How A Clint Eastwood Western Landed John Vernon The Role Of The Dean In Animal House

When your students are tanking their classes (if they attend at all) and dumping Fizzies tablets onto the varsity swim meet, you can't be a soft school administrator. That said, Dean Wormer would run Faber College more like Rikers if he had the opportunity. The gruff villain (played by John Vernon) is just one of the highlights of "National Lampoon's Animal House," John Landis' 1978 frat comedy, as the biggest authority standing in the way of Delta House's good time. The movie was penned by Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney, and Chris Miller, pulling from their respective experiences in higher education. It was "National Lampoon Magazine" editor-in-chief and writer Kenney who came up with the Dean years before the movie, as the satirical "National Lampoon's High School Yearbook" featured Wormer as a civics teacher and coach. On the big screen, Wormer doesn't suffer fools or twerps, and he's as rigid about rules and order as a by-the-book Judge in a western movie, threatening to kick a fraternity pledge out "faster than s*** through a goose."

"Animal House" producer Matty Simmons' 2012 book "Fat, Drunk and Stupid: The Inside Story Behind the Making of Animal House" is brimming with insights from stars like Karen Allen and director Landis, who is revealed to originally want the hard-boiled "Dragnet" star Jack Webb as his Dean. Webb, who sat with a cigarette in one hand and a Scotch in the other as Landis pitched the plot to him, gave his reply over the phone the next day: "John, I appreciate the offer but you're out of your god**** mind!"

With his desired heel passing on the role, Landis was reluctant when producer Ivan Reitman suggested one of cinema's great big-screen grouches, John Vernon.

John Landis was still on the rise in the late '70s; he had come a long way from his assistant director duties on MGM's "Kelly's Heroes" at the start of the decade. But even with "Schlock" and "Kentucky Fried Movie" under his belt, he had several uphill battles that made the development of "Animal House" as pressurized as a beer keg at times. Casting in particular was already troublesome with Universal (who was signing the checks), who mandated that white-hot "Saturday Night Live" star Chevy Chase be cast.

As the principal baddie, Dean Wormer's casting was essential — the whole show would be flat without someone stern and believable to anchor Delta House's hijinks. As "Fat, Drunk, and Stupid" tells it, Landis heeded Ivan Reitman's suggestion and caught "The Outlaw Josey Wales," a Clint Eastwood vehicle wherein John Vernon's steely-eyed Fletcher made an impression upon the future "American Werewolf in London" director. Landis recalled:

"There was a huge close-up and Vernon had this great line where he said, 'Don't piss down my leg [sic] and tell me it's raining.' When I saw and heard his voice, which was like venom, and thought of the line in our script, 'The time has come for someone to put his foot down and that foot is me!' I knew that he was our man."

Vernon had been successful in Canada before coming to Tinseltown, with celebrated roles on the stage, TV, and early feature roles like the '67 John Boorman thriller "Point Blank." His stare could bore a hole between your eyes, and his voice commanded any room he entered — the perfect fit for the iron-fisted head of a college campus. From a lesser actor, the line "No more fun of any kind!" would sound corny; from Vernon, the outburst would be a satisfying collapse of the fixtures that National Lampoon specializes in sabotaging.