed in the gymnasium at Cuesta College; where the male incarcerated were being held. Gravy organized and acted as MC for a variety show there that he called the, "Tornado of Talent". Wavy arrived at the holding facility dressed in a pair of bright green coveralls. After settling into his "bunk" (a thin mattress on the gym floor) he removed the coveralls to reveal a Santa Claus suit.
"Wavy Gravy nominated Nobody for president at the "Yippie National Convention" outside the Republican National Convention in Kansas City in 1976. It was the second time the Hog Farm had nominated a candidate for the Presidency, following the nomination of the hog, Pigasus, eight years prior."
Wavy Gravy ran a "Nobody for President" campaign that held a rally across from the White House on November 4, 1980, which included Yippies and a few to promote the option of "none of the above" choice on the ballot—as in, "Nobody's Perfect", "Nobody Keeps All Promises", "Nobody Should Have That Much Power", and "Who's in Washington right now working to make the world a safer place? Nobody!". After criticizing Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and John B. Anderson, the committee offered the "perfect" candidate: Nobody. "Nobody makes apple pie better than Mom. And Nobody will love you when you're down and out," Gravy told a crowd of 50 onlookers at the rally. The allusion had been used previously, in the 1932 short film Betty Boop for President.
Gravy established the store Nobody's Business across the road from the Hog Farm. reminiscent of his "Nobody for President" campaign.
In 1965, Wavy Gravy married the actress Bonnie Beecher, who later adopted the name Jahanara Romney. They have a son, born in 1971 as Howdy Do-Good Gravy Tomahawk Truckstop Romney, who has since become known as Jordan Romney.
| +Filmography !Year !Title !Role !Type !Notes | ||||
| 1963 | The Fat Black Pussycat | Assistant Detective (as Hugh Romney) | Film | Detective film |
| 1970 | Woodstock | Himself | Film | Documentary film |
| 1972 | Cisco Pike | Reed (as Hugh Romney) | Film | |
| 1994 | Flashing on the Sixties: A Tribal Document | Himself | Television | |
| 1995 | The History of Rock 'N' Roll, Vol. 6 | Himself | Television | |
| 1997 | Timothy Leary's Last Trip | Himself | Film | Film takes place at the "Pig-Nic" at the Hog Farm. |
| 1999 | The '60s | Film | ||
| 2000 | My Generation | Himself | Film | |
| 2001 | The End of the Road | Himself | Film | |
| 2001 | Ram Dass, Fierce Grace | Himself | Film | |
| 2005 | The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose | Film | ||
| 2006 | Breaking the Rules | Himself | Film | |
| 2008 | Battleground Earth | Himself | Television | episode "Ludacris vs. Tommy Lee" |
| 2008 | Himself | Film | Mockumentary. | |
| 2009 | Himself | Film | Documentary film, directed by Michelle Esrick and released by Ripple Effect Films. | |
| 2009 | Woodstock: Now & Then | Himself | Film | |
| 2019 | Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation | Himself | Film | Documentary film by director Barak Goodman. |
| 2021 | "Saint Stupid The Movie recut" | Himself | Film by Bishop Joey | https://vimeo.com/547299331?ref=em-share |
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