John Belushi

John Adam Belushi (/bəˈluːʃi/; January 24, 1949 – March 5, 1982) was an American comedian, actor, and musician. He is best known for his "intense energy and raucous attitude" which he displayed as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, in his role in the 1978 film Animal House and in his recordings and performances as one of The Blues Brothers.
During his career he had a close personal and artistic partnership with fellow SNL actor and writer Dan Aykroyd whom he met while they were both working at Chicago's Second City comedy club.
Belushi died on the morning of March 5, 1982 at the age of 33 at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, after being injected with a mixture of cocaine and heroin, known as a "speedball", which led to combined drug intoxication. He was posthumously honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, on April 1, 2004.

Early life

Belushi's mother, Agnes Demetri (Samaras), was the daughter of Albanian immigrants, and his father, Adam Anastos Belushi, was an Albanian immigrant from Qytezë. Born in Humboldt Park, a neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, Illinois, John was raised in Wheaton, a suburb west of Chicago, along with his three siblings: younger brothers Billy and Jim, and sister Marian. Belushi was raised in the Albanian Orthodox Church and attended Wheaton Community High School, where he met his future wife, Judith Jacklin.

Career

The Second City and National Lampoon

After starting his own comedy troupe in Chicago, The West Compass Trio (named after the improvisational cabaret revue Compass Players active from 1955-1958 in Chicago), with Tino Insana and Steve Beshekas, in 1971 Belushi was asked to join the cast of The Second City. At Second City, he met and began working with Harold Ramis. He was subsequently cast with Chevy Chase and Christopher Guest in National Lampoon Lemmings, a parody of Woodstock, which played Off-Broadway in 1972.

In 1973, Belushi and Judith Jacklin moved together to New York where Belushi worked for National Lampoon magazine's The National Lampoon Radio Hour, a half-hour syndicated comedy program where he was a writer, director and actor. During a trip to Toronto to check the local Second City cast in 1974, he met Dan Aykroyd. Jacklin became an associate producer for the show, and she and Belushi were married on December 31, 1976.

Saturday Night Live

Belushi became a member of the original cast of the television show Saturday Night Live (SNL) in 1975. His characters at SNL included the belligerent Samurai Futaba, Henry Kissinger, Ludwig van Beethoven, the Greek owner of the Olympia Diner, and a contributor of furious opinion pieces on Weekend Update, during which he coined his catchphrase, "But N-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O!" With Aykroyd, Belushi created Jake and Elwood, the Blues Brothers.

During his tenure at SNL, Belushi's excessive drug and alcohol use affected his performances, and caused him to be fired (and re-hired) a number of times. In Rolling Stone Magazine's February, 2015 appraisal of all 141 SNL cast members to that time, Belushi received the top ranking. "Belushi was the 'live' in Saturday Night Live," they wrote, "the one who made the show happen on the edge ... Nobody embodied the highs and lows of SNL like Belushi."

Expansion into films

In 1978, he made the films Old Boyfriends (directed by Joan Tewkesbury), Goin' South (directed by Jack Nicholson) and Animal House (directed by John Landis). Upon its initial release, Animal House received generally mixed reviews from critics, but Time and Roger Ebert proclaimed it one of the year's best. Filmed for $2.8 million, it is one of the most profitable movies of all time, garnering an estimated gross of more than $141 million in the form of theatrical rentals and home video, not including merchandising. Animal House was also largely responsible for defining and launching the gross-out genre of films, which became one of Hollywood's staples.

Following the success of The Blues Brothers on SNL, Belushi and Aykroyd, with the help of pianist-arranger Paul Shaffer, started assembling studio talents to form a proper band. These included SNL saxophonist "Blue" Lou Marini and trombonist-saxophonist Tom Malone, who had previously played in Blood, Sweat & Tears. At Shaffer's suggestion, guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn, the powerhouse combo from Booker T and the M.G.'s and subsequently almost every hit out of Memphis's Stax Records during the 1960s, were signed as well. In 1978 The Blues Brothers released their debut album, Briefcase Full of Blues, with Atlantic Records. The album reached #1 on the Billboard 200 and went double platinum. Two singles were released, "Rubber Biscuit", which reached number 37 on the Billboard Hot 100 and "Soul Man", which reached number 14.

