His name was Doug Kenney and if you love the comedy cult classic Animal House as much as I do, then you'll have seen Doug countless times ... without knowing that he was what started it all.
“Animal House was an accident that happened. One day Doug Kenny, one of the creators of National Lampoon, came to me and said Matty I’ve had it. It’s been six years now and I just can’t handle the deadlines anymore and I just have to quit. I was panicky. I didn’t want to lose this guy. He was a star. I just blurted out ‘you can’t leave!’ and he said why and I knew Doug loved show business. And so I said we’re gonna do a movie. It just like that.” (Matty Simmons, Producer)
At that point, there was no inkling of an idea of what the movie was going to be, let alone a notion of anything that would be Animal House eventually.
Douglas Clark Francis Kenny went to Harvard, where he was editor of The Harvard Lampoon. When he graduated, he and a few others licensed the Lampoon name to create a national publication - et voilà, the National Lampoon was born. This hugely successful publication was a key comedy factor of the seventies and led to many National Lampoon’s this and that (among them, “National Lampoon’s Animal House”).
Doug Kenny was there as a founder and through the proudly and wildly satirical early years. But yeah, then he’d had enough, wanted to leave - and Matty Simmons had the brilliant idea to entice Doug to stay with the carrot of a film.
Harold Ramis and Doug Kenny were put to the task and Kenny, according to Ramis, sidetracked them into writing a high school movie and they ended up writing a script entitled “Laser Orgy Girls” - a story about Charles Manson in high school. The idea, while thought funny and wild, didn’t exactly fly. A third writer, Chris Miller, came on board, the story would be shifted to college … and that’s when the magic happened - the three started swapping every single college story they could think of, started developing the archetypes and Animal House began to take shape.
Check out this endearing documentary, featuring so many familiar faces, it’s a joy to watch and listen to the countless Animal House reminiscences:
In this documentary you’ll hear from the co-writers, from director John Landis and from many others about that wonderful talent that had been Doug Kenny. Yes, had been.
Animal House premiered in 1978 - and he played the minor character ‘Stork’ in it. Animal House would go on to the most profitable Hollywood comedy (until Ghostbusters broke that record in 1984). After Animal House, Kenney produced and co-wrote Caddyshack. The same year, 1980, Kenney and Chevy Chase went to Hawaii. Chase had to fly back for a work commitment, and Kenney’s girlfriend also returned to Los Angeles after a short stay…
… they found notes for projects in Kenney’s hotel room afterwards, jokes, movie ideas, lines - and so it seemed pretty obvious that Kenney had not committed suicide. You see, this is what happened: While traveling on his own on the island of Kauai on the 27th of August 1980, Douglas Kenney fell to his death from a 35-foot cliff called the Hanapepe Valley Lookout.
His old home, the National Lampoon publication, published a tribute by Michael Simmons - as well as a cartoon showing a sign reading “Doug Kenney Slipped Here” next to the edge of a cliff. Frankly, true to form - I think he would have laughed.
By the way, should you feel like learning a bit more about Doug Kenney, Netflix made a film about him - it stars Will Forte and is called “A Futile And Stupid Gesture” and I thought it was surprisingly good, charming, irreverent - just as it should be. In the film, Kenney’s death very much looks like it’s been a suicide, but, on the upshot, they many famed Lampoon alumni have a food-fight at the wake.
