John Belushi

John Belushi (24 January 1949 Chicago, Illinois – 5 March 1982 Hollywood, California) was a comic actor who achieved great success in television, motion pictures, and the music industry in a relatively short space of time. Between the years 1975 to 1982 Belushi became a cultural phenomenon in America, graced the covers of Rolling Stone and Newsweek, and was finally so famous that he was able to gain access to a private function at the White House without carrying any identification on his person. “All of the doors of the continent were open to him,” recalled his best friend Dan Aykroyd. “He was America’s guest.” January 1979 was Belushi’s miracle month, when he simultaneously held a number one spot in film (highest grossing comedy up to that time, National Lampoon's Animal House), television (highest rated late-night show, Saturday Night Live), and music (top album on the Billboard chart, Briefcase Full of Blues), a triple feat that has never been emulated. But his passionate, non-stop, over-the-top, wild and crazy lifestyle led to his untimely death from a drug overdose at the age of 33.

1949 - 1970 Growing Up

Belushi’s parents were immigrants from Albania who settled in Humboldt Park, a working-class, immigrant neighborhood of Wheaton, Illinois, where Belushi’s father opened up two restaurants. Growing up, Belushi tried to hide his Albanian origins (in part because it was a Communist country), and told people that he was Greek.

Early on Belushi exhibited a gift for comedy and mimicry, and could reduce his mother to fits of hysterical laughter. As a teenager he listened incessantly to record albums by comedians Jonathan Winters and Bob Newhart and acted them out, honing his sense of timing and style. His schoolmates would remember him as class-clownish but not buffoonish.

A thick-set, stubbly, motorcycle-riding Belushi was an engaging presence at Wheaton Central High School, where he was co-captain of the football team, homecoming king, and a popular actor in the theater productions, where his versatility so impressed his drama teacher, Dan Payne, that Payne helped get John a job in a summer-stock theater in 1967, when Belushi was eighteen. After one high school stage production, the school’s principal told Belushi’s parents, “John’s one in a million.”

After high school graduation, Belushi enrolled first at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater in the fall of 1967, where he studied drama; then, one year later, he entered the College of DuPage, where he eventually received a degree in general studies in June 1970. In order to evade the Vietnam War draft, he enrolled in the University of Illinois, Circle Campus, in Chicago, in the fall of 1970.

During his years at DuPage Belushi co-formed a comedy group with two friends called the West Compass Players, which performed skits in coffee houses and on the DuPage campus. Later, in Chicago, the West Compass Players rented a basement of the Universal Life Church and regularly performed comedic productions (called “blackouts”) for up for 48 people at $1 a ticket.

1971 - 1974 Early Career

Second City 1971 – 1972

In February 1971, John, at age 22, quit the College of DuPage when he won a spot in Second City, a well-respected comedy troupe based in Chicago. Earning him $150 a week, it was Belushi’s first adult job. The producer of Second City, Bernard Sahlins, later recalled, “He had that something that you can’t learn in school. Call it charisma, call it magnetism, he had it.”

Fellow cast members described the Belushi of this time as having “wild hair”, as “kind of strange looking”, and more often than not dressed in torn jeans and old shirts. Cast member Harold Ramis recalled, “John brought a street element . . . [that] cut through the intellectual pretence of the theater. He brought rock and roll to the show.” The irreverent Belushi was perfect for such parts as “The World’s Most Obnoxious Houseguest.”

Belushi had a riveting stage presence and fluency with improvisation which often upstaged the other actors. “Literally the second John walked onstage he grabbed everyone’s attention,” recalled one cast member. The drama critic of the Chicago Daily News wrote, “We all have our personal favorites and mine was John Belushi, who has only to step out on the stage to start me tittering like a schoolboy.” John kept the review in his wallet. Another cast member marvelled at Belushi’s ability to “come on, give one line and go off – and take the whole scene.” Ramis said, “John could steal a scene just by raising an eyebrow.”

National Lampoon 1973-1974

Belushi and his high school sweetheart, Judy Jacklin, moved to New York City late in 1972 when a new and greater job opportunity presented itself. National Lampoon magazine, a satirical monthly, was producing a comic stage play for off-Broadway entitled Lemmings, and Belushi won a prominent place in the cast, alongside a young Chevy Chase. The director of Lemmings, Tony Hendra, marvelled as Belushi’s “intense, chaotic presence . . . [he was] a ferocious package. . . . his talent was just staggering” Soon after opening on January 25, 1973, Lemmings brought Belushi to national prominence. New Yorker magazine’s review of the play commented, “Funniest of all is Mr. Belushi . . . a real discovery.” Time magazine described Belushi as “endearing”. Lemmings became a hit show, playing for months to sell-out audiences.

The success of Lemmings led to Belushi playing a major role in the new National Lampoon Radio Hour, which billed itself as sixty minutes of “mirth, merriment, and racial slurs”. It debuted on November 17, 1973. Next came the National Lampoon Show, another stage show of comic skits which played New York City and also went on the road; playing alongside Belushi was a young Bill Murray.

It was in this theater stage-based period of Belushi’s life, both in Chicago and New York, where Belushi’s incipient drug problem began in earnest. He was smoking marijuana, experimenting with LSD and magic mushrooms, snorting cocaine, and taking Quaaludes. Christopher Guest, a member of the Lemmings cast, later remarked, “Drugs were rampant at that time. And he wasn’t the only one who was stoned.” Tony Hendra later analyzed it this way: “I do believe that there was something very sad at John’s core. There was some deep dissatisfaction that poisoned him, and that he just had no way of filling.” Janis Hirsch, an employee of National Lampoon, explained, “He just didn’t have limits, with anything. If you gave him a loaf of bread, he’d eat the whole loaf of bread. If you gave him a bag of drugs, he’d do the whole bag of drugs.”

Hirsch went on to say, “John could eat a chef’s salad with his hands, but he also had a sweetness to him that most people can’t imagine.”

1975 - 1977 Television

Saturday Night Live

In 1975 Belushi auditioned for and won a spot as one of the original seven “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” of Saturday Night Live, a television show that would be widely hailed by media critics as one of the most groundbreaking and influential shows in American history. In the words of respected Washington Post television critic Tom Shales, “Saturday Night Live is more than just a television show. . . . There’d never been anything like it in TV.”

Saturday Night Live was a comedy program consisting of skits and musical interludes, and occupied NBC’s 11:30 pm to 1:00 am time slot. Its format was one-of-a-kind, unlike anything else on the air at the time. When it debuted on national television on October 11, 1975, Belushi was the star of the opening skit, which was staged prior to the titles.

SNL quickly became a hit, a phenomenon. Within a month of SNL’s debut, an NBC executive reported in a memo, “Saturday Night is getting the most attractive audience on television today.” Another NBC executive enthused, “The best demographics in the history of commercial TV.”

The most famous characters Belushi created for himself on the first season of SNL were the Japanese Samurai, who communicated in unintelligible grunts, and a parody of Captain James T. Kirk from Star Trek. Co-starring with Belushi on SNL included Dan Akyroyd, who would become Belushi’s closest friend and business associate; and Chevy Chase, with whom Belushi had a strained relationship, as Chase fast became the most popular actor on the program. SNL’s success was confirmed when the show won four Emmy Awards on May 17, 1976: best comedy-variety series; best comedy writing; best comedy directing; and best supporting actor for a variety show (Chase).

But starring in the hottest show in television was hard work; making SNL meant a six-day work week toiling long hours on floor 17 of NBC’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan; and Belushi resorted to cocaine more and more. “There were drugs [at SNL]”, admitted one NBC executive. “Open an office door in the SNL suite,” Tom Shales wrote, “and you might well be enswirled in marijuana smoke.” Drug use was so rampant during the first couple of years of SNL that one history of the television show devotes an entire chapter to the subject. In morbid celebration of his excessive lifestyle, Belushi's birthday cake in January 1976 was a facsimile of a Quaalude. By the start of SNL’s season 2 in the fall of 1976, Belushi was earning $100,000 a year, and spending $500 of that a week on drugs. Cocaine was his daily habit, as he admitted to his physician on November 29, 1976, and he also admitted to taking mescaline regularly, also marijuana, four different kinds of amphetamines, Quaaludes, and he smoked three packs of cigarettes a day.

The self-medicated Belushi became infamous for his irreverent behavior; more than once he’d fall asleep with a lit cigarette, setting his mattress aflame. He was always disappearing for hours or days, leaving his friends to wonder if he were alive or dead. He would party all night, using limousines to flit from one nightclub to the next. One SNL writer recalled that Belushi’s punishing lifestyle sometimes left him too “narcotized” to perform on the show. Another SNL writer described the Belushi of this time as “zonko, out of his skull.”

Judy Jacklin, whom Belushi would marry on January 1, 1977, described this turbulent time in her biography of her husband: “It was rough. He was spending too much time at the show, too many nights on the town and too much money on coke.” SNL writer Marilyn Miller described Belushi as “a tornado that would spin itself round and round and then be exhausted.” But at times Belushi tried to come to grips with his addictions, and began to see a psychiatrist in April 1977, but he soon quit. And yet, through all of his excesses, there was a sense of fun about Belushi that remained inextinguishable and winsome, as his wife recalled: “Sometimes we laughed so long we couldn’t remember why we were laughing.”

Chevy Chase had left SNL after the first season, and Belushi quickly became the audience favorite in the second season. SNL and Belushi alike were getting more and more popular. Tom Hanks, who would host the show many times over the years, recalled, “It was the cultural phenomenon of the age. It was truly as big as the Beatles.” In June 1977 Crawdaddy magazine did a cover story on Belushi with the headline: “The Most Dangerous Man on TV: Saturday Night’s John Belushi”. Belushi told the interviewer, with reference to his wild and crazy lifestyle: “When in doubt, I floor it.”

Filmography

• National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
• Goin’ South (1978)
• Old Boyfriends (1978)
• 1941 (1979)
• The Blues Brothers (1980)
• Continental Divide (1981)
• Neighbors (1981)

Bibliography

• Belushi, Judy Jacklin. Samurai Widow (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1990).
• Hill, Doug and Jeff Weingrad. Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live (New York: Vintage Books, 1987).
• Pisano, Judith Belushi and Tanner Colby. Belushi (New York: Rugged Land, 2005).
• Shales, Tom and James Andrew Miller. Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2002).
• Woodward, Bob. Wired (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984).

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