1. Chevy Chase became the breakout cast member in the first season of Saturday Night Live, where his recurring Weekend Update segment became a staple of the show.
64 Facts About Chevy Chase
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Chevy Chase has hosted the Academy Awards twice and briefly had his own late-night talk show, The Chevy Chase Show.
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Cornelius Crane Chevy Chase was born in Lower Manhattan on October 8,1943, and grew up in Woodstock, New York.
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Chevy Chase's father, Edward Tinsley "Ned" Chase, was a Princeton-educated Manhattan book editor and magazine writer.
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Chevy Chase's mother, Cathalene Parker, was a concert pianist and librettist, whose father, Rear Admiral Miles Browning, served as Admiral Raymond A Spruance's Chief of Staff on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise at the Battle of Midway in World War II.
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Chevy Chase's mother, named Cathalene, was an opera singer who performed several times at Carnegie Hall.
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Chevy Chase disdained the pretension of his mother's side of the family, as embodied by her mother, Cattie.
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Chevy Chase's parents divorced when he was four; his father remarried into the Folgers coffee family, and his mother remarried twice.
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Chevy Chase has stated that he grew up in an upper middle class environment and that his adoptive maternal grandfather did not bequeath any assets to Chase's mother when he died.
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Chevy Chase was educated at Riverdale Country School, an independent day school in the Riverdale neighborhood of The Bronx, New York City, before being expelled.
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Chevy Chase ultimately graduated as valedictorian in 1962 from the Stockbridge School, an independent boarding school in the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
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Chevy Chase transferred to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he studied a pre-med curriculum and graduated in 1967 with a Bachelor of Arts in English.
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Chevy Chase did not enter medical school, which meant he was subject to the military draft.
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Chevy Chase was not drafted, and when he appeared in January 1989 as the first guest of the just-launched late-night The Pat Sajak Show, he said he had tricked his draft board into believing he deserved a 4-F classification by falsely claiming that he had "homosexual tendencies".
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Chevy Chase played drums and keyboards for a rock band called Chamaeleon Church, which recorded one album for MGM Records before disbanding in 1969.
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Chevy Chase was a member of an early underground comedy ensemble called Channel One, which he co-founded in 1967.
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Chevy Chase wrote a one-page spoof of Mission: Impossible for Mad magazine in 1970 and was a writer for the short-lived Smothers Brothers TV show comeback in the spring of 1975.
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Chevy Chase made the move to comedy as a full-time career by 1973, when he became a writer and cast member of The National Lampoon Radio Hour, a syndicated satirical radio series.
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Chevy Chase appeared in the movie The Groove Tube, which was directed by another co-founder of Channel One, Ken Shapiro, featuring several Channel One sketches.
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Chevy Chase was one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live, NBC's late-night comedy television show, beginning in October 1975.
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In later years, Chevy Chase met and became friendly with President Ford.
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Chevy Chase claimed that his version of Weekend Update was the inspiration for later news satire shows such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
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Weekend Update was later revived as a segment on The Chevy Chase Show, a short-lived late-night talk show produced by Chase and broadcast by Fox Broadcasting Company.
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Chevy Chase was committed contractually to SNL for only one year as a writer and became a cast member during rehearsals just before the show's premiere.
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Chevy Chase received two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award for his comedy writing and live comic acting on the show.
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In Rolling Stones February 2015 appraisal of all 141 SNL cast members to date, Chevy Chase was ranked tenth in overall importance.
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Chevy Chase acknowledged Ernie Kovacs's influence on his work in Saturday Night Live, and he thanked Kovacs during his acceptance speech for his Emmy Award.
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In late 1976, in the middle of SNL's second season, Chevy Chase became the first member of the original cast to leave the show.
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Chevy Chase moved to Los Angeles, married Carlin, and was replaced by Bill Murray, although he made a few cameo appearances on the show during the second season.
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Chevy Chase participated in the 40th anniversary special in February 2015.
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Chevy Chase said in an interview that he chose to do Foul Play so he could do "real acting" for the first time in his career instead of just "schtick".
