ACME Animal House Trivia - College as it should have been

TRIVIA
It was the Deltas against the rules... the rules lost!

Common Trivia Answers

Mashed Potatoes
Zero Point Zero
Faber College

Trivia at Internet Movie Database
Goofs at Internet Movie Database
Movie Mistakes
Movie Quotes
The Nitpickers Site
Movie Minutia
After preview showings in Denver, National Lampoon's Animal House had it's world premier in New York City on July 27, 1978. It opened nationwide the next day. It was re-released to theaters in the USA September 21, 1979.
With a budget of $2.7 million, Animal House grossed $141.6 million in the United States, currently placing it in the top 200 on the all-time list, with an additional $70,826,000 from video rentals. At the time of its initial run, it was the highest grossing comedy ever made, and the second highest grossing film of 1978 (after Grease).
Animal House has been honored several times by the American Film Institute (AFI). It was chosen #36 on the AFI's list of America's 100 Funniest Movies (it was also on the AFI's list of the 400 Movies nominated for the top 100 Greatest American Movies). The line, "Toga! Toga!" was chosen #82 on the AFI's list of America's 100 Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time. Other nominated quotes not making the top 100 cut were Bluto's "Over? Did you say “over?” Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!" and Dean Wormer's "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son." The song Shout was nominated for the AFI's list of America's 100 Greatest Movie Songs of All Time.
Animal House was voted as #1 on Bravo's selection of the 100 Funniest Movies.
An award for best beer-drinking movie went to the classic guy flick, Animal House. That verdict was rendered by more than 800 Heartland Brewery customers who took part in a 2006 poll to identify the sudsiest movie ever to grace the silver screen. The fact that the fraternity-house foam fest starring the late John Belushi as the beer-swilling Bluto was No. 1 on the top-12 list came as a surprise to no one. Heartland owner Jon Bloostein said the idea for the poll grew out of the desire to give customers at his five Manhattan brewpubs something to yak about.
Harold Ramis, a co-screenwriter, was in the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity at Washington University in St. Louis. He went on to write and direct films such as Caddyshack, Groundhog Day and Analyze This.

John Landis and the screenwriters wanted a cast that was very different from what they ended up with:

Role	Desired Actor	Actor Used

Bluto	John Belushi	John Belushi
Otter	Chevy Chase	Tim Matheson
Boon	Bill Murray	Peter Riegert
Hoover	Brian Doyle-Murray	James Widdoes
D-Day	Dan Aykroyd	Bruce McGill
Dean Wormer	Jack Webb	John Vernon
Mrs. Wormer	Kim Novak	Verna Bloom

Chevy Chase turned down the role of Otter to film Fowl Play with Goldie Hawn; likewise, Murray, Aykroyd, and the others turned down the roles for other projects.

Tim Matheson, who landed the role of Otter, was originally offered an Omega role but asked to join the Deltas instead.
Co-screenwriters Chris Miller (Hardbar) and the late Douglas Kenney (Stork) played small parts in the film. Chris' one line was "No!" during the homecoming parade when a father behind him asks, "My kid can't see. Is it all right if he stands in front of you?" Doug got to say, "What the hail we spoz to do, ya' moron." Harold Ramis, the third co-screenwriter, wrote the role of Boon for himself, but refused to accept a smaller part when Landis felt he was too old (33) to play a college student. "I was too proud to be an extra." Peter Riegert was 30.
Karen Allen (Katy) had just moved to New York City from the Washington, D.C., area and was studying at the Lee Strasberg Institute. "One day I walked by a bulletin board and there was a flyer that said, 'College-Aged Actors and Actresses Wanted for Feature Film.' " Karen would later get the part in Raiders of the Lost Ark because Steven Spielberg was a fan of her work in Animal House. "She reminded me of the 1930s women," Spielberg says. "She had that Irene Dunne quality, a little bit of Carole Lombard." The new Indiana Jones DVD shows Karen screen-testing as Marion Ravenwood with Animal House alum Tim Matheson (Otter).
Mark Metcalf (Neidermeyer): "I was doing a play in New York called Streamers. Michael [Chinich], a casting director from Universal came and saw it and liked my performance. He called me in to meet with John Landis. I originally went in for the part of Otter. I was dressed kind of Otterish and Landis immediately started talking to me about Neidermeyer. That was his instinct. He asked me if I could ride [a horse]. I told him I was born on a ranch in Montana and had been riding since I was two. He laughed and said "sure." I lied to him 6 different times and I don't know if he liked the fact that I lied or if he eventually gave up, but he wanted me to come back and meet the producers. A couple of weeks later, I came back and read for them. I did the scene with Michael. It was the scene that had Flounder [wearing a Delta pledge pin on his uniform]. I had my script rolled up because I knew my lines really well and Landis encouraged me to really take it out on Michael, so I was hitting him with my script and using it as though it was a riding crop and abusing him, doing things to him that I would have been arrested for in public life." After winning the part, Metcalf signed up for riding lessons and arrived on location fully prepared for his riding scenes.
The statue of Faber College founder Emil Faber with the Knowledge is Good motto on the base was a prop created specifically for the film. Contrary to rumors, it was not the 1919 bronze "Pioneer Statue" that stands between Fenton and Friendly Halls on the University of Oregon campus, That statue has no motto and shows a trapper in buckskins and wearing a hat.
Stephen Furst (Flounder) met Peter Riegert (Boon) for the first time in the airport before they flew to Oregon. Stephen told Pete, "Don't look now, but over there by the luggage is Bette Midler!" Pete replied, "Yes, let me introduce you to my girlfriend."
During casting, director John "Outlandish" Landis asked each auditioner if they had any unusual talents, something he could use for the toga party scene — Bruce (D-Day) McGill could really play the William Tell Overture on his throat, James (Hoover) Widdoes could juggle tennis rackets, and, of course, John (Bluto) Belushi could crush beer cans on his forehead. But when Landis heard McGill's bit, he said, "That's too good for the toga party. We'll save that for your entrance." McGill learned the shtick at home as a kid, imitating the sound of the old Maxwell House coffee commercial percolator theme.

Fans can thank (or blame) Ivan Reitman for launching the National Lampoon film series. Impressed by Saturday Night Live's early success, he suggested a film based on The National Lampoon Show. The 'Poonies put their heads together, and ideas began forming. Non-Poonie Harold Ramis offered up Freshman Year, which was flunked by the Harvard types. Next came Laser Orgy Girls, a collaborative effort written by Ramis and Lampoon editor Doug Kenney. Ramis says the concept was "Charles Manson in high school." Landis felt their concept had too much sex and drugs for high school. He suggested they write it for college. Eventually, they stumbled onto the brilliant idea to translate Chris Miller's frat stories for the big screen. The result launched myriad careers and remains one of the most revered comedy classics ever filmed.

Co-screenwriter Chris Miller based the National Lampoon short stories that gave rise to the film on his experiences in the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity at Dartmouth, from which he graduated in the class of 1963:

"I was at Dartmouth in the early sixties and I belonged to the outlaw fraternity on campus at that time (Alpha Delta Phi). I always said that one day I was going to write the story of that experience. So, around 1974 or so, I started writing it as a novel and then the novel got cut up into chunks, which became short stories that ran in the Lampoon. The stories were documentary. They were cinema verite. When the script was written, the actual incidents that the two stories were about were the fraternity initiation that I underwent (The Night of the Seven Fires) and the experience I called Pinto's First Lay.

"I was Pinto in my fraternity. That was my name. In the movie, I think that Pinto is me as a pledge and Boon is me as a senior. All the other guys are guys that are so archetypal that everybody knows them. Everybody had friends like those other guys.

"I think the parts of the movie that were most true to my life were the road trip and what goes on during the road trip. In fact, the guy who was the original guy who tried to get a date with the dead girl was at the premiere. When the incident came on, he stood up and raised his hands in the air just like Rocky."

Now living in Venice, California, Miller said at the film's 25th Anniversary Reunion that he's writing a prequel to the movie. "We can't exactly do a sequel with the death of John Belushi," he said.

