Drugs, decadence and a dream: The night John Belushi died
Looking into the behind-the-scenes stories of Saturday Night Live can be just as bleak as the stories on screen can be hilarious.
The likes of Phil Hartman and Chris Farley are heartbreaking stories in their own right. Farley’s especially plays into the “tears of a clown” tropes. The kind that shows just how true it is that those who seek to create laughter are often running from the darkness of their own. The truth is, though, the dark side of SNL is one that appeared right from the very beginning, entwined with the life and death of one of its leading lights from day one, John Belushi.
One of Chicago’s most beloved sons, Belushi, got his start in his comedy troupe, The West Compass Trio. His work there got him a spot at The Second City comedy club, which led to national attention in the National Lampoon in the mid-1970s. At the same time, Lorne Michaels had been given the green light to start work on a new, live sketch comedy show for NBC, and was scouting the alternative comedy scene for writers, performers and ideally, folks who could do both.
John Belushi was Michaels’ ideal frontman for SNL, and he became a superstar off the back of it. Behind the scenes, though, the show was a trainwreck. The early years of SNL were crafted on the back of hot and cold running cocaine. Absolutely no one on the production team for that show wasn’t partial to a bit of marching powder. So it was saying a hell of a lot when Belushi was ousted from the SNL cast for his drug addiction.
Perhaps the team could see the way the wind was blowing for Belushi, but that didn’t stop a number of people from trying to help in the meantime.
What led to the death of John Belushi?
Tragically, there was a period of time when Belushi managed to get himself clean as the ’70s became the 1980s. However, he fell off the wagon hard during the making of Neighbours in 1981, which seemed to be the final fucking straw. The people around him at the time, including close friends Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, spoke of a man who, most of the time, seemed barely sentient. Seemingly working on a screenplay but could barely communicate with other people, shuffling from club to club in Los Angeles and hitting up damn-near every contact he had for drug money.
Yet, people refused to give up on him. De Niro, in particular, was dead set on helping him out. On the evening of March 4th, 1982, he stopped off at Belushi’s bungalow in Chateau Marmont, Los Angeles, to ask if Belushi wanted to join him at dinner that night. De Niro, along with fellow actor Harry Dean Stanton, found him and his dealer, Cathy Smith, even more wasted than usual and in no goddamn state to leave his apartment. The bungalow had been their spot to return to after the clubs closed, though, so the two actors made plans to check back in on Belushi on the way home.
De Niro, Stanton and Robin Williams all made good on that promise, checking in on John Belushi on their way back home and finding him high as a kite, complaining about congestion in his chest. What they weren’t aware of was the speedballs that Smith admitted to injecting into him over the course of the night. The morning afterwards, Smith left, and by the time Belushi’s trainer arrived at the bungalow, the SNL legend was dead.
John Belushi was 33 years old. Several Saturday Night Live alumni wouldn’t live that much longer than that. A chilling reminder that the world of comedy has a body count just as high as rock ‘n’ roll.