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Chevy Chase followed Foul Play in 1980 by portraying Ty Webb in the Harold Ramis comedy Caddyshack.
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Chevy Chase then released a self-titled record album, co-produced by Chase and Tom Scott, with novelty and cover versions of songs by Randy Newman, Barry White, Bob Marley, the Beatles, Donna Summer, Tennessee Ernie Ford, The Troggs, and The Sugarhill Gang.
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Chevy Chase narrowly escaped death by electrocution during the filming of Modern Problems in 1980.
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The near-death experience followed the end of his marriage to Carlin, and Chevy Chase experienced a period of deep depression.
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Chevy Chase continued his film career by playing Clark Griswold in 1983's National Lampoon's Vacation.
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In 1985, Chevy Chase played Irwin "Fletch" Fletcher in Fletch, based on Gregory Mcdonald's Fletch books, which grossed more than $50 million off an $8 million budget.
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Chevy Chase appeared alongside Paul Simon, one of his best friends, in Simon's 1986 second video for "You Can Call Me Al", in which he lip-syncs all of Simon's lyrics.
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In 1989, Chevy Chase starred in a sequel to Fletch, Fletch Lives, which went on to gross more than $35 million, and made a third Vacation film, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which pulled in $71 million and, thanks to its holiday theme, has become one of his more durable films.
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Chevy Chase played saxophone onstage at Simon's free concert at the Great Lawn in Central Park in the summer of 1991.
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In September 1993, Chase hosted The Chevy Chase Show, a weeknight talk show, for the Fox Broadcasting Company.
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Chevy Chase later appeared in a commercial for Doritos, airing during the Super Bowl, in which he made humorous reference to the show's failure.
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Snow Day, in which Chevy Chase appeared, was successful grossing over $60 million, as well as Orange County, grossing more than $40 million.
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Chevy Chase was Hasty Pudding's 1993 Man of the Year, and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in that same year.
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Chevy Chase received The Harvard Lampoons Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996.
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Chevy Chase was roasted by the New York Friars Club for a Comedy Central television special in 2002.
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Chevy Chase returned to mainstream movie-making in 2006, co-starring with Tim Allen and Courteney Cox in the comedy Zoom, though it was both a critical and commercial failure.
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Chevy Chase appeared in a prominent recurring role as villainous software magnate Ted Roark on the NBC spy-comedy Chuck.
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In 2010, Chevy Chase appeared in an online Vacation short film Hotel Hell Vacation, featuring the Griswold parents, and in the Funny or Die original comedy sketch "Presidential Reunion", where he played President Ford alongside other current and former SNL president impersonators.
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That same year, Chevy Chase appeared in the film Hot Tub Time Machine which received some praise, and a sequel.
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Chevy Chase later claimed that his exit was due to his personal opinions of the show rather than the outburst, claiming that it "wasn't funny enough".
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Chevy Chase's departure was cemented by the writers, who made the creative decision to kill off Pierce in the third episode of Community's fifth season.
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In 2015, Chevy Chase reprised his role as Clark Griswold in the fifth Vacation installment, titled Vacation.
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In 2019, Chevy Chase was in the Netflix movie The Last Laugh where he starred alongside Richard Dreyfuss.
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Chevy Chase married Susan Hewitt in New York City on February 23,1973.
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Chevy Chase resided in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles from 1980 until 1995 in a Tudor-style home.
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Chevy Chase was the Honorary Mayor of Pacific Palisades between 1986 and 1988.
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Chevy Chase married his third wife, Jayni Luke, in Pacific Palisades on June 19,1982.
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In 1986, Chevy Chase was admitted to the Betty Ford Center for treatment of a prescription painkiller addiction.
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Chevy Chase's use began after he experienced ongoing back pain related to the pratfalls he took during his Saturday Night Live appearances.
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Chevy Chase entered the Hazelden Clinic in September 2016 to receive treatment for alcoholism.
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An active environmentalist and philanthropist, Chevy Chase is a political liberal.
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Chevy Chase campaigned for Democratic presidential nominees Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and John Kerry in 2004.
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On September 23,1993, Chevy Chase received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard.