John Belushi
The autopsy report of John Belushi — comedian, actor, and original Saturday Night Live star, 1949–1982.
Early Life
John Adam Belushi was born on 01/24/1949 in Chicago, Illinois, the eldest son of Adam Anastos Belushi and Agnes Demetri Samaras, both Albanian immigrants. The family settled in Wheaton, Illinois, a suburb west of Chicago, where Adam ran a restaurant and the household was full of music, argument, and laughter. John grew up alongside his younger brother James — the future actor Jim Belushi — in a close-knit immigrant family where performing for the dinner table came naturally.
At Wheaton Central High School, Belushi was a standout athlete — an all-conference linebacker and captain of the football team — but it was his gift for making people laugh that truly set him apart. Classmates remembered a restless, magnetic kid who could command a room. After high school he drifted through college before finding his calling in 1971, when he joined Chicago’s famed Second City comedy troupe, the legendary training ground that had launched a generation of comic talent and would soon launch him toward national fame.
Comedy Stardom
After Second City, Belushi joined the National Lampoon troupe, starring in the 1973 off-Broadway revue Lemmings — a savage parody of the Woodstock generation — and appearing on the 1972 comedy album The National Lampoon Radio Dinner. Then, in 1975, he became one of the original “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” when Saturday Night Live premiered on October 11, 1975. Over four seasons he created characters that are still quoted today: the grunting, sword-wielding Samurai; his uncanny Joe Cocker impression; and, with fellow cast member Dan Aykroyd, Jake Blues of the Blues Brothers.
Film stardom followed fast. In 1978 he stole Animal House as John “Bluto” Blutarsky, the toga-clad fraternity slob whose rallying cry of “Toga! Toga!” and cafeteria food fight remain among the most beloved moments in screen comedy; the low-budget film became one of the highest-grossing comedies of its era. The Blues Brothers — Jake and Elwood, the dark-suited, sunglasses-wearing rhythm-and-blues duo — had debuted on SNL in 1978, spawned the chart-topping album Briefcase Full of Blues, and headlined the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, directed by John Landis. Belushi stood at the very peak of American comedy.
The Later Years
Belushi left SNL in 1979 to chase a film career, with uneven results. Steven Spielberg’s big-budget ensemble comedy 1941 (1979) was a costly disappointment, though Belushi’s wild-eyed fighter pilot was widely singled out as a highlight. Neighbors (1981), which reunited him with Aykroyd, divided critics and audiences alike, while Continental Divide (1981) cast him against type as a cynical newspaper columnist and revealed a warmer, more romantic leading man than his fans had ever seen.
Behind the marquee success, Belushi’s drug use had grown heavier, and those closest to him worried openly about the pace he was keeping. In early 1982 he was living at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood while developing Noble Rot, a screenplay about a rock star that he hoped would become his next starring vehicle. He was 33 years old, one of the most famous comedians in America, and — as friends would later say with heartbreaking clarity — running out of time.
The Death
On 03/05/1982, John Belushi was found dead in Bungalow 3 of the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. He was 33 years old. The Los Angeles County coroner determined that he had died from a combination of cocaine and heroin — a “speedball” — that had been injected by Cathryn Evelyn Smith, an acquaintance who was with him at the bungalow that night. The coroner ruled the death accidental, a finding of acute drug intoxication.
Smith fled to Canada, and for years the full story remained clouded until Bob Woodward’s 1984 book Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi detailed her role in the injections. She was eventually extradited to the United States, pleaded to involuntary manslaughter, and served roughly 18 months of a three-year sentence. Belushi was laid to rest on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and his death — at the height of his fame — became one of the most famous cautionary tales in the history of American comedy.