In 1979, Belushi left Saturday Night Live with Aykroyd to pursue a film career. They made three movies together, 1941 (directed by Steven Spielberg), Neighbors (directed by John Avildsen), and most notably The Blues Brothers (directed by John Landis). Released in the United States on June 20, 1980, The Blues Brothers received generally positive reviews. It earned just under $5 million in its opening weekend and went on to gross $115.2 million in theaters worldwide before its release on home video. The Blues Brothers band toured to promote the film, which led to a third album (and second live album), Made in America, recorded at the Universal Amphitheatre in 1980. The track "Who's Making Love" peaked at No 39.

The only film Belushi made without Aykroyd following his departure from SNL was the romantic comedy Continental Divide (directed by Michael Apted). Released in September 1981, it starred Belushi as Chicago home town hero writer Ernie Souchack (loosely based on newspaper columnist and long-time family friend Mike Royko), who gets an assignment researching a scientist (played by Blair Brown) who studies birds of prey in the remote Rocky Mountains.

By 1980, Belushi had become a fan and advocate of the punk rock band Fear after seeing them perform in several after-hours New York City bars, and brought them to Cherokee Studios to record songs for the soundtrack of Neighbors. Blues Brother band member and sax player Tom Scott, along with producing partner and Cherokee owner Bruce Robb, initially helped with the session but later pulled out due to conflicts with Belushi.

At the time of his death, Belushi was pursuing several movie projects, including Moon Over Miami with Louis Malle, National Lampoon's The Joy of Sex, and Noble Rot, a script he adapted and rewrote with former SNL writer Don Novello. He was also scheduled to work with Aykroyd on Ghostbusters and Spies Like Us.

Belushi also made a "Guest Star Appearance" on an episode of the television series Police Squad! (1982), which showed him underwater wearing cement shoes. He died shortly before the episode aired, so the scene was cut and replaced by a segment with William Conrad.

Death

On March 5, 1982, after showing up at his hotel for a scheduled workout, his trainer Bill Wallace found Belushi dead in his room, Bungalow 3 at the Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. He was 33 years old. The cause of death was combined drug intoxication involving cocaine and heroin, a drug combination also known as a speedball. In the early morning hours on the day of his death, he was visited separately by friends Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, as well as Catherine Evelyn Smith. His death was investigated by forensic pathologist Michael Baden, among others, and, while the findings were disputed, it was officially ruled a drug-related accident.

Two months later, Smith admitted in an interview with the National Enquirer that she had been with Belushi the night of his death and had given him the fatal speedball shot. After the appearance of the article "I Killed Belushi" in the Enquirer edition of June 29, 1982, the case was reopened. Smith was extradited from Toronto, Ontario, arrested and charged with first-degree murder. A plea bargain reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter, and she served 15 months in prison.

Belushi's wife arranged for a traditional Orthodox Christian funeral which was conducted by an Albanian Orthodox priest. He has been interred twice at Abel's Hill Cemetery in Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. A tombstone marking the original burial location has a skull and crossbones, that reads, "I may be gone but Rock and Roll lives on." He is also remembered on the Belushi family stone marking his mother's grave at Elmwood Cemetery in River Grove, Illinois. This stone reads, "He gave us laughter."

Tributes and legacy

Belushi's life is detailed in the 1984 biography Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi by Bob Woodward and 1990's Samurai Widow by his wife Judith. Wired was later adapted into a feature film in which Belushi was played by Michael Chiklis.

The thrash metal group Anthrax penned a song about Belushi on their 1987 album Among the Living, titled "Efilnikufesin (N.F.L.)."

Belushi has been portrayed by actors Eric Siegel in Gilda Radner: It's Always Something, Tyler Labine in Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of Mork & Mindy (which also features his friendship with Robin Williams), and Michael Chiklis in Wired. Future SNL star Chris Farley, whose work was heavily influenced by Belushi, died in 1997 at age 33 due to a drug overdose, similar to combined drug intoxication, contributing to comparisons between Belushi and Farley.

His widow later remarried and is now Judith Belushi Pisano. She and co-biographer Tanner Colby produced Belushi: A Biography, a collection of first-person interviews and photographs of John Belushi's life that was published in 2005.

In 2004, Belushi was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2006, Biography Channel aired the "John Belushi" episode of Final 24, a documentary following Belushi in the last twenty-four hours leading to his death. In 2010, Biography aired a full biography documentation of Belushi's life.

