Animal House Turns 45: A Dartmouth Story

This article is continued in “Animal House Turns 45: A Dartmouth Story, Part II.”

Dartmouth occupies a singular place in the American cultural imagination. On the one hand, it carries the standard “Ivy League Elitist” trope that the public also associates with its so-called “peers” at Yale, Princeton, and a few other schools not worth mentioning. Yet, for some at least, Dartmouth has other connotations, of independence, and maybe of debauchery. Compared to the other Ivies, it is viewed perhaps as rather more relatable, even slovenly. But where did this impression come from? No single source has played a larger role than the 1978 film National Lampoon’s Animal House. 

Yes, the film co-written by Dartmouth alumnus Chris Miller ’63 and based in part on his experiences at the College created a lasting idea of Dartmouth even for those who have never visited. On a basic level, Animal House follows college students as they revolt against an overbearing administration in their fight for the right to goof off. It’s also perhaps the single strongest defense of reckless debauchery ever put to film. While many in the Administration would prefer otherwise, Animal House is inescapably tied to the idea of Dartmouth, and it still plays an important role in campus culture. 

The genesis for Animal House lay in Miller’s own experiences as a Dartmouth undergraduate from 1959 to 1963. The film’s title is a reference to Delta Tau Chi, the movie fraternity modeled after Alpha Delta, a now-unrecognized fraternity of which Miller was a brother. Many moments in the film, from the toga party to the drunken interactions of fraternity brothers and female guests, are almost verbatim recreations of experiences Miller remembered from his days at Dartmouth. He recounts these and other true experiences in his 2006 book The Real Animal House.

But more than that, Miller drew upon the free-wheeling attitude that he found characterized campus life. In an editorial he wrote for the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine in 1989, Miller explained his belief that fraternity antics were a rejection of the claustrophobic atmosphere of students’ childhoods and of the adulthoods that loomed before them. In Miller’s view, college was a four-year period when some of the best and brightest young people in the country could engage in hooliganry to an untold degree. And if a sclerotic administration were to try to take that morsel of freedom away from them, of course they would act out. Animal House is thus about more than getting drunk—it’s about finding a sense of belonging. The brothers of Delta Tau, wastrels all,  form a steadfast brotherhood. It is this brotherhood that holds them together and enables them to defeat Dean Wormer and his snobbish student goons. 

Fittingly, Dartmouth students were among the first in the country to see Animal House. In early July 1978, several days prior to the film’s general release, a handful of preview screenings were held in the Nugget before packed audiences of summer-term students. The film was an instant, smash hit among Dartmouth students, who knew well that the film was about them. Indeed, triumphantly accompanying the film at its Hanover preview screenings was none other than Chris Miller, who recalls that throngs of cheering students carried him out of the cinema after the first screening.

Tom Farmer ’81 remembers interviewing Miller for Dartmouth College Radio at the time: “I interviewed Chris in the chill[y], moonlit alley behind the movie house as he basked in [his] hero’s reception. The movie’s fate was unknown at that point (though it would become the year’s top comedy blockbuster), but Dartmouth loved him already. ‘How much of the movie is true?’ I asked, cassette recorder running. Miller, who co-wrote the movie and had a small part as a Delta—he’s the guy who lets the marbles loose during the parade finale—giggled back at me through a wreath of dope smoke. ‘It’s all true,’ he said.”

The Review’s own Peter Robinson ’80 recalls that he went to see Animal House repeatedly with friends. The laughter was so loud in the theater, he tells us, that one couldn’t make out all of the dialogue in a single sitting. In his memoir, Robinson specifically remembers seeing the film “at least half a dozen times” at the Nugget. Of Bluto, John Belushi’s famous character in the film, Robinson writes, “Bluto seemed natural. Bluto was our man. We wanted to be just like him ourselves.”

Ty Burr ’80, who was present at one of the first Nugget screenings, postulates that there was a political undercurrent to the film’s reception at Dartmouth: “The students at the screening roared in approval and, more interestingly, relief. By 1978, the progressive liberalism that had sustained the counterculture from before the civil rights era to the fall of Richard M. Nixon had started to feel like oppressive doctrine.”

Of course, the prospect of the U.S. viewing Dartmouth as the “party Ivy” or perhaps the reactionary Ivy did not play well with Dartmouth faculty and administrators. The film’s release brought about a series of attacks on Dartmouth’s Greek Life. 

In late 1978, Dartmouth faculty overwhelmingly supported a petition to ban Greek Life from campus. While the Administration did not do anything so drastic, it did implement measures that restrained Greek houses. The Administration mandated expensive renovations, imposed restrictions on alcohol, and eventually banned freshmen from rushing. The Hanover Police Department even sent an undercover cop and an 18-year-old woman on a fraternity crawl, later charging every fraternity that had served her alcohol. Yet these measures failed to prevent a resurgence in the “wildness” of Greek Life in the aftermath of the film’s release. To this day, one can thank Animal House for the continued presence of toga parties on campus. 

Much of Miller’s 1989 Alumni Magazine article centers on answering related questions as to the film’s impact at Dartmouth. Miller returned to campus and visited his old fraternity, partaking again in its activities. Many of the more objectionable elements so pronounced in Miller’s day had already begun to fade away. AD featured less compulsive drinking, and the brothers were more respectful of their female guests. New members were told plainly that they could bow out of any “educational activities”—a policy that has been universally adopted since. However, there were still raucous antics, loud parties, and copious indulgence. More importantly, the fundamentals of brotherhood remained. There was still a sense of belonging, of community, in Alpha Delta. Despite Miller’s quarter-century absence from AD, the brothers there made him feel like one of them. 

Today, many fraternities still try to capture that Animal House spirit, a mix of unbreakable bonds between brothers and of pushing one’s physical and mental limits. While Alpha Delta itself no longer exists, having been pushed off campus due to hazing violations, Greek Life remains strong. Animal House left a legacy of close brotherhood that serves as an inspiration for fraternities today.

This article is continued in “Animal House Turns 45: A Dartmouth Story, Part II.”