Chevy Chase: Playboy Interview

More than a decade ago, when NBC's Saturday Night Live was still being regarded as anything from "sophomoric" to "subversive," one of the cast's resident loonies took it upon himself to make his presence on the show even more bizarre. "Good evening," he began his weekly mock-newscast segment, "I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not." Then, with the slightly off sobriety of a Dan Rather on acid, he would deliver a smug, hip run-down of the week's top news stories.

Conceived and largely written by Chase himself, "Weekend Update" was one of many segments on Saturday Night Live that offered a brand of political satire not seen before on network television. But even though the irreverent sketches spotlighted each of the other talented cast members as well, there was something about the TV clown's preppie-hip persona that tickled viewer's funny bones. No matter what he did&mdashartfully pratfalling in mimicry of the accident-prone then-President Gerald Ford, or gingerly picking his nose on camera&mdashhe became the show's mainstream favorite.

Within a few weeks of its premiere, Saturday Night Live was a runaway hit, but by October 1976, after just one season, Chase got restless and left the show to write, produce and star in a series of specials for NBC.

Inevitably, Chase decided movies were the way to go. Paramount signed him to star opposite Goldie Hawn in a romantic adventure comedy called Foul Play, in which he was cast as a San Francisco police investigator. Although the reviews were mixed, the movie did well at the box office, grossing about $45,000,000. It was followed by Caddyshack, in which he played a wealthy but strange country-club golfer. That, too, was a hit, and suddenly Chase&mdashdubbed by some media pundits as "the new Cary Grant"&mdashwas Hollywood's most sought-after leading man for light comedy.

Then something happened: By the early Eighties, the heady momentum of his meteoric career hit a snag. A series of mediocre pictures—Under the Rainbow, Modern Problems and Oh, Heavenly Dog&mdashcaused many critics and fans to question whether Chase had sold out to Hollywood. Reviews were generally scathing and, to add injury to insult, Under the Rainbow was a box-office turkey. In the midst of all that, he was beset by a series of personal tragedies, including the breakup of his second marriage and the deaths of two of his closest friends, Doug Kenney and John Belushi. He turned to drugs and alcohol, put on weight, mouthed off on talk shows and became a popular target among tabloid journalists.

Then came National Lampoon's Vacation, in which Chase portrayed the bumbling but enthusiastic Clark Griswold, a typical middle-class family man who takes his kids and wife on an ill-fated car trip across America. A box-office smash (it earned about $63,000,000), Vacation put Chase back on top and Fletch, which came out two years later, won over his critics, who dubbed it his comeback film. Here, finally, was a movie that best took advantage of his good-natured charm as well as his agile comic characterizations. Fletch did well and, for the first time in his erratic movie career, Chase was getting spectacular reviews.

His next three films—National Lampoon's European Vacation, Spies Like Us and ¡Three Amigos!—were not greeted with as much critical enthusiasm, but that didn't seem to faze the film industry's business machinery: Today, Chase is one of a handful of leading men able to command more than $5,000,000 for a picture.

Although he became famous announcing that he was Chevy Chase and we were not, he wasn't Chevy Chase, either. He was born Cornelius Crane Chase in New York City on October 8, 1943, but while still a newborn, his paternal grandmother started calling him Chevy—perhaps after the Washington, D.C., suburb, though no one is quite sure—and the name stuck. His father, Edward Tinsley Chase, a writer and book editor, taught him the singular importance of a sense of humor, while his mother, a concert pianist, gave him an enduring interest in music.

Growing up amid comfortable middle-class surroundings, Chase attended a number of prep schools (where, not surprisingly, he developed a reputation as a class cut-up) and entered Bard College with the class of 1967. There, he took up music—mainly jamming on drums—and teamed up with two fellow students to write and perform Channel One, a satirical stage revue that lampooned all aspects of TV—including commercials, kiddie shows, newscasts and documentaries.

After graduating from college, Chase wrote spoofs for Mad magazine and appeared as a white-faced mime in public television's The Great American Dream Machine. He made his theatrical debut in National Lampoon's Lemmings—an off-Broadway musical revue satirizing the foibles of rock-and-roll culture—and later wrote and performed on the National Lampoon Radio Hour, the cast of which included John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray.

In 1974, Chase moved to Los Angeles, where he wrote material for comedians Alan King and the Smothers brothers. It was during that period that he got the big break. Standing in line to see Monty Python and the Holy Grail, he struck up a conversation with producer Lorne Michaels, who was putting together the first cast and crew for Saturday Night Live. Michaels was so impressed with Chase's impromptu patter, he offered the 31-year-old comedy writer a job as the new show's head scribe.

To illuminate the twists, turns and pratfalls of Chase's career, we sent free-lance writer John Blumenthal (who had co-conducted the Playboy Interview with the cast and writers of Saturday Night Live in May 1977) to talk with Chase following the completion of his 14th film, Funny Farm. His report:

"The last time I interviewed Chevy, he had just left the cast of Saturday Night Live and was about to embark on a new career. At that time, he seemed a bit uncertain as to whether or not leaving the show had been the right decision. He was an articulate interviewee then, quick with the glib repartee, outrageously funny and not shy with acid-dipped put-downs. I was curious to see, 11 years and millions of dollars later, if he were still the same Chevy Chase or if film stardom and family life had altered his perspective.

"Our first meeting took place just before Christmas. Chevy, his wife, Jayni, and their two daughters, Cydney, five, and Caley, three, live in a modern security-gated complex in Pacific Palisades. The house is not a mansion&mdashjust a simple, well-appointed, conventionally comfortable dwelling, mercifully free of the usual Hollywood trappings; the sort of place Clark Griswold would buy if he won the lottery.

"Chevy greeted me on the front lawn and led me inside. I noted that the intervening 11 years had not aged him much, though he pointed out a few gray hairs at his temples. We strolled through the kitchen—which was alive with pre-Christmas hubbub—managed not to trip over either of his children and took a tour through an elaborate recording studio that had recently been installed in his guest house. Admitting that he had no idea whatsoever how to use the studio, Chevy sat down near a gargantuan Christmas tree and began talking.

"Over the course of our conversation, it became apparent that Chevy had mellowed. Although still sardonic, the years has softened the outrageous, sassy edge. He seemed mistrustful of the press and, at times, guarded, occasionally even conservative. Nevertheless, I found him to be candid about his mistakes and weaknesses, eager to refute some of the negative legends and more than a little self-deprecating about the ups and downs of his checkered film career.

"Since he had just come off the set of his 14th movie, a retrospective look at his films seemed like an appropriate place to begin. But first, we had to clear something up."