John Adam Belushi (; January 24, 1949 — March 5, 1982) was an American comedian, actor, and musician best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live and for his roles in the films National Lampoon's Animal House and The Blues Brothers. He was the older brother of James Belushi.
"Christ, seven years of college, down the drain.""I give so much pleasure to so many people. Why can I not get some pleasure for myself?""I guess happiness is not a state you want to be in all the time.""I owe it all to little chocolate donuts.""It's all false pressure; you put the heat on yourself, you get it from the networks and record companies and movie studios. You put more pressure on yourself to make everything that much harder.""Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!"
Belushi was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Agnes Belushi (née Samaras), a first generation Albanian-American, and Adam Belushi (b. 1918), an Albanian immigrant and restaurant operator who left his native village, Qytezë, in 1934 at the age of sixteen. The family's name at the time of immigration was Bellios, or Belliors. Belushi was raised in the Albanian Orthodox church and grew up outside Chicago in Wheaton with a brother Jim, five-and-a-half years his junior. He attended Wheaton Central High School, where he met his future wife, Judy Jacklin.
Belushi's first big break as a comedian occurred in 1971, when he joined The Second City comedy troupe in Chicago. He was cast in National Lampoon's Lemmings, a parody of Woodstock, which played Off-Broadway in 1972 and also showcased future Saturday Night Live (SNL) performers Chevy Chase and Christopher Guest.
In 1973, Belushi and Jacklin moved together to New York. From 1973 to 1975, National Lampoon Inc. aired The National Lampoon Radio Hour, a half-hour comedy program syndicated across the country on approximately 600 stations. Belushi was a regular player on the show. Other players included future SNL regulars Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray and Chevy Chase. Jacklin became an associate producer for the show, and she and Belushi were married on December 31, 1976. A number of comic segments first performed on The Radio Hour would be translated into SNL sketches in the show's early seasons.
1975—1979
Belushi achieved national fame for his work on Saturday Night Live, which he joined as an original cast member in 1975. Between seasons of the show, he made one of his best-known movies, Animal House. As several Belushi biographies have noted, on John's 30th birthday (in 1979), he had the number one film in the U.S. (Animal House), the number one album in the U.S. (The Blues Brothers: Briefcase Full of Blues) and Saturday Night Live was the highest-rated late night television program.
When interviewed for retrospectives on John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd told stories of John often finishing SNL rehearsals, shows or film shoots and, exhausted, simply walking unannounced into nearby homes of friends or strangers, scrounging around for food and often falling asleep, unable to be located for the following day's work. This was the impetus for the SNL horror-spoof sketch "The Thing That Wouldn't Leave", in which Belushi torments a couple (played by Jane Curtin and Bill Murray) in their home looking for snacks, newspapers and magazines to read, and taking control of their television. In an unfortunate foreshadowing, during the opening of the episode of SNL that aired on December 17, 1977, Belushi, while in character as himself, quipped, "I plan to be dead by the time I'm 30." SNL also featured a short film by writer Tom Schiller called "Don't Look Back In Anger", where Belushi, playing himself as an old man and the last-surviving SNL cast member, visits the graves of his now-former cast members. Ironically, Belushi was the first SNL cast member to die.
Belushi left Saturday Night Live in 1979 to pursue a film career. Belushi would make four more movies; three of them, 1941, Neighbors, and most notably The Blues Brothers were made with fellow SNL alumnus Dan Aykroyd.
Other movie projects
Dan Aykroyd wrote the roles of Dr. Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters and Emmett Fitz-Hume in Spies Like Us with Belushi in mind, and the roles were actually played by Belushi's former SNL castmates Bill Murray and Chevy Chase, respectively.
Released in September 1981, the romantic comedy Continental Divide starred Belushi as Chicago home town hero writer Ernie Souchack, who gets put on assignment researching a scientist studying birds of prey in the remote Rocky Mountains.
