Celebrity Biographies
Harold Ramis
Actor and director Harold Ramis passed away on February 24, 2014 as a result of autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, a rare disease that affects the blood vessels. He was 69 years old. His wife, Erica Mann Ramis, broke the news.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 21, 1944, to a Jewish family, Harold Allen Ramis got his start in show business as a collaborator with Bill Murray on The National Lampoon Radio Hour.
After various television jobs, Ramis made his debut as a screenwriter with the National Lampoon group in American Desmadre , based on his own college experiences. For Murray he wrote The Meatballs , The Nutty Squad and The Ghostbusters , in which he played Dr. Egon Spengler, one of the members of the lead group. He reprized in Ghostbusters II , and there has long been speculation that a third installment would be made.
Although as a director he began with very minor titles, such as The Crazy Club and The Vacation of a Crazy American Family , in 1993 he surprised with A Caught in Time , which started from an excellent idea – the script is also the work of Harold Ramis -, very well used: a guy was forced to repeat the same day over and over again until the day turns out round at the moment he stops looking at his navel. He repeated the idea, but with less success, in My doubles, my wife and I , also a kind of fable about a guy who seeks a comfortable life by cloning himself.
Ramis also had a huge success with Dangerous Therapy , with Robert De Niro spoofing himself as a gangster going to a psychologist, the latter played by Billy Crystal . His next comedies, To Devil with the Devil and Year One , were less successful .