According to Jane Curtin, who appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011, John Belushi was a "misogynist" who would deliberately sabotage the work of women writers and comics while working on SNL. "So you'd go to a table read, and if a woman writer had written a piece for John, he would not read it in his full voice. He felt as though it was his duty to sabotage pieces written by women."

The character Slimer from the Ghostbusters franchise has been referred to as "The Ghost of John Belushi" due to his resemblance to Belushi's character Bluto from Animal House. During the pre-production of Ghostbusters, Ivan Reitman remarked Slimer was sort of like Bluto in the film Animal House, like the ghost of John Belushi. Since then, Slimer has been described as "The Ghost of John Belushi" by Dan Aykroyd in many interviews.

At the conclusion of the very first live SNL episode (Robert Urich/Mink DeVille on March 20, 1982) following Belushi's death, Brian Doyle-Murray gave a tribute to him.

The ABC Network's similar sketch comedy series Fridays aired a live episode the night of Belushi's death. Just before the final credits rolled cast member Maryedith Burrell paid tribute to him by saying, "We're all going to miss John Belushi".

Belushi was scheduled to present the first annual Best Visual Effects Oscar at the 1982 Academy Awards with Dan Aykroyd. Aykroyd presented the award alone, and stated from the lectern: "My partner would have loved to have been here tonight to present this award, since he was a bit of a Visual Effect himself."

In 2015, Belushi was ranked by Rolling Stone as the greatest SNL cast member of all time.

On May 23, 2016, cable network Showtime announced that a documentary directed by filmmaker R.J. Cutler and produced by British documentary producer John Battsek is in pre-production and will begin filming in fall 2016.

Film credits

• Tarzoon: Shame of the Jungle (1975) - Craig Baker (English version, voice)
• National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) - John Blutarsky
• Goin' South (1978) - Deputy Hector
• Old Boyfriends (1979) - Eric Katz
• 1941 (1979) - Capt. Wild Bill Kelso
• The Blues Brothers (1980) - 'Joliet' Jake Blues
• Continental Divide (1981) - Ernie Souchak
• Neighbors (1981) - Earl Keese (Last appearance)

TV credits

• Saturday Night Live (1975–1979) (1980,1981) (TV) - guest-appearances
• The Beach Boys: It's OK (1976) (TV) - Cop #2
• The Richard Pryor Special? (1977) (TV) - cameo appearance
• The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978) (TV film) - Ron Decline, The most feared promoter in the world

Others

• National Lampoon Lemmings (1973) (Stage)
• The National Lampoon Radio Hour (1973–1974) (Radio) (also Creative Director)
• The National Lampoon Show (1975) (Stage)

Discography

• National Lampoon's Lemmings (Blue Thumb Records, 1973) (bass guitar, lead vocals on Lonely At The Bottom)
• Old Boyfriends: Original Soundtrack (Columbia, 1978) (lead vocals on Jailhouse Rock, You Belong to Me, Get Up and Down and Tush)
• National Lampoon's Animal House: Original Soundtrack (Universal, 1978) (lead vocals on Money (That's What I Want) and Louie Louie)
• Briefcase Full of Blues (Atlantic, 1978) US #1 (with the Blues Brothers)
• The Blues Brothers: Music from the Soundtrack (Atlantic, 1980) US #13 (with the Blues Brothers)
• Made in America (Atlantic, 1980) US #49 (with the Blues Brothers)
• Best of The Blues Brothers (Atlantic, 1981) US #143 (with the Blues Brothers)
• Dancin' wid da Blues Brothers (Atlantic, 1983) (with the Blues Brothers)
• Everybody Needs the Blues Brothers (Atlantic, 1988) (with the Blues Brothers)
• The Definitive Collection (Atlantic, 1992) (with the Blues Brothers)
• The Very Best of The Blues Brothers (Atlantic, 1995) (with the Blues Brothers)
• The Blues Brothers Complete (Atlantic, 2000) (with the Blues Brothers)
• The Essentials (Atlantic, 2003) (with the Blues Brothers)

Comedy albums

• The Missing White House Tapes (National Lampoon, 1974)
• National Lampoon Gold Turkey ((National Lampoon, 1975)
• NBC's Saturday Night Live (Arista, 1976)
• National Lampoon That's Not Funny, That's Sick ((National Lampoon, 1977)
• Greatest Hits of the National Lampoon ((National Lampoon, 1978)
• National Lampoon White Album ((National Lampoon, 1979).