Crossing the Streams

Good evening everyone and welcome to a rather tragic entry of The Magical Mystery Blog.

Dearly beloved, we gather around our screens tonight to bid a fond farewell to the late, great Harold Ramis.

comicbook.com

Harold Ramis was an actor and director born in 1944 in Chicago, Illinois. He wrote parody plays in college and was heavily inspired by the famous Marx brothers. In his college years, he freelanced for the Chicago Tribune and even Playboy. After attending the Washington University in Wisconsin, he worked in a mental institution in St.Louis for seven months, and claimed that it prepared him for the madness of Hollywood.

Upon returning to Second City in 1972, he discovered that Belushi took his place as a comedic king, and became his deadpan foil. Belushi then led Ramis, Bill Murray, and other Second City performers to New York to work on the radio program, The National Lampoon Radio Hour. These actors along with Gilda Radner, Christopher Guest, and Joe Flaherty went on to perform in The National Lampoon Show, the successor to National Lampoon’s Lemmings; a show similar to Woodstock only filled with comedic sketches, great music, and Belushi’s best impersonation of Joe Cocker.

Ramis then went on to become an actor and the head writer of Second City TV. He declined working for Saturday Night Live and chose to work with SCTV for its first three years.  After the three years, Ramis left SCTV to pursue a film career; his first project was a script he wrote with National Lampoon magazine which later became National Lampoon’s Animal House. It was the highest grossing and raunchiest film of its time.

Ramis and Murray teamed up and produced some of the greatest films ever such as Meatballs and five others.  Not only did Ramis write them, but he propelled Murray to his superstar status. Ramis also co-wrote with Dan Aykroyd and created Ghostbusters and Ghostsbusters 2. Ramis also created popular movies such as National Lampoon’s Vacation, Analyze This, Caddyshack, Analyze That, and other classics. He also acted in a great deal of his works and other movies like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Stealing Home, Baby Boom, As Good as it Gets,Stripes, and many more.

In 2004, he was inducted into the St.Louis Walk of Fame. The following year he received the Distinguished Screenwriter Award from the Austin Film Festival. In 2009, he stated that Ghostbusters 3 would be in theaters by Christmas 2012 – regretfully, this did not occur because he contracted vasculitis in 2010.

Vasculitis develops when the immune system goes against veins and arteries. It can starve organs, cause harmful tissue damage, and can possibly lead to aneurysms. It left Ramis immobile for a while, but he gained his ability to walk. However, in 2011 he suffered a relapse from this disease, and ultimately caused his death on February 24^th, 2014.

He died at the tender age of sixty nine as a fantastic director, an extraordinary writer, a terrific actor, and the grandfather of two grandchildren. Harold Ramis will go down in cinema history as a man who brought smiles to our faces by way of his particular style of tongue in cheek pep talks, sloppiness and improv, and rage, curiosity, and sloth in a high articulated voice.

Even though he is deceased, we will still call on you Harold Ramis, to make us laugh with your Twinkie analogy, to brighten our days with the crazy antics of Mr. Griswold, and to make us smile by just being you. May you rest in peace, Mr. Ramis and enjoy the company of your good friends in the clouds overhead.