You’re out! Finished! Expelled!

The double-secret probation of John Vernon, who fashioned a long career in character roles as villains and scoundrels, has ended at the age of 72. He’s probably best known as evil Dean Vernon Wormer from Animal House and the short-lived Delta House, a role he got after John Landis saw him as Fletcher in The Outlaw Josey Wales. The commanding presence he displayed there made him the ideal actor to tell Flounder that Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life and put the Deltas on notice that it was time for someone to put his foot down and that foot is me. He made his screen debut in the uncredited role of Big Brother in the 1956 version of 1984, and later lent his commanding voice to Prince Namor, the Submariner and Iron Man. He returned to his native Canada to play a crime-fighting coroner in the series Wojeck. In his later years, he parodied his screen persona in roles as Dr. Stone in Airplane II, who didn’t do impressions, his training was in psychiatry, General Hannibal Stryker in Hail to the Chief and Deputy Curtis Mooney in Killer Klowns from Outer Space. And I can assure you this is the only place you’ll see that reference.