Producer Matty Simmons, founder of the National Lampoon, contributed one line to the script, Bluto's "Seven years of college down the drain!"
Director John Landis had only directed the low budget film Kentucky Fried Movie and the ultra low budget Schlock before working on Animal House. He was surprised as anyone to be chosen for such an adventurous project. He used several actors from his previous movies, including Donald Sutherland (Professor Dave Jennings), Stephen Bishop (Charming Guy with Guitar), Bruce Bonnheim (Delta frat brother "BB"), and Eliza Garrett (Brunella).
Director Landis cast himself in the film as a cafeteria worker — he even shaved off his beard for the part — but he cut his only scene before the film was released. The cut frames were all thrown away. All that remains today are a few still photos.
Katherine Wilson

At 132 minutes, Landis felt the film was too long. In addition to his own scenes, he cut an early scene of Otter in the red Corvette taking a girl (played by

Sunny Johnson

Katherine Wilson) to the Rainbow Motel on Old Mill Road (with his Little Black Bag!). If you watch closely, you can see a few seconds of this scene in the film's trailer, available on the Collectors Edition and 25th Anniversary videos. Also cut was a scene with Tim Matheson and Sunny Johnson ("Otter's Coed").
Bruce McGill came up with D-Day's bizarre combination of haircut and mustache on his own.
Landis claims the highest-paid actors were Donald Sutherland ($50,000 for two days' work, instead of taking points that ultimately would have made him at least $17 million), Junior (Neidermeyer's white horse Trooper) and John Belushi ($40,000 each). Landis was able to get Sutherland to appear because they were close friends. Landis had been one of Kiefer Sutherland's baby sitters.
Most of the rest of the cast worked for union scale plus small portions of the net profits. They still receive checks every time the film is exhibited somewhere or plays on cable. Kevin Bacon worked for scale, even though, at the time, he didn't know what the term "scale" meant.
Shooting for Animal House took place October 24 through November 30, 1977. The famous toga party scene was filmed in two, 12-hour day shoots.
SAE House 812 East 14th

Landis made a point of bringing the Delta House actors on location at the University of Oregon a week early. They quickly bonded and partied like it was 1962. One evening some of the guys met up with a few sorority girls and went to a frat party at the SAE house, to absorb the atmosphere and gather information about playing college students. The local Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter didn't take kindly to their arrival, however, and they managed to get into a brawl with "drunk football players dying for blood." The melee that ensued sent Peter Riegert to the emergency room, left Bruce McGill with a black eye and put James Widdoes in a dentist's chair at eight on a Sunday morning to repair a broken tooth. "It was Karen Allen's fault," recalls Riegert today. "We were trying to get out of there and she turned around and started with the name-calling." When John Belushi arrived in Oregon (his SNL commitments kept him from arriving a week early) and heard about the SAE fight, he responded with, "WE GOTTA GET 'EM!!!" and had to be physically restrained from seeking revenge!

Later, after the rest of the cast arrived, the Delta actors snubbed the actors who would play Omegas. At mealtime, Kevin Bacon, Mark Metcalf and James Daughton glumly sat off by themselves. "We would throw things at them and look the other way," recalls Stephen Furst. John Belushi, true to legend, incited the first food fight before the cameras ever rolled. Metcalf deliberately changed his hotel room to one above Bruce McGill's (the Delta actors' party room), where he listened to the all-night racket as he spit-shined his ROTC shoes and stewed.
Mark Metcalf still signs autographs with the notation "You're worthless and weak."

The infamous food fight scene lasts only three seconds in the film.

Outside References

At the end of Animal House a subtitle says that Doug Neidermeyer went to Vietnam where he was "killed by his own troops." John Landis' segment of Twilight Zone - The Movie (1983), about racial bigotry, has a scene in a swamp in Vietnam. One of the American soldiers says, "I told you we shouldn't have fragged Neidermeyer."

Delta House (ABC), a short-lived TV sitcom, premiered January 18, 1979 in an attempt to continue the adventures of Flounder, Pinto, Bluto and the rest. Stephen Furst, Bruce McGill, John Vernon and James Widdoes recreated their roles from the film, with Josh Mostel as "Blotto" Blutarsky, Bluto's brother. Michelle Pfeiffer, in her first acting role, was one of the regulars on the show. The show was cancelled after six episodes.

In typical copy-cat fashion, the other two broadcast networks proffered their own frathouse sitcoms in early 1979: Brothers and Sisters (NBC — cancelled after four episodes) and Co-ed Fever (CBS — one episode).

In the TV series "Star Trek: The Next Generation" there was an episode (QPID, 22 Apr 1991) in which the crew is somehow transported to Sherwood Forest and each member is cast as one of Robin Hood's Merry Men. There is one scene where Geordi La Forge, as Friar Tuck, is playing a lute very badly. Worf, as Little John, comes up behind him, grabs the lute out of Geordi's hands, smashes it against a tree and mutters, "Sorry".

