Fans of 1978 movie hit “National Lampoon’s Animal House” will be saddened to learn that one of its stars has passed away.
Actress Mary Louise Weller, who portrayed Pi House sorority sister Mandy Pepperidge in the raucus college comedy, passed away on Thursday, Oct 1, one day before what would have been her 80th birthday.
Her longtime partner Michael Roy Curtis confirmed the news to The Hollywood Reporter, revealing she passed after a brief illness.
A Comedy Classic
Directed by John Landis and made on a modest budget of under $3 million, “Animal House” became a massive box-office hit, bringing in more than $140 million and cementing the stardom of “Saturday Night Live” standout John Belushi.
Weller appeared in one of the film’s most iconic scenes, in which Belushi’s character, Bluto Blutarsky, climbs a ladder to peer through a window to watch Mandy undress, only to have the ladder tumble backwards, sending him flat on his back.
In the film’s closing sequence, it’s revealed that Mandy went on to marry Bluto, who becomes a U.S. senator.
In a 2012 interview with Culture Film Freak, Weller was asked if she knew that “Animal House” would become as popular as it did.
She said she “was pretty sure” the R-rated comedy would be a hit, adding, “I remember showing [the script] to Brandon Stoddard, who was head of ABC at that time. He also knew it would be an enormous hit … but he warned me that it would be the movie I would always be known for.”
Frequent TV Guest Star
Both prior to and after “Animal House,” Weller appeared extensively on television, making guest-starring appearances on numerous series.
These included “Baretta,” “Kojak,” “Starsky & Hutch,” “Fantasy Island,” “CHiPs” and many others.
On the big screen, Weller played a guest editor at a New York fashion magazine in the 1979 film version of Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar,” and was also the love interest of the character played by Chuck Norris in 1982 action flick “Forced Vengeance.”
“I was the beautiful girl in trouble or the rich guy’s daughter who owns a Porsche and won’t give you the time of day,” she said of the characters she typically played in a 1986 interview with Los Angeles Times.
Weller started her career as a Ford model, and was also seen on television commercials as spokesperson for the Jean Naté fragrance brand.
Her acting career, however, was brief. Her final screen role was in a 1983 episode of “Quincy M.E.”
After that, she gravitated toward theater, and found further success as a playwright.
“I did a bunch of plays in New York,” she told the Times. “And out of that came a play I wrote called ‘Four Alone.’ With a girlfriend, I got a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to perform it at the Greenhouse Theater in Pasadena. And I wrote another script which Mark Carliner bought.”
As THR notes, Weller was an avid equestrian who had trained with the U.S. Equestrian team as a teenager. Prior to exiting show business, Weller had attempted to produce a film based on the life of jockey Mary Bacon.
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‘Animal House’ Star Has Passed Away at 79