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actor, Amy Heckerling, Analyze This, Animal House, Anne Plotkin, Bill Murray, Caddyshack, Celebrity, Chicago, comedian, director, Egon Spengler, Erica Mann, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Harold Ramis, National Lampoon's Vacation, SCTV, Second City, Stripes, vasulitis, writer
Harold Ramis (November 21, 1944 – February 24, 2014)
Harold Allen Ramis was an American actor, comedian, director and writer. His best-known film acting roles were as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989), and as Russell Ziskey in Stripes (1981); he also co-wrote those films. As a director, his films include the comedies Caddyshack (1980), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), Groundhog Day (1993), and Analyze This (1999). Ramis was the original head writer of the television series SCTV, on which he also performed, as well as a co-writer of Groundhog Day and National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978). The final film that he wrote, produced, directed, and acted in was Year One (2009). Along with Danny Rubin, he won a BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay for Groundhog Day.Second
Born in Chicago, Ramis began writing parodic plays in college. For a short time, he worked as a substitute teacher serving the inner city Robert Taylor Homes. He became associated with the guerilla television collective TVTV while writing freelance for the Chicago Daily News. He then began performing with Chicago’s Second City improvisational comedy troupe. He also served as joke editor at Playboy magazine. Through Second City he met John Belushi, then Bill Murray as well as Joe Flaherty, Christopher Guest and Gilda Radner. He received an offer to write on Saturday Night Live but declined, choosing to remain with SCTV. Eventually he did leave the show to pursue a film career. And the rest is history. He directed 11 movies, wrote 16 and produced 8 comedy films, many of them beloved classics.
Ramis married twice. In July 1967, he married artist Anne Plotkin with whom he had a daughter, Violet. (Actor Bill Murray is her godfather.) They separated in 1984 and later divorced. In 1985, he had a second daughter Mollie with director Amy Heckerling. In 1989, he married Erica Mann. They had two sons, Julian and Daniel. In May 2010, Ramis contracted an infection that resulted in complications from autoimmune inflammatory vasulitis and lost the ability to walk. He did relearn to walk but suffered a relapse of the disease in late 2011. On February 24, 2014, he died from complications of the disease at his Chicago home at age 69. During the filming of Groundhog Day, Murray and Ramis had a falling out which Ramis said occurred due to problems that Murray was having in his life at that time. They did not speak for more than 20 years. Shortly before his death, encouraged by Murray’s brother Brian Doyle Murray, Bill came to visit him and make amends with a box of donuts. By this time, Ramis had lost the ability to speak, so Bill did most of the talking. Bill then gave a tribute to Ramis at the 86th Academy Awards. In 2004, Ramis was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. In 2005, he received the Austin Film Festival’s Distinguished Screenwriter Award. In 2010, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Chicago Improv Festival. In 2015, the Writers Guild of America posthumously honored him with their lifetime achievement award, the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement. In 2016, two years after his death, The Second City founded the Harold Ramis Film School, the first film school to focus solely on film comedy, in his honor. The 2016 film Ghostbusters, a reboot of the series Ramis co-created and starred in, was posthumously dedicated to him. A bust of his head appears in the film.