Lorne Michaels doubted John Belushi would suit Saturday Night Live until one audition
John Belushi was in the very first sketch Saturday Night Live ever aired, in October 1975, yet its creator had almost passed on him, unsure his physical comedy fit. Within a few years Belushi had starred in Animal House, formed the Blues Brothers with Dan Aykroyd, and died at 33.
Belushi was born in Chicago in 1949 to Albanian-American parents; his father, an immigrant, ran the Fair Oaks restaurant on North Avenue. He grew up in Wheaton with three siblings, including his younger brother Jim, attended the Albanian Orthodox Church, and met his future wife, Judith Jacklin, at Wheaton Central High School. Music came early: in 1965 he sang and drummed in a school band, the Ravens, whose single went nowhere. He also spent a summer acting in stock productions in Indiana.
Comedy took over after he started the West Compass Trio with Tino Insana and Steve Beshekas, naming it after the improvisational Compass Players. The trio impressed Bernard Sahlins, founder of the Second City, who invited Belushi into the company; there he worked with Harold Ramis and Brian Doyle-Murray and met Dan Aykroyd. In 1972 he joined Chevy Chase and Christopher Guest in National Lampoon Lemmings, an off-Broadway spoof of Woodstock, then moved to New York to write, direct and perform on The National Lampoon Radio Hour alongside Bill Murray and Gilda Radner.
Chase and writer Michael O'Donoghue recommended him in 1975 to Lorne Michaels, who was assembling a new late-night show for NBC. Michaels hesitated, then changed his mind after an audition, and Belushi appeared with O'Donoghue in the opening sketch, later called the Wolverines, on October 11, 1975. His characters included impressions of Henry Kissinger and Beethoven. He was fired from the show several times and rehired more than once.
Films followed, among them National Lampoon's Animal House and 1941, and with Aykroyd and musicians such as Steve Cropper and Paul Shaffer he founded the Blues Brothers, which became a film of its own. He died on March 5, 1982, at the Chateau Marmont from a drug overdose; the woman who supplied it was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. A Hollywood Walk of Fame star followed in 2004.
Source: John Belushi