In The Mask (1994) Lt. Mitch Kellaway, played by Peter Riegert (Boon), has his men empty The Mask's pockets. When they find a framed photo of Verna Bloom as Marion Wormer we learn that she is the Lieutenant's wife.

In the film EdTV (1999) some of the viewers of EdTV are watching from the Delta Tau Chi fraternity, the full name of the fictional Delta House fraternity from Animal House.

The film Sorority Boys (2002) has cameos by four Animal House cast members: Mark Metcalf, James Daughton, and Stephen Furst play alumni dads, and John Vernon — Dean Wormer! — plays a really old dude.


Oregon	Tennessee	Pennsylvania

Why is there a Tennessee state flag in the courtroom scene? Although Faber College is supposed to be "somewhere in Pennsylvania," all filming was done at the University of Oregon. Unfortunately, the Oregon flag has "State of Oregon" across the upper part, so it wouldn't work in that scene. Unable to quickly find a Pennsylvania flag, Hal Gausman the set decorator apparently used the first "generic" looking flag he could find — which happened to be a Tennessee flag.
This was the first significant film appearance for many cast members: John Belushi, Kevin Bacon, Karen Allen, Tom Hulce, Peter Riegert, James Widdoes, Martha Smith, Mary Louise Weller, Sarah Holcomb, and Lisa Baur. It was the second film for five others.
In addition to Belushi, five others who were involved in this film are no longer with us: Douglas Kenney (Stork) fell to his death after stepping onto a crumbling precipice during a vacation in Kauai, Hawaii, in 1980. There has been some speculation over whether it was an accident or not, but no one really knows for certain. Sunny Johnson (Otter's coed), after appearing in six more films (Where the Buffalo Roam, Flashdance), died at age 30 of a ruptured aneurysm in 1984. Cesare Danova (Mayor Carmine DePasto) passed away March 19, 1992, of a heart attack. He was 66. Elmer Bernstein, composer of the movie's score, died August 18, 2004. John Vernon ( Dean Vernon Wormer) died February 1, 2005, at age 72 of complications from heart surgery. Belushi of course died from a drug overdose at age 33 on March 5, 1982.

And three of the loveliest actresses have vanished from public life: Lisa Baur, Sarah Holcomb and Mary Louise Weller. Although she was a professional actress when hired for the picture, this is the only film credit for Lisa Baur (Shelly Dubinsky). Sarah Holcomb's (Clorette DePasto) four-year film career ended with Caddyshack in 1980. She reportedly turned to alcohol and drugs and slowly lost touch with reality as she suffered from schizophrenia. The 2004 film Stateside is reportedly about her descent through alcohol, drugs, sexual abuse and finally mental illness. I am told she is now living a quiet, obscure life far from the madness of Hollywood under an assumed name and does not wish to be found. Finally, Mary Louise Weller retired from acting in the 1980s and now raises horses. She trained with the U.S. Equestrian Team as a teenager and has ridden competitively. She is now married and travels across the country on the horse show circuit in an RV with her new hubby.

Casting singer-songwriter Stephen Bishop in his films became a running gag for Director John Landis. He used Stephen in Kentucky Fried Movie (Charming Guy), Animal House, (Charming Guy with Guitar), The Blues Brothers (1980) (Charming Trooper), and Twilight Zone (1983) (Charming GI).

Singer-songwriter Stephen Bishop (On and On) met Karen Allen on the set of Animal House and it was the beginning of a four-year bi-coastal relationship, between his Laurel Canyon retreat and her East Village townhouse.

Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers

When Otter introduces himself to Shelly Dubinsky in the lobby of her Emily Dickinson College dorm, he uses the name "Frank Lymon." Frankie Lymon, lead singer of Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers ["Why Do Fools Fall in Love" (1956)] was the first black teenage singing idol. The group's success inspired the formation of a number of youthful black vocal groups, from the Students in the late '50s to the Jackson Five in the '60s. The group's sound influenced young singers such as Ronnie Bennett and Diana Ross, and served as prototype for both the girl groups and early Motown groups of the '60s.
Cottage cheese? A boiled egg? Rice? Marshmallows? Snow-ball? Cream pie?
None of the above! In the now-famous "What am I?" scene in the school cafeteria, John Belushi spews out a mouthful of mashed potatoes and gleefully responds, "A zit! Get it?"
Belushi in his green sweatshirt

There has been some debate as to the color of the "COLLEGE" sweatshirt worn by Belushi in the movie. Anyone who saw the original theatrical release or who has seen any of the DVDs, will know that the shirt was dark green. Apparently a second, navy blue version of the shirt was used for promotional stills, but that shirt never appears in the film. Some people, probably having seen the b&w still, insist the shirt was black. There is also disagreement over the origin of the shirt. Some say it was the idea of costumer Deborah Nadoolman. Others claim the shirt belonged to John Belushi, and was made for him by Van H. Anderson, owner of Gusto's Graphics in Carbondale, Illinois. But since Mr Anderson claims he made John a navy blue shirt, it is likely the shirt was duplicated in green for the film while the Gusto shirt was only used in the promotional stills.
Bluto's date at the Toga Party, seen briefly dancing to Shout with him, was played by Judith Belushi. Mrs. John Belushi is also seen sitting on the stairs in front of Bluto when he destroys the Charming Guy's [real!] guitar. Speaking of the smashed guitar, Stephen Bishop, who wrote and performed the Animal House Theme, claims to have framed the smashed guitar. The hole the guitar made in the wall was the only damage done to The Sigma Nu fraternity house at 763 E. 11th Ave where the Delta House interiors were filmed. Rather than repair it, they commemorated the event by placing a frame with an engraved brass tag around the hole.
When Greg Marmalard is introducing Pinto and Flounder to the leading men of the Omega House at the pledge party, he points to one of the members and says "that's Carl Philips, editor of the Daily Faberian." Interestingly, the reporter at Grover's Mills, New Jersey in Orson Welle's War of the Worlds radio play was also named Carl Philips. [Thanks, Chuck!]
Thaddeus Seymour was the Dean of Dartmouth College at the time Chris Miller attended that institution, and he, along with Richard Nixon, was the inspiration for the character of Dean Wormer. Seymour later became president of Wabash College in Indiana and Rollins College in Orlando Florida.
At the Toga Party, Bluto shouts something and all of the Deltas fall to the floor and start writhing like they're having seizures. What did Bluto yell that caused such a reaction? Some say "Alligator!" or "'Gator!" while others say, "Do the turtle!" or just "Turtle!" I watched the Collector's Edition Widescreen DVD with English sub-titles turned on. All that showed was "[Indistinct Shout]." Finally, NBC-TV's Making of Animal House special which aired June 30, 2001, has answered this question. John Landis says Bluto yells "Gator," the name of a popular dance craze of the '60's. See for yourself!

In A Futile and Stupid Gesture, Josh Karp explains how Doug Kenney got Bluto and the rest of the cast doing the gator: "During the toga party scene... Doug looked at Belushi, screamed, 'Hey John, we ought to do the gator,' fell to the floor, and appeared to have an epileptic seizure. Landis had no idea what was going on and asked Doug about it, who explained that it was, in fact, a real dance. Confirmed by Belushi and Miller, the moment stayed in the film."
Several times in the film Otter whistles the main theme ("Peter's Theme") from Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf: while he is getting dressed for the rush party, at the grocery store and again in the lobby of the Emily Dickinson College dormitory when he goes to pick up Fawn Leibowitz.

The "road trip" to Emily Dickinson College, where Otter pretends to be the fiance of dead coed Fawn Leibowitz, was based on a real-life incident with a fraternity brother of writer Chris Miller. When that brother saw the film for the first time, he stood up in the theater and proudly yelled out, "That was me!"

Several years before Animal House was filmed, the National Lampoon published National Lampoon's 1964 High School Yearbook: 39th Reunion Edition, written by Doug Kenney (1946 - 1980) and author P.J. O'Rourke. The 1964 Yearbook presents an entire year at C. Estes Kefauver High in mind-numbingly boring Dacron, Ohio. Among the characters are Lawrence "Larry" Kroger and Amanda Swansdown "Fridge" Peppridge, later to be known as "Mandy."

