Bill Murray Reacts To 'Ghostbusters' Star Harold Ramis' Death: 'God Bless Him'
Many fans of comedy great Harold Ramis were devastated to hear of his passing and took to various social media to comment on his death. Ramis worked with Bill Murray on nearly half a dozen films, including the 1984 classic "Ghostbusters." Murray commented on the actor/director/writer dying at the age of 69 in a statement to Time magazine.
“Harold Ramis and I together did the ‘National Lampoon Show’ off Broadway, ‘Meatballs,’ ‘Stripes’, ‘Caddyshack,’ ‘Ghostbusters’ and ‘Groundhog Day.’ He earned his keep on this planet,” he told Time Monday. “God bless him.”
Ramis was also responsible for co-writing the blockbuster “National Lampoon’s Animal House” and directing "National Lampoon's Vacation," "Analyze This" and "Analyze That." Most recently he directed a few episodes of "The Office."
“More than anyone else,” Paul Weingarten wrote in the Chicago Tribune Magazine in 1983, according to the New York Times, “Harold Ramis has shaped this generation’s ideas of what is funny.”
The famed director died of complications stemming from autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, which is an inflammation of the blood vessels, arteries, veins or capillaries, according to the Vasculitis Foundation. The problem can lead to one’s organs not getting enough blood and sometimes cause them to shut down. That’s sadly what happened to Ramis.
Ramis had been suffering with AIV since 2010 and succumbed to his illness on Monday at 12:53 a.m. He left behind his second wife Erica Mann Ramis and their Julian and Daniel, and daughter Violet from his first marriage to Anne Plotkin.
When looking back on her husband’s work, Mann said Ramis was fortunate to have had an early start. “He was very lucky," she said. "I mean, the first screenplay he wrote was ‘Animal House,’ and the first movie he directed was ‘Caddyshack,’” she said.
The Hollywood star won a BAFTA Film Award for Best Originial Screenplay for “Caddyshack” in 1993.
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