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Verna Bloom, dean’s wife in ‘Animal House,’ dead at 80

Verna Bloom, the actress who portrayed the wife of the dean in the movie "Animal House," has died

BAR HARBOR, Maine (AP) — Verna Bloom, the actress who portrayed the wife of the dean in the movie Animal House, has died. She was 80.

Family spokesman Mike Kaplan tells The Hollywood Reporter that Bloom died Wednesday in Bar Harbor, Maine, of complications from dementia.

In the 1978 John Landis film, Bloom played Marion Wormer, who flirted with and had a drunken romp with fraternity president "Otter" Stratton.

She was Clint Eastwood’s lover in High Plains Drifter and was Mary in The Last Temptation of Christ.

Bloom was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, and graduated from Boston University in 1959.

She is survived by her husband, former film critic and two-time Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jack Cocks, and a son.