Paul Gleason

Actor Paul Gleason, best known as Principal Vernon in The Breakfast Club, died of pleural mesothelioma in 2006, three weeks after diagnosis.

”Don’t Mess With the Bull”

For anyone who grew up in the 1980s, Paul Gleason’s face is unforgettable. As Assistant Principal Richard Vernon in John Hughes’ 1985 classic The Breakfast Club, Gleason created one of cinema’s most memorable antagonists, a petty authoritarian who sees the worst in his students while revealing his own insecurities. “Don’t mess with the bull, young man, you’ll get the horns,” Vernon warns Judd Nelson’s rebellious John Bender. The line became iconic, and so did the performance.

What audiences did not know was that Gleason’s path to Hollywood began on 1950s construction sites in New Jersey, where as a teenager he worked alongside his father. Those jobs exposed him to asbestos fibers that would remain dormant in his body for five decades before developing into pleural mesothelioma.

An Athlete Before an Actor

Born May 4, 1939, in Jersey City, New Jersey, Gleason was a gifted athlete long before he found acting. He played college football at Florida State University alongside future stars Burt Reynolds and Robert Urich. He then spent several years in professional baseball, playing in the Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox farm systems from the late 1950s through 1962, reaching Triple-A level. During his baseball years, he befriended Hall of Famer Ted Williams.

When his baseball career ended, Gleason pursued acting. He studied method acting under Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York beginning in the mid-1960s and made his Broadway debut in The Gingerbread Lady in 1971.

A Working Actor’s Career

Gleason built his career steadily through the 1970s and 1980s, ultimately appearing in more than 60 films. His film breakthrough came with Trading Places (1983), where he played the villainous Clarence Beeks. But it was The Breakfast Club that made him a household face.

He followed that with Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson in Die Hard (1988), providing comic relief opposite Bruce Willis. Other film credits include Johnny Be Good and National Lampoon’s Van Wilder. On television, he appeared in Friends, Seinfeld, Malcolm in the Middle, Hill Street Blues, Dallas, and The A-Team, among many others.

What set Gleason apart was his ability to make authority figures both threatening and pathetic. He brought humanity to characters that lesser actors might have played as one-dimensional, and he understood that playing unlikable characters was an art form.

The Hidden Danger

Gleason’s exposure to asbestos occurred during his teenage years in the 1950s, when he worked construction jobs with his father in New Jersey. Before the 1980s, asbestos was present in nearly every aspect of construction: insulation, drywall compounds, floor tiles, roofing materials, and dozens of other building products. Workers on those sites breathed asbestos fibers daily, typically without any respiratory protection.

The five-decade gap between Gleason’s exposure and his diagnosis illustrates mesothelioma’s defining characteristic. Asbestos fibers lodge in tissue and can remain dormant for 20 to 50 years before triggering cancer. Someone exposed at 16 may not develop symptoms until their late 60s.

Three Weeks

Paul Gleason was diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma approximately three weeks before his death. On May 27, 2006, he died at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California. He was 67 years old.

Shortly before his death, Gleason had published a book of poetry. He is survived by his wife Susan and daughters Shannon Gleason-Grossman and Kaitlin.

His daughter Shannon said: “He was an athlete, an actor, and a poet. He gave me and my sister a love that is beyond description that will be with us and keep us strong for the rest of our lives.”

Legacy

More than four decades after its release, The Breakfast Club remains a touchstone of American cinema, preserved by the Library of Congress as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Gleason’s performance as the petty, insecure, ultimately human Vernon is as fresh as ever.

His death from mesothelioma serves as a reminder that asbestos exposure extended far beyond factories and shipyards. Construction workers, their families, and anyone who spent time in buildings where asbestos was being used faced risk. The latency period means that people exposed decades ago are still being diagnosed today.