Cornelius Crane Chevy Chase is an American actor, comedian, musician, singer and writer. He played Clark Griswold in four National Lampoon’s Vacation films, as well as comedic roles in “Foul Play”, “Caddyshack”, “Seems like Old Times”, “Fletch”, “Spies Like Us” and “Three Amigos”.
Background
Cornelius Crane Chevy Chase was born on October 8, 1943, in Woodstock, New York, United States. He is the son of Edward Tinsley Chase and Cathalene Crane (née Widdoes) Chase. He was given his childhood nickname Chevy—possibly after the Maryland suburb—by his grandmother. The Chase family was affluent and distinguished; his paternal grandfather, the painter Edward Leigh Chase, taught at the Art Students League; his father, Edward Tinsley “Ned” Chase, was a prominent Manhattan book editor and a contributor to such magazines as the New Yorker, Harper's and the Atlantic. Chase’s mother was descended from the Crane plumbing-fixture family.
Chase was listed on the Social Register from early childhood. His upbringing was complicated, however, by his parents’ divorce when he was four. His father remarried into the Folger coffee family; his mother married a psychoanalyst and, after another divorce, married composer and Juilliard School professor Lawrence Widdoes. Chevy Chase grew up mainly in his mother’s and first stepfather’s apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Despite being a page boy for the annual debutante ball, Chase felt “a sense of broken entitlement, of disinheritance” along with his brother Ned, according to an article by Dinitia Smith in New York magazine.
Education
Chase was a class clown and was expelled from more than one school, including the Dalton School. A stay at Massachusetts’ Stockbridge School was more propitious. Then, at Haverford College, a Quaker institution, he continued his personal tradition of prankpulling by leading a cow to the third floor of the dormitory; since Haverford had an honor system, to which Chase evidently adhered, he was in time expelled for the numerous infractions he himself had reported. This led him to Bard College in upstate New York, where he received an education he remembered fondly in later years. He graduated from the college as a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1967. He also studied audio research at CCS Institute three years later.
Chase worked in a variety of jobs and ventures, some artistic and some not, in the lively Manhattan scene at the time after 1967. With two young colleagues, he was an early experimenter in homemade video comedy, turning out the cult classic Channel One, which was later renamed The Groove Tube. A rock group fronted by Chase did not get further than a low-selling debut album. In off-Broadway theater, he appeared as a mime in The Great American Dream Machine, and in National Lampoon’s satirical revue Lemmings; in the latter he met future Saturday Night Live colleague John Belushi.
In 1974, Chase moved to California, hoping to land a job writing for comedian Lily Tomlin. He served on the staff of the television series The Smothers Brothers, and in 1975, while in a line for movie tickets with director-actor Rob Reiner, he met future Saturday Night Live producer Lome Michaels. The producer was so entertained by Chase’s humor that he offered him a job writing for the new show.
In addition to writing for Saturday Night Live, Chase appeared on the late-night comedy show in the role of President Gerald Ford, in an impersonation that focused on pratfalls rather than physical resemblance. He became nationally recognized for this recurrent sketch, as well as for his regular “Weekend Update” sequence and his “land shark” skit.
Chase occasionally experienced strained relations with Belushi and other colleagues. He left Saturday Night Live in 1976, moved to California, and in 1978, starred in his first major movie, Foul Play, with Goldie Hawn. Mixed reviews propelled the film to a profitable position, and his string of films that followed, including Caddyshack and Oh Heavenly Dog, were also commercially successful, though even Chase himself made negative comments about their artistic quality.
Chase starred in more than one popular movie series: National Lampoon’s series of vacation movies (Vacation, European Vacation, Christmas Vacation, and Las Vegas Vacation), two Caddyshack releases; and the Fletch movies, which were given a thumbs-up by Time reviewer Richard Schickel, among others.
Chase appeared in several more serious movies in the 1990s, notably the John Carpenter-directed Memoirs of an Invisible Man and Steve Martin’s L.A. Story.
Chase launched The Chevy Chase Show, a late-night talk show which was one of several efforts by comedians in 1993 to fill the void left by the retirement of Johnny Carson. However, it was one of the least successful of those efforts and was quickly canceled. In the opinion of Richard Zoglin in Time, the talk show ironically missed a feasible chance to find its niche, for Chase, more than David Letterman or Jay Leno, might have appealed to the middle-aged audience that missed Carson. What prevented Chase from doing this successfully, Zoglin felt, was the star’s own efforts to appear hip.
Despite the cancellation of The Chevy Chase Show, Chase has continued to make movies, including Fletch Three, National Lampoon's Las Vegas Vacation, and 1998’s Dirty Work.
Chase guest-starred in "In Vino Veritas" on the November 3, 2006 episode of Law & Order, as well as in two episodes of the drama series Brothers & Sisters. Chase appeared in the NBC (National Broadcasting Company) spy-comedy Chuck. Starting in 2009, Chase starred in the NBC sitcom Community. But Chase left the show in 2012 after completing the majority of the episodes of Season 4. He returned for a cameo appearance in the Season 5 premiere. In 2010, he appeared in the film Hot Tub Time Machine and in a short online film featuring the Griswold Family, and in the Funny or Die original comedy sketch "Presidential Reunion".
Additionally, Chase has appeared in numerous television commercials, such as Dollar Rent-a-Car, Doritos, History Channel, a series of commercials for AAMI Insurance (Australian Associated Motor Insurers Limited), Aflac, Cola Turka, T-Mobile and Chase Manhattan Bank.
Chase is a recipient of the Award for Best Script in comedy variety special from Writers Guild. In 1976, Chase also won two Emmy Awards for Saturday Night Live for Outstanding Continuing or Single Performance by a Supporting Actor in Variety or Music, and a third Emmy for co-writing The Paul Simon Specialfor Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program in 1978.
Chase became a Man of the Year in 1993, and received the Harvard Lampoon Lifetime Achievement Award three years later.
In 1998, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to Chase.
Chase is an active environmentalist, charity fundraiser and liberal. He raised money for Bill Clinton in the 1990s and John Kerry in the 2004 Presidential Election. After the 2004 elections, Chase criticized President George W. Bush during a speech at a People for the American Way benefit at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, referring to the President as an "uneducated, real lying schmuck" and "dumb".
Membership
Chase is a member of the American Federation of Musicians, the Stage Actors Guild, the Actors Equity, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
Personality
Chase's success stemmed from a number of factors, according to observers. His slapstick ability had been honed informally since childhood to the point where, he told Smith in New York, “you never actually land ... At any given time, a small portion of your body is making contact with the ground while the body moves.” He was also a notably relaxed performer not only when taking a fall, but when facing the camera as well—a result, he felt, of his years performing The Groove Tube. His relaxed self-confidence enabled him to go before the camera with material he had written just minutes before, as he did on many Saturday Night Live episodes and on the 1988 Academy Awards Show, which he hosted.
A member of a monthly poker game whose players included Martin, Johnny Carson, Carl Reiner, and Neil Simon, Chase remains well-ensconced in the Hollywood entertainment community. He misses live television, he reported to Smith: “I just want to get back on TV and be funny on TV again ... It’s just all I care about.”
Connections
Chase married Susan Chase on February 23, 1973, but the couple divorced on February 1, 1976. Chase was then married to Jacqueline Carlin from December 4, 1976 till their divorce in 1980. His second marriage had failed, meanwhile, and he had become addicted to painkillers for a degenerative-disk disease that had been triggered by his comic falls. The 1980s saw Chase remarried to Jayni Luke, whom he had met when she was a production coordinator on the 1980 film Under the Rainbow. He has three children - Cydney Cathalene, Caley Leigh and Emily Evelyn.
Father:
Edward Tinsley Chase
Mother:
Cathalene Crane (Widdoes) Chase
child:
Emily Evelyn Chase
child:
Caley Leigh Chase
child:
Cydney Cathalene Chase
1-st spouse:
Susan Chase
3-rd spouse:
Jayni Luke Chase
She was a film production coordinator, later a founder of Project Eco-School, a nonprofit environmental education foundation.
