The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals (49 page)

In order to get some distance from himself and the troubles in Hollywood, Belushi travelled back to New York to visit his wife Judy, but because of the troubles he had left behind in Hollywood, he was not the best of company. The visit was stressful and after about a week he returned to California to try and sort things out with the screenplay and the movie, once and for all.

Arriving back at the Chateau Marmont hotel, Belushi seemed stressed and hotel staff noticed that there were times when he seemed so tired he would avoid talking to people. He also seemed unhappy and acutely lonely, something which had plagued the actor for some time as he had always hated to be alone. Other times, however, he would seem to be back to his old self, joking and happy, though his mood swings were undoubtedly giving people around the hotel further cause for worry. The hotel manager, Suzanne Jierjian, later told the
Los Angeles Times
that the actor seemed to be driving himself incredibly hard. “He seemed like he was very, very tired,” she said.

It would appear that while Belushi’s previous visit to the hotel was a low-key, work-heavy affair, this time, however, he was determined to party. He telephoned Cathy Evelyn Smith, a woman he had been friends with for several years and who was known as a backing singer and “groupie”. She was also – unfortunately – rumoured to be a drug dealer. From the moment Belushi arrived in Los Angeles, the two hung out together, and according to the woman, they spent at least one evening together – platonically she claimed – drinking California wine and “inhaling cocaine through the nasal passages”. She also claimed that they had been injecting too.

On 4 March 1982, Belushi rang his wife Judy from his room at the Chateau Marmont to give her news about his work, and from his tone during the call she sensed that he was not at all happy with the way things were going. Still, there was nothing she could do to make him feel any better with the situation, so she just listened to her husband’s worries as he apologized for his behaviour during their last visit and told her that he loved her. That was the last time Judy ever spoke to her husband.

That evening John went out to a restaurant with Cathy Smith before ending up in the VIP section of the Roxy nightclub. There he became extremely intoxicated and felt so ill that Smith drove him home and helped him into his bungalow at the Chateau Marmont. Once there he vomited in the bathroom, before proceeding to drink wine and snort cocaine, despite still feeling unwell and in no fit state to carry on partying.

The drug-taking continued well into the early hours of the morning and Smith later reported that the actor became pale and sweaty. Still, the night did not end there and at some time before 3 a.m. Belushi welcomed two friends to the bungalow – actors Robert De Niro and Robin Williams. They both arrived separately but neither stayed for long after becoming disturbed by what they had found to be going on in the room.

Williams in particular was said to have thought of Cathy Smith as “creepy” and wondered what on earth Belushi was doing hanging around with her. He had been battling his own demons for some years and knew enough about Hollywood to be concerned for his friend’s welfare. Before he left the hotel, he told Belushi to call him if he ever got out of bed again, and what happened later disturbed him so much that he is said to have gone “cold turkey” in order to wean himself off drugs. In 1988 the evening was still playing on his mind and, during an interview with
People
magazine, he described the tragedy as “frightening” and a wake-up call for “a whole group of showbusiness people”.

After both Williams and De Niro had left the bungalow, the drug-taking between Smith and Belushi continued in a rampant fashion, and at 6.30 a.m. the actor took a shower and complained that he felt cold. He turned up the heat but still felt decidedly unwell – not really surprising considering the amount of drugs he had ingested that evening. Then at around 8 a.m., the couple ordered room service, but Belushi fell asleep on his bed before it arrived. Cathy Smith – still awake – took delivery of the order, and later said that at this point she noticed that her sleeping friend was breathing in a very erratic way, wheezing and visibly shaking.

She was concerned enough to wake him up, and later described that he was not pleased to be woken and assured her that everything was okay. He then drank a glass of water, took some more drugs and fell back to sleep, but not before asking Smith to stay with him as he did not want to be alone. She stayed for a while but had personal business to attend to away from the hotel, so after looking in on him one last time, the woman took Belushi’s Mercedes and left for the morning.

What happened next is something of a mystery and it is unclear as to whether or not the actor ever regained consciousness. However, what we do know for sure is that his personal trainer, William Wallace, tried several times to contact Belushi by telephone and could not get through. He arrived at the hotel at 12.15 p.m. and on entering the room discovered the actor lying on the bed, having obviously passed away. He summoned the hotel security man, Bruce Beckler, and together they took the actor’s body from the bed and tried desperately to revive him but it was no good. Paramedics later commented that Belushi was probably dead by 10 a.m. that morning, a good two hours before being discovered by Wallace.

By the time Cathy Smith arrived back at the hotel, the police had surrounded the building and, as she had made the mistake of driving up a one-way street in the wrong direction, she was stopped by the police, who pointed out what she had done wrong. On mentioning that this was the route John Belushi told her to take, the officers immediately seized the woman and took her away for questioning, apparently not informing her until hours later that the actor had passed away.

It was during this police interview that the coroner later said Smith presented officers with a blackened spoon and syringe, which she had taken from the room in an effort to keep the drug-taking secret from the hotel’s cleaning service. She had not cleaned the room as much as she had believed, however, when officers on the scene found not only a “green leafy substance” in a container, but also hand-rolled cigarettes, papers and – most revealingly – traces of white powder on a dresser.

Smith was released after questioning, but quite surprisingly, rather than just choosing to fade into the background, she actually consented to an interview with
ABC News
to talk about Belushi’s last days. The interview was not particularly revealing and while she freely admitted that it wasn’t totally out of the question that Belushi had overdosed, she chose not to admit witnessing the actor taking drugs that evening. Added to that, her lawyer stopped the interviewer from asking about the rumours of her drug-dealing, before finally jumping to his feet and calling a halt to the programme altogether when Smith was asked about the rumours of drug-taking among Belushi and his friends.

Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi – who had also investigated the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Natalie Wood – was assigned to the case and, on performing an autopsy, he declared that the procedure had not yet established a cause of death. Further tests were ordered and at that point police attested that they could see no foul play involved in the death.

By this time the news had been wired around the world and Belushi’s friend and co-star Dan Aykroyd travelled to John’s home in order to break the sad news to John’s wife, Judy. She was understandably upset and confused, and immediately tried to get answers from the police as to why and how her husband had died. However, during an interview with
People
magazine some years later, she recalled that the police were not helpful and that one officer actually asked her what she expected, as “the guy was a junkie”. Considering this was a young widow grieving the loss of her husband, it was not the most compassionate way to behave, but it seems this was only the tip of the iceberg. Over the next few weeks she would be told all kinds of rumours, including how Belushi had drug marks over his entire body, which made her feel awful and ultimately turned out to be false.

Meanwhile, fans began to gather in Chicago bars and at comedy clubs in a desperate attempt to get “closer” to their lost idol, talking about the laughs he had brought them and the tragedy that had unfolded in a lonely hotel room just days before. Tributes began to pour in from friends, though some – including Robin Williams – were too upset to talk. Dan Aykroyd was described as having “submerged in New York”, completely overwhelmed at the loss of his friend, while John’s siblings, Marian and Jim, were beside themselves with grief. Jim struggled through a stage production of
The Pirates of Penzance
on – according to him – “Valium and alcohol”, while friends desperately tried to provide comfort to them. It was well meant but unfortunately unsuccessful: “Nothing can help now,” Marian told the
Los Angeles Times
.

On 8 March 1982 sources at the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office revealed that it was believed that the actor had died after a drugs overdose. Rumours surfaced that his arms had needle marks and prominent veins, and one unnamed source disclosed that it had been free-based cocaine (the purest and most potent form of the drug) that Belushi had been injecting that evening.

Although no official word could be obtained from Noguchi and police were denying all knowledge of any official results, the stories did actually turn out to be true. On 10 March the coroner’s office finally revealed that the death had been caused by a mixture of heroin and cocaine being injected into his veins, and that samples taken from his room at the Chateau Marmont Hotel had been found to be drugs. The levels of narcotics in Belushi’s body were described as “extremely large” and “substantial”, while on the death certificate it listed “Acute Cocaine and Heroin Intoxication” as the cause of his death, which was registered as an “accident”.

Friends and colleagues of the actor were not surprised to hear of the death verdict, though several did declare that they had never witnessed him taking drugs in front of them in the past. One unnamed friend assured reporters that while working on films, Belushi never touched drugs, though in between projects he had been known to inject heroin and snort cocaine for at least the past two years. However, while the reports of drug-taking were shocking, friends did point out that John had expressed a recent desire to straighten himself out and get off heroin once and for all.

His wife Judy later said that she had believed that Belushi was turning a corner, while friends at the time gave their opinion that if he had been with his wife – who disliked his drug-taking immensely – he never would have lost his life. “If she had been with him, he’d still be alive today,” one told the
Los Angeles Times
, and this was something that played on Judy’s mind for a long time afterwards, before she eventually allowed herself to realize that her presence might not have saved him; that there were no guarantees either way.

All the “ifs and buts” were no use in bringing back John Belushi; he had gone and everyone was faced with the inevitable loss. The body of the once vibrant comedian was taken back east to Martha’s Vineyard where he owned his holiday house, in order for his friends and family to say their last goodbyes; 150 mourners gathered at the West Tisbury Congregational Church, while hundreds of fans, neighbours and the curious stood on the street to pay their respects. The ceremony was solemn but included the odd hint of humour and comedy, just as John would have wanted, with the reverend at one point quoting the comedian’s catchphrase, “Wise Up!” to the amused congregation.

The funeral may have been a small, conservative affair, but there was a chance to remember the star in a grander way several days later when a thousand of Belushi’s friends and family met at the St John the Divine Cathedral in New York. There John’s brother Jim told the congregation that he was sure his sibling would have enjoyed cartwheeling down the aisle of the cathedral, while co-star Dan Aykroyd promised that he would always remain Belushi’s “number one fan”. He then held up a cassette player and played a song entitled “Two Thousand Pound Bee”, which he told the congregation that he and Belushi had always said would be played at their funerals.

In the days and months ahead, a full investigation was conducted into the death of John Belushi, but it was felt that his passing was just another Hollywood tragedy with no one to blame but the actor himself. However, all this changed when Cathy Smith – who was by now living in Canada but still apparently not willing to fade into the background – gave an interview to the
National Enquirer
. In the damning article, the woman apparently gave the shocking announcement that she had injected Belushi with a “speedball” – a mixture of heroin and cocaine – shortly before he had died.

This news caused a firestorm and the Deputy District Attorney Michael Genelin immediately urged police to reopen the case, saying that if the quotes were true, Smith had in effect confessed to second-degree murder. Officers headed to Canada to interview the woman, but by then she was denying saying such a thing and threatening to sue the
National Enquirer
for damages. In a statement released through her lawyer, Smith said that she was anxious to clear up misunderstandings caused by her words being taken out of context, and that she was willing to be interviewed, after “certain documents” had been reviewed.

Unfortunately for Smith, the
National Enquirer
refused to revoke the comments and told reporters that they would be standing behind their story “fully”, revealing that they had reportedly paid the woman $15,000 for her interview. Smith’s lawyer immediately issued a statement which said that the sometime singer was drunk and on drugs when she had spoken to the magazine, and even more controversially, claimed that the alcohol had been provided by the reporters themselves. He denied that she had ever said anything to them about giving Belushi a final – and fatal – drug hit, and declared that the article Smith had approved was not the one that had ended up on the news-stand. Finally, he tried to assure everyone that the whole episode had left his client very “distressed and dismayed”.