Harold Ramis

Harold Allen Ramis was born on November 21, 1944 in Chicago, Illinois. He began his career in comedy as the joke editor and reviewer for *Playboy* magazine. In 1969, he joined Chicago's Second City Improvisational Theatre Troupe before relocating to New York, where he wrote and performed in *The National Lampoon Show* alongside fellow Second City alumni such as John Belushi, Gilda Radner, and Bill Murray. By 1976, he became head writer and a regular performer on the Canadian comedy series *SCTV*. His Hollywood debut came with a collaboration on the screenplay for *National Lampoon's Animal House* (1978), produced by Ivan Reitman. He then worked as a writer with Reitman as producer on *Meatballs* (1979), *Stripes* (1981), *Ghostbusters* (1984), and *Ghostbusters II* (1989), and appeared in the latter three films. Harold Ramis died on February 24, 2014, at the age of 69, from complications of autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis.