Harold Ramis Redefined Comedy for a Generation

Feb. 24, 2014 8:38 p.m. ET

Actor, director and writer Harold Ramis in 2009. Getty Images

Harold Ramis was a standard-bearer for a loopy brand of humor that grew out of sketch comedy and he created some of the most popular movies of the 1980s and 1990s including “Ghostbusters” and “Caddyshack.”
Mr. Ramis who died Monday at age 69 from the effects of a rare autoimmune disease, was a veteran of The Second City comedy troupe and various National Lampoon productions culminating in “Animal House,” which he co-wrote and “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” which he directed.
Many of his films had an anarchic, kitchen-sink quality, with jokes thrown in almost at random bearing little relation to the plot. But his most critically successful work, epitomized by “Groundhog Day” and “Analyze This,” was more tightly focused.
Coming-of-age themes in the 1960s constituted the canvas for many of his comedies: summer camp (“Meatballs”), college fraternities (“Animal House”) and the Army (“Stripes”).
Mr. Ramis’s directorial debut was the 1980 film “Caddyshack,” starring Rodney Dangerfield, who once called him “the Steven Spielberg of Comedy.”
The film also starred “Saturday Night Live” veterans Chevy Chase and Bill Murray as a daffy groundskeeper hunting a malevolent gopher. A Wall Street Journal critic wrote that she “laughed until I sneezed.”
Mr. Murray went on to appear in several more of Mr. Ramis’s films, most notably “Groundhog Day,” in which he played a weatherman who relives a single day repeatedly until he wins his love interest, played by Andie MacDowell. Mr. Ramis co-wrote the screenplay and directed.
Mr. Ramis sometimes appeared in his own movies, often in smaller parts. He had a more central role in the 1984 film “Ghostbusters,” which he co-wrote with Dan Aykroyd but didn’t direct. He played Dr. Egon Spengler, the brainiest of the spook-stalking parapsychologists.
Mr. Ramis was a native of Chicago, where his parents ran a food and liquor store. He grew up idolizing Marx Brothers movies on TV and liked to say he felt he was a combination of Groucho and Harpo.
Mr. Ramis attended Washington University in St. Louis. “I looked around and, hey, they don’t take attendance here,” he told the Chicago Tribune. He joined a fraternity, and many of his antics provided material that would make it into the movie “Animal House,” his first successful outing as a screenwriter.
Moving back to Chicago, Mr. Ramis worked as a jokes editor at Playboy and joined The Second City. He eventually became head writer for Second City Television.
After “Analyze This” (1999) Mr. Ramis’s movies flagged at the box office. In recent years, he worked with producer Judd Apatow on a biblical romp, “Year One,” and appeared in Mr. Apatow’s “Knocked Up” and “Walk Hard.” He also directed several episodes of “The Office.”
—Email remembrances@wsj.com

Read the original: Harold Ramis Redefined Comedy for a Generation