The man is 27-year-old Doug Kenney, and the magazine he had co-founded, National Lampoon, is a runaway success. He has just sold his stake in it for millions. Three years later, the movie he would co-write, “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” would become the biggest grossing comedy in history and spawn a whole new cinematic genre. Kenney was golden in Hollywood. His second movie would be “Caddyshack.” Today, almost a quarter of a century later, it remains a cult classic whose punch lines have become part of the very fabric of the game.
A month after “Caddyshack” opened, to lukewarm reviews, Kenney’s body was found at the bottom of the Hanapepe Lookout in Hawaii. He was 32 years old.