Harold Ramis

Harold Allen Ramis was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker whose work helped define screen comedy from the 1970s through the 2000s. Born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 21, 1944, he came out of a world of newspapers, improvisation, sketch television, and ensemble comedy before becoming one of the most familiar comic voices in Hollywood. He died on February 24, 2014.

Ramis is best known to many viewers 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, he made some of the best-known American comedies of their time, including Caddyshack (1980), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), Groundhog Day (1993), Analyze This (1999), and Analyze That (2002). He co-wrote National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) and Groundhog Day, and with Danny Rubin won the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay for Groundhog Day. His final film as writer, producer, director, and actor was Year One (2009).

His outlook was shaped early by Chicago and by a mix of literature, satire, and everyday people. Ramis was the son of Ruth and Nathan Ramis, who owned the Ace Food & Liquor Mart on Chicago’s West Side. He had a Jewish upbringing, which continued to shape his identity and comic sensibility as an adult. He attended Chicago public schools, then Washington University in St. Louis, where he studied English literature and graduated in 1966. In college he wrote parodic plays and later described himself as feeling like “a combination of Groucho and Harpo Marx,” drawn both to wit used as a weapon and to antic charm.

Before Hollywood, Ramis worked for seven months in a mental institution in St. Louis, experience he later said helped him understand people reacting from anxiety, grief, fear, or rage. Back in Chicago, he worked as a substitute teacher in schools serving the Robert Taylor Homes public housing development, wrote freelance entertainment features for the Chicago Daily News, studied and performed with Second City, and became joke editor, then associate editor, at Playboy. Those jobs placed him close to language, timing, behavior, and pressure, all useful tools for a comic writer and director.

Ramis moved through some of the main comedy institutions of his era. In 1974, John Belushi brought him and other Second City performers, including Bill Murray, to New York to work on The National Lampoon Radio Hour. Ramis also appeared in The National Lampoon Show. From 1976 to 1979, he was a performer and the original head writer of SCTV, where his characters included Maurice “Moe” Green, Officer Friendly, Swami Bananananda, Allan “Crazy Legs” Hirschman, and Mort Finkel.

His films influenced later comedians, writers, actors, and filmmakers, with Jay Roach, Jake Kasdan, Adam Sandler, Judd Apatow, and Peter and Bobby Farrelly among those who have named his films as favorites. The line “Life doesn’t care about your vision. You just have to roll with it” fits the practical humor often found around his work: dry, flexible, and alert to how plans fall apart. That is why his words still play well on a quotes site. They sound less like grand advice than like someone experienced in comedy, people, and the mess of getting through a day.