On July 28, 1978, National Lampoon’s Animal House, a movie
spoof about 1960s college fraternities starring John Belushi,
(above) opened in theaters. Produced with an estimated budget
of $3 million, Animal House became a huge, multi-million-dollar
box-office hit, spawned a slew of cinematic imitations and
became part of pop-culture history with such memorable lines
as “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

Set at the fictional Faber College (the University of Oregon
served as a stand-in during filming).

    
    
    
   
Melvin (Mel) James Brooks (Kaminsky)

Mel Brooks is an actor, comedian, and filmmaker. With a career
spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and
director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies. A
recipient of numerous accolades, he is one of 18 entertainers to
win the EGOT, which includes an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award,
an Academy Award ("Oscar"), and a Tony Award. He received a
Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in
2010, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013, a British Film
Institute Fellowship in 2015, a National Medal of Arts in 2016, a
BAFTA Fellowship in 2017, and the Honorary Academy Award
in 2023.

He began his career as a comic and a writer for Sid Caesar‘s
variety show Your Show of Shows from 1950 to 1954.

1974

1974

Philip Edward Hartman
(Hartmann; September 24, 1948 – May 28, 1998)

On May 28, 1998, the comedian and actor Phil Hartman, famous
for his work on Saturday Night Live and NewsRadio,was shot to
death by his wife, Brynn, in a murder-suicide. He was 49.

Johnny Carson, the king of late-night television, hosted his
final episode of "The Tonight Show" on this day in history,
May 22, 1992, after a 30-year run.

Carson conducted about 22,000 interviews during his tenure
and was seen by more people on more occasions than anyone
else in U.S. television history. 

The long-running "The Tonight Show" was the first, and for
decades the most-watched, network talk program on TV, 
according to the Television Academy Foundation.

CAMILLE BOHANNON