Harold Ramis Dies at 69
02/24/2014 at 12:30 PM EST
Corey Sipkin/NY Daily News Archive/Getty
Filmmaker Harold Ramis, who exerted a strong creative hand in such popular comedies as National Lampoon's Animal House, the Ghostbusters series and Groundhog's Day, has died in Chicago, of a rare autoimmune disease, reports the Chicago Tribune. He was 69.
His wife, Eric Mann Ramis, told the newspaper he was surrounded by family when he died at 12:53 a.m. Monday.
An actor, writer, director, and producer - whose dry wit, long face and eyeglasses often had him compared to the legendary 1930s playwright George S. Kaufman, a compliment Ramis enjoyed - Ramis was born in Chicago and grew up idolizing the Marx Brothers, Sid Caesar and Ernie Kovacs.
Graduating from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri in 1967, he became the jokes editor for Playboy magazine.
Two years later he joined the improvisational comedy troupe Second City, which at the time featured such young talents as John Belushi and Bill Murray. In the mid-1970s, he wrote and acted on SCTV' with John Candy and Eugene Levy.
Ramis's first hit screenplay was Animal House, then he directed Murray in Caddyshack. From that point on he could basically write his own ticket.
In Ghostbusters, he played Dr. Egon Spengler, the intellectual. More recently, he played the father of the Seth Rogen character in 2007's Knocked Up.
Erica Mann Ramis, his wife since 1989, survives him, along with their two sons, Julian and Daniel, and a daughter from his first marriage to Anne Plotkin, Violtet Ramis.
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