There are other Yearbook in-jokes with which the writers amused themselves: Faber's Dean takes his name from Kefauver's Phys Ed and Civics teacher, also named Vernon Wormer (a name originally based on Vernon Webber, headmaster at Gilmour Academy, a prep school near Cleveland attended by Doug Kenney). Likewise, the Omegan at the piano playing "Tammy" during the rush party is a nod to Larry Kroger's Kefauver High obsession with Tammy Ann Croup.

Stephen Hansen lived in Cottage Grove when the Homecoming Parade scenes were filmed and shares this information: "They had everyone who volunteered (and wasn't in school) helping as extras. They would yell 'everyone run this way' as the smoke was blowing. [Parts] of the scene where they are driving the Deathmobile [were shot] on River Road, a short road that follows the river around the back of town. The marching band was led through [one of] the few alleys we have in the town, and into a vacant lot where they [had constructed] a fake wall for them to march into. They pulled all the new Fords out [of the] Holloman Ford dealership and put old cars in for the scene where a [float] crashes through the glass window.

"One thing I remember being told was, for the scene where John Belushi swings across the street during the parade, he was terrified of heights. They strapped him in a harness and had to have someone hold his feet as he leaned over to start the swing. Then they put in a stunt man. The stunt man jumped and they had a mattress against a wall to stop him. The entire town was excited to have a REAL movie being filmed in the town, but Main Street was blocked off for three weeks."
According to Katherine Wilson of Stage III Productions, the location scout and location casting director for Animal House, the film used 500 local extras in Eugene, plus about 100 local crew (construction, wardrobe, transportation, production office, greens crew, craft service, security, etc.). About 1,400 more were hired just for the homecoming parade — 800 from Cottage Grove — mostly parade watchers — and 600 from Eugene — the Omegas, the Deltas, the Marching Band, the ROTC gang, sorority girls and some of the grand stand people.
Katherine Wilson says her Grandfather, Jake Jager, a 4th generation farmer in Oregon, was the one who in early September predicted the one week in November it wouldn't rain, to schedule the Parade Scene. He was only one day off.
Shooting in Cottage Grove was supposed to last nine days, with five days for the homecoming parade. Because of the number of extras and the possibility of rain delays for filming the parade scenes, Katherine Wilson — freaked out about having to call 1,400 extras each day — worked out a plan where a local radio station would announce at 6am if that day's shooting was cancelled or not, so the extras would know when to show up. Extras were paid $2.50 an hour.
According to Gail Hoelzle, co-owner of The Bookmine bookstore at 702 E Main Street, a heavy downpour the night after the first day's shooting of the homecoming parade put a slight crimp in the film's shooting schedule. Needing dry streets for continuity, the production crew rented a field-burning tractor from Junction City. The farm implement, used to burn stubble, shot flames out the width of Main Street, Gail said. "That solved the problem and the street was dry again," she said.

Hilda Kracht, who was 22 and living in Eugene, played the homecoming queen during the parade scene. "I wore a purple dress with a tiara. Those were fun times during the filming. I got to hang out with Tim Matheson, who was very good looking and nice," she said.

"I was a police sergeant working in the City of Cottage Grove where the parade scenes from Animal House were filmed, along with the interior dorm shots for both the Delta House and the girls' dorm which featured the famous pillow fight with "peeping Tom" John Belushi outside on the ladder. I coordinated all security and was assigned as Belushi's personal body guard by the director John Landis, who ordered me to keep him happy and out of trouble as he waited to film his scenes. I did a lot of the stunt driving including the famous Deathmobile. I was presented with an autographed orginal script signed by the entire cast with a letter of thanks from John Landis. He allowed me to appear in four scenes of the movie: I arrested Boone at the parade scene. responded code 3 in the old [Plymouth] police car, and had two scene's jumping on the float after it had crashed into the bleachers, pulling the two actor's out of the Deathmobile and attempting to arrest them. Universal Studios had such a limited budget, I allowed the filming crew to use my personal stationwagon with cameras mounted on top, in place of using a dolly, for action shots during the four days filming the parade."

