Happy Birthday Harold

It's the birthday of writer and director Harold Ramis, born in Chicago in 1944. One of the least-recognized but most influential screenwriters of the last century, Ramis cowrote of some of America's most beloved comedies, including National Lampoon's Animal House (1978),Caddyshack (1980), Stripes (1981), Ghostbusters (1984),Groundhog Day (1993), and Analyze This (1999). Ramis is lauded for a sense of humor that rejected the slick, packaged Hollywood comedies of the past and channeled the anger and disaffection of his generation at the country's sacred institutions, like fraternities, country clubs, and the Army.

By the late '60s, Ramis — who had avoided the Vietnam draft by claiming to suffer from every malady on the medical-history form — was writing and performing with the fabled Chicago improv troupe Second City. He eventually became the head writer for the group's television show, SCTV, before leaving to write the screenplay Animal House. His reputation among his contemporaries — comedians like John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Bill Murray — was as the smart, responsible one; the one, Aykroyd told The New Yorker, likeliest to announce after an all-night party, "That was fun, but now we've got to take the car out of the pool."

Ramis said: "When you're young and you first see the extent and depth of the world's hypocrisy, it's fun to go after it. But by the time you're 60, it's so commonplace. What's the point in ridiculing these people anymore? Their existence itself is a sort of sick joke. Which is different from joining it or being completely co-opted by it. Even though I live in the suburbs, I pride myself in being the guy who will refer to an unpleasant reality in polite, mixed company."