What kind of parties swept the nation after the release of the 1978 film, National Lampoon's Animal House?

The iconic party scene in the 1978 comedy *National Lampoon's Animal House* is credited with launching the toga party into mainstream popularity. The film, which satirizes college fraternity life in 1962, features the rowdy Delta Tau Chi fraternity throwing a wild Roman-themed party as an act of defiance. The image of John Belushi's character, Bluto, and his fraternity brothers draped in bedsheets, became an enduring symbol of collegiate revelry and anti-establishment fun.

Following the movie's massive success, toga parties became a cultural phenomenon, especially on college campuses across the United States. Students were inspired by the film's depiction of a chaotic and carefree celebration, and the toga party quickly became a popular theme for fraternities and other student organizations. Universal Pictures, the studio behind the film, even helped promote toga parties on various campuses to market the movie.

While Greco-Roman themed parties existed before the film, they were not the widespread, bed-sheet-centric events that became popular after 1978. Earlier versions were sometimes called "bed sheet and pillow slip" parties and were held by various civic and fraternal groups. There are records of college toga parties as early as the 1950s, and even First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt hosted one in 1934 to poke fun at her husband's critics. However, it was *Animal House* that cemented the toga party in the popular imagination as a quintessential college experience.