In this article, I wanted to write about a piece of history
that affected me when I was a teenager, the death of John Belushi. For someone
who basically writes about antiquarian stuff and my knowledge based on history
stops around the 1950s, this was a huge stretch for me, but I will try to do
the subject justice. John Belushi was a comic legend. Growing up in Chicago is
where he met his most famous costar, Dan Ackroyd at the Second City comedy
club, famous for producing great comedic talent. They will be part of the inaugural
season of Saturday Night Live, and they will put together the iconic band The
Blues Brothers. Belushi was a comic genius, which means he had a dark side as
well, drugs. And that would be his downfall that would lead to his death in Los
Angeles at the Chateau Marmont Hotel on the Sunset Strip on March 5th,
1982.
This article isn’t just about the death of John Belushi, but
the life of Cathy Smith, the drug dealer who gave Belushi the lethal mixture of
heroin and cocaine. Cathy Smith isn’t an enigmatic character, nor is she a
person on the streets dealing drugs. Smith, who was born in Toronto, Canada
first came into the music scene with her relationship with Levon Helm of The
Band in 1963. There she dated several members of the musical group and even
became pregnant, and they called the baby “The band baby” because the paternity
of the child wasn’t clear.
In the early 1970s she met Canadian songwriter and singer
Gordon Lightfoot. I rather like Gordon Lightfoot and if you have never heard
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” stop reading now and take a listen.
Lightfoot’s haunting voice and his ability to tell a story made him an icon of
music. Cathy Smith became an employee of Lightfoot, and later his lover. Their relationship was tempestuous at best,
and his love affair with Smith lasted three years. The 1974 song “Sundown” was
released as a single and became another hit for Gordon Lightfoot. The song was,
of course, about Cathy Smith.
In the 1970s Cathy Smith became addicted to heroin and
became a dealer for such bands as the Rolling Stones. Smith was running all
across music circles during this time, as both a back-up singer and drug
dealer. In 1976 she first met John Belushi when a band that she was touring
with performed on Saturday Night Live. She would not meet him again until March
1982 when he came to Los Angeles after a film shoot. There Smith gave to
Belushi the drugs that killed him.
Belushi checked in to the Chateau Marmont on February 28,
1982. He was then seen at local nightclubs along Sunset Strip. Soon, he was
looking for money, so he visited his longtime manager, Bernie Brillstein. At
first Brillstein would deny his request for money but would eventually give in.
It was in the early morning hours of March 5th when Belushi had
several visitors at his bungalow including Robert De Niro, Robin Williams, and
Cathy Smith. After Robert De Niro left for his own bungalow at the hotel, Smith
and Belushi continued to do “speedballs” which is an injection of cocaine and
heroin. Breakfast was delivered in the morning and Smith signed for it. Belushi
was sleeping after he complained about some chest congestion. Around 10:15 am
Smith looked in on Belushi and went out to run errands. She took her syringe
and her spoon that was used for the injections just in case the maids wanted to
clean the room.
Around noon that day Bill Wallace, a former kickboxing
champion and personal trainer, came to the bungalow to drop off a typewriter
and a tape recorder that Belushi had asked for the day before. He let himself
in with a key that Belushi had given him and he found Belushi on the bed. He
tried to resuscitate him but he was dead. Law enforcement and the city coroner
did not reveal anything about the case for several days. John Belushi was dead
at the age of 33.
Cathy Smith was arrested for possession of narcotics on March 5th. Later in 1982, Rolling Stones magazine gave details of the arrest, “On the afternoon of March 5th, Cathy Evelyn Smith had appeared driving the wrong way into the one-way exit of the Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Strip behind the wheel of John Belushi's rented red Mercedes … At that moment, a hundred feet away, Belushi lay naked and dead on the floor of his $200-a-day bungalow. The police who had cordoned off the area were reflexively insisting it had been 'death from natural causes'.” Smith plead no contest to involuntary manslaughter, and she served fifteen months in Chino at the California Institute for Woman, which I drive by almost every day on my way to work.
Belushi is buried at Abel's Hill Cemetery in Chilmark,
Massachusetts, on Martha's Vineyard