Patrick Murphy

Sheldon High School
Marching Band

The parade band that marched into a dead-end alley was the Sheldon High School Fighting Irish Marching Band from Eugene Oregon, wearing uniforms borrowed from the Winston Churchill High School Marching Band. Katherine Wilson, the location casting director, cast the Sheldon band in the movie because Mr. Johns, their Band Director, was a friend of hers and the band was trying to raise money for a trip to Europe. When Landis said he didn't like their shamrock green uniforms, Katherine got the Churchill band to let them use theirs.
The Knights' on-screen bass player is none other than Grammy®-winning bluesman Robert Cray! Cray was also instrumental in getting the other musicians together that appeared as the band: Robert Bailey, Sonny King, Tommy Smith, and Ron Steen.
It was during the filming of Animal House that John Belushi got turned on to the blues, listening to Curtis Salgado, lead singer for Robert Cray's Nighthawks, at the Eugene Hotel on Monday nights. Belushi's Jake Blues was modeled directly from Curtis Salgado's act -- he didn't steal from Salgado, he took lessons from him! Check the credits for the Blues Brothers' album Briefcase Full of Blues, and you’ll see that it was dedicated to Salgado. At least Belushi gave credit where credit was due.
Some posts on the IMDb Animal House message board suggest that Samuel L. Jackson might have played the uncredited character Muhammed, one of the pledge candidate losers at Omega House. It seems plausible. Jackson was just at the start of his career, an unknown, and about 29 or 30 years old. This topic comes up regularly on that message board. Here's what I wrote there in March 2004:
- At the time Animal House was filmed, Jackson lived in New York City where he was a member of the Negro Ensemble Company.
- If that were really Jackson on the couch, he would have assuredly included that information in his acting resume and filmography.
- If that were really him on the couch, we'd have heard something about it long ago. He would have attended the reunion parties and been interviewed on the anniversary DVDs.
- All of the non-speaking parts (and a few of the speaking parts) were played by locally hired extras. Why would Landis pay to fly Jackson from New York for such a tiny part and then not even give him credit for it?
- Co-script writer Chris Miller told me, "Samuel Jackson was in no way part of anything to do with Animal House. Wouldn't that have been cool, though?"
- But finally, the character Muhammed was actually played by an extra named Terry, a member of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity at the University of Oregon, one of the many students hired as extras.
Otis Day & the Knights perform at the toga party and again on the road trip at the Dexter Lakes Club. Both of the songs were lip-synched by Dewayne Jessie to recordings produced by Mark Davis (composer of Shama Lama Ding Dong) in Los Angeles before filming began. The lead singer heard on the two songs is Lloyd Williams. A few years ago Dewayne Jessie had his name legally changed to Otis Day, and he now tours college campuses and other venues doing over 100 shows a year as Otis Day & the Knights.
In the Yearbook portion of the Animal House Double Secret Probation DVD there are interviews with Universal Pictures executives Sean Daniel (Executive in Charge of Production) and Thom Mount (Head of Production), both of whom were huge supporters of getting the movie filmed. In Blues Brothers, John Candy (aka Officer Burton Mercer) asks for "Troopers Daniel and Mount" to try to apprehend the Brothers! Coincidence? ACME Animal House fan John Vukovich, Jr. thinks not!
After filming completed, Kevin Bacon returned to his job waiting tables at a bar in Manhatten. No one would believe him when he told them he'd just finished filming his first motion picture.

Martha Smith, who played Babs, was Playboy Magazine's July 1973 Playmate of the Month. Speaking of Playboy Magazine, one of the few period items the movie got right was the issue the boy was reading when the girl flies into his window and he exclaims, "Thank you, God!" He was reading the June 1962 issue, "A Toast to Bikinis." It makes sense that a film made by a magazine would get a magazine cover right! Animal House fan Dave adds this: "I would like to point out to you that in the film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), on the way to the target, the crew in the B52 bomber piloted by the Slim Pickens character is also reading the June 1962 Playboy magazine"! Coincidence? You tell me.

According to the notes at the end of the film, Babs becomes a tour guide at Universal Studios. The closing credits for this film, along with Landis' The Blues Brothers (1980), Landis' An American Werewolf in London (1981) and Belushi's Continental Divide (1981) include advertisements for the tour at Universal Studios. The ads all add "Ask for Babs." Supposedly this was a Studio Tour promotion, which was either a discounted or free admission.

Similarly, after the closing credits for Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) there is an ad for Universal Studios Florida. Under the Universal logo the words "Ride the Movies" fade out to "(Ask for Babs)." According to Landis, this was all just a running gag, and there never was any such promotion at Universal Studios.

Return to