Screenwriter Who Partied With John Belushi Before Fatal Overdose Dies At 73

Lyon’s account of Mr. Belushi’s final days came to light after he testified about the case before a grand jury in 1983 in exchange for immunity from prosecution. According to his testimony, during the last 24 hours of Mr. Belushi’s life both Mr. Lyon and Mr. Belushi were injected with drugs a half-dozen times by Cathy Evelyn Smith, a Canadian drug dealer then living in Southern California. Mr. Belushi, 33, was found dead on March 5, 1982, in a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. Ms. Smith said publicly that she had injected him with the mixture of heroin and cocaine that caused his death... The next few days were a kind of movable feast, ranging among Mr. Lyon’s home, a private club on the Sunset Strip and Mr. Belushi’s $200-a-day bungalow at the Chateau Marmont. A “boys’ night out,” Mr. Lyon said Mr. Belushi called it.

Ms. Smith continued giving the two men injections, including one that Mr. Lyon said produced an “aggravated and extreme” feeling and “rendered me a walking zombie.” Mr. Lyon said he left Ms. Smith and Mr. Belushi at Mr. Belushi’s bungalow about 3:30 a.m. on March 5. Mr. Belushi was found dead there that day.

When Warhol was struggling with a concept for the cover of the 1971 Rolling Stones album "Sticky Fingers," Lyon told him to incorporate a working zipper into a close-up portrait of jeans, according to an unpublished memoir by Lyon. After Warhol went with the idea, he gave Lyon five Marilyn Monroe prints to pay him, the writer later recalled.