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TORONTO (CP) - He was the smarmy Dean Wormer in the sophomoric cult movie Animal House.
He was a bad guy who got tossed out a window to his death by the even badder Lee Marvin in Point Blank. But Canadians may best remember actor John Vernon as a crusading coroner in the groundbreaking 1960s CBC crime series Wojeck.
Vernon, 72, died peacefully at his Los Angeles home Tuesday, his family said.
With his pockmarked face and heavy-lidded blue eyes, Vernon proved to be the ideal villain in dozens of the 85 motion pictures he made over a four-decade career.
"Everybody's seen my face but nobody's sure who I am," he once told an interviewer, revealing that he had often been mistaken for Richard Burton or Robert Shaw. "People confuse me with other people and I enjoy that."
He was seen most recently on the "double secret probation" DVD edition of Animal House, in a feature that offered a tongue-in-cheek current look at the characters of the 1978 film. Vernon's Dean Wormer was a crotchety, snowy-haired senior in a wheelchair.
Vernon's other notable film roles included The Outlaw Josey Wales, Dirty Harry, Airplane II, Topaz, Brannigan, Charley Varrick, Nobody Waved Goodbye and Tell Them Willie Boy Was Here. He also starred in a short-lived ABC-TV Animal House spinoff series called Delta House and in a 1990 CBC movie that reprised his Wojeck character.
He was a bad guy who got tossed out a window to his death by the even badder Lee Marvin in Point Blank. But Canadians may best remember actor John Vernon as a crusading coroner in the groundbreaking 1960s CBC crime series Wojeck.
Vernon, 72, died peacefully at his Los Angeles home Tuesday, his family said.
With his pockmarked face and heavy-lidded blue eyes, Vernon proved to be the ideal villain in dozens of the 85 motion pictures he made over a four-decade career.
"Everybody's seen my face but nobody's sure who I am," he once told an interviewer, revealing that he had often been mistaken for Richard Burton or Robert Shaw. "People confuse me with other people and I enjoy that."
He was seen most recently on the "double secret probation" DVD edition of Animal House, in a feature that offered a tongue-in-cheek current look at the characters of the 1978 film. Vernon's Dean Wormer was a crotchety, snowy-haired senior in a wheelchair.
Vernon's other notable film roles included The Outlaw Josey Wales, Dirty Harry, Airplane II, Topaz, Brannigan, Charley Varrick, Nobody Waved Goodbye and Tell Them Willie Boy Was Here. He also starred in a short-lived ABC-TV Animal House spinoff series called Delta House and in a 1990 CBC movie that reprised his Wojeck character.
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