At the time of his death, Belushi was pursuing several movie projects, including Noble Rot, an adaptation of a script by former Mary Tyler Moore Show writer and producer Jay Sandrich entitled Sweet Deception. Noble rot is a benevolent fungus that can infect wine grapes on the vine, helping to produce high quality sweet wines.
Belushi recruited the band Fear and brought them to Cherokee Studios to record songs for the soundtrack of Neighbors, a film he and Aykroyd were starring in. Cherokee Studios was a regular haunt for the original Blues Brothers back in the early days of the band. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd became fixtures at the recording studio, while fellow Blues Brother and guitar player Steve Cropper called Cherokee his producing home. "John was a crazy guy, but a heavy drinker. At times, he would drink an entire fifth of Jack Daniel's in less than five minutes," Aykroyd commented. Whenever they needed a bass player, they were joined by another Blues Brother, Donald "Duck" Dunn. During this time, Cropper along with producing partner and Cherokee owner Bruce Robb, worked on a number of music projects with the two comedian/musicians, the band Fear and later Aykroyd's movie Dragnet. "What can I say? John was excessively talented, and I guess you could say he sort of lived life 'excessively.' I think what happened to John had a sobering effect on a lot of people, me included," said music producer Bruce Robb.
On March 5, 1982, Belushi was found dead in his room at Bungalow number 3 of the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. The cause of death was a speedball, a combined injection of cocaine and heroin. On the night of his death, he was visited separately by friends Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, each of whom left the premises, leaving Belushi in the company of assorted others, including Cathy Smith. His death was investigated by forensic pathologist Dr. Ryan Norris 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, arrested and charged with first-degree murder. A plea bargain reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter, and she served 15 months in prison.
Prior to his death, he filmed a cameo for the comedy series Police Squad!. At the suggestion of the show's producer, Robert K. Weiss, Belushi was filmed, face down in a swimming pool, dead. The footage was part of a running gag where the episode's guest-star would not survive past the opening credit sequence without meeting some gruesome end. The scene was cut after his death and the footage is believed to have been lost.
Belushi and his friend Dan Aykroyd were slated to present the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 54th Academy Awards, an event held less than four weeks after his death.
Belushi is interred in Abel's Hill Cemetery on Martha's Vineyard Chilmark, Massachusetts. His tombstone, a New England classic slate design, complete with skull and crossbones, reads "I may be gone but Rock and Roll lives on." Rumor has it that his gravestone is not above his body because it was moved after operators of the cemetery had found many signs of vandalism and rowdiness where his body lies. He also is remembered on the Belushi family stone marking his mother's grave at Elmwood Cemetery in River Grove, Illinois. This stone says "He Gave Us Laughter.
John Belushi's life is detailed in the 1985 biography The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi by Bob Woodward. Many friends and relatives of Belushi, including his wife Judy, Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi, agreed to be interviewed at length for the book, but later felt the final product was exploitative and not representative of the John Belushi they knew. The book was later adapted into a feature film in which Belushi was played by Michael Chiklis. Belushi's friends and family boycotted the film, which proved to be critical and caused the movie to be a box-office flop.
The Grateful Dead performed the song "West L.A. Fadeaway" beginning in late 1982. The song, penned by long time lyricist Robert Hunter and sung by Jerry Garcia, contains fairly explicit references to Belushi's death, especially the line "Looking for a chateau, 21 rooms but one will do.
Belushi was 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.
His widow later remarried and is now Judith Belushi Pisano. Her biography (with co-biographer Tanner Colby) of John, A Biography is a collection of first-person interviews and photographs, and was published in 2005.
On April 1, 2004, 22 years after his death, Belushi was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, after a ten-year lobby by James Belushi and Judith Belushi Pisano. Among those present at the ceremony were Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, and Tom Arnold.
In 2006, Biography Channel aired the "John Belushi" episode of Final 24, a documentary following Belushi in the last 24 hours leading to his death. In 2010, Biography aired a full biography documentation of the life of "John Belushi".
