![]() With his round glasses lending a professorial air, Ramis would become the calm center of storms brewed by fellow actors, playing the bushy-haired, low-key wisecracker to Bill Murray's troublemaker in "Stripes" and being the most scientific-minded "Ghostbuster." Later roles included the sympathetic doctor of James L. I learned that my thing was lobbing in great lines here and there, which would score big and keep me there on the stage." How could I ever get enough attention on a stage with guys like this? "When I saw how far he was willing to go to get a laugh or to make a point on stage, the language he would use, how physical he was, throwing himself literally off the stage, taking big falls, strangling other actors, I thought: I'm never going to be this big. "The moment I knew I wouldn't be any huge comedy star was when I got on stage with John Belushi for the first time," he said in a 1999 Tribune interview. After some time away from Second City, he returned in 1972 and came to a major realization while acting alongside a relative newcomer in the cast. Ramis also wrote and edited Playboy magazine's "Party Jokes" before and during his Second City days. "It was a gift for noticing life's ironies and twists that distinguished his writing eye at the very earliest." "When it was over, he noted that the kids came out of the concert, and the parents were waiting for them in their cars to drive them home," Christiansen said with a laugh. Richard Christiansen, his Daily News editor (and later Tribune theater critic and entertainment editor), recalled one assignment in which Ramis covered a rock concert attended mostly by authority-scorning teenagers. Louis.įor his first professional writing gig, he contributed freelance arts stories to the Chicago Daily News in the mid-1960s. The son of Ruth and Nathan Ramis, who owned Ace Food & Liquor Mart on the West Side before moving the store and family to Rogers Park, Ramis graduated from Senn High School and Washington University in St. Ward recalled that when she first began working for Ramis 15 years ago as his assistant, he had to be in California for a month, and he told her that although he didn't need an assistant out there, she should go anyway because it would be a good experience for her, and he'd make sure her expenses were covered. "He's had enormous success relatively, but none of it has gone to his head." "He's the least changed by success of anyone I know in terms of sense of humor, of humility, sense of self," the late Second City founder Bernie Sahlins, who began working with Ramis in 1969, said of him in 1999. Ramis also left behind a reputation as a mensch and mentor. He literally made every single one of our favorite movies." ![]() We grew up on 'Second City TV' and 'Ghostbusters,' 'Vacation,' 'Animal House,' 'Stripes,' 'Meatballs' (which Ramis co-wrote). "His work is the reason why so many of us got into comedy. "When I was 15, I interviewed Harold for my high school radio station, and he was the person that I wanted to be when I was growing up," said Apatow, who would cast Ramis as Seth Rogen's father in "Knocked Up" and would produce Ramis' final movie, "Year One" (2009).
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