Love him or hate him, Chevy Chase charmed America with his humor and arrogance from the moment he went live from New York on “Saturday Night Live” in 1975.
Chase, 82, became the breakout comedy king of the late night show with his smug, deadpan sketches and pompous “Weekend Update” sign-on, “I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not” before springing to movie star status in the 1980’s.
But his career was laden with highs and lows — from cocaine and alcohol addiction to brawling with “SNL” cast members — and an reputation for allegedly hurling homophobic and racial slurs, leading the comic to become known as notoriously difficult to work with.
“He’s genuinely an unusual character, even by Hollywood standards … a combustible cocktail of DNA and sensibilities that all joined forces to make his personality,” James Andrew Miller, co-author of “Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, told The Post.
Chase’s massive successes and hitting rock bottom are chronicled in Marina Zenovich’s documentary, “I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not,” out Jan. 1 on CNN.
“People thought he was arrogant and disrespectful — whether or not that stemmed from his upbringing is between him and his shrink,” Miller said.
Indeed, moments into the documentary, Chase insults Zenovich upon meeting her for the first time, warning she won’t be able to figure him out.
“You’re not bright enough, how’s that?” he snubs.
Born Cornelius Crane Chase into a wealthy family, mother Cathalene Parker, a concert pianist, and father Edward Tinsley “Ned” Chase, a book editor and magazine writer, Chase graduated from Bard College in 1967 with an English major.
He became a drummer in a college jazz band before cutting his teeth on comedy in the 1970’s at age 32, starring in “SNL’s” inaugural season alongside Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, Michael O’Donoghue and George Coe.
He quickly rose to stardom with his “Weekend Update” segment saying his name straight into the camera and some co-stars resented him for it.
“Chevy was a golden boy,” recalled Susan Morrison, author of “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live.”
“Chevy was so completely cocksure – Here’s a detail that I think says a lot. People [working on the show] would stay up all night on Tuesday writing sketches for the Wednesday read through and instead of preparing or writing a script for his Weekend Update material, he would pin a card on the board that said ‘Chevy being funny.’”
The reason he got away with it was because he was scarily funny – he was so funny and so cocksure people forgave what they called his ‘sharp elbows.’
“As he became the breakout star of the show in the first season, He could be kind of toxic to his colleagues, who were envious,” Morrison told The Post.
Chase left “SNL” in the middle of the show’s second season in November 1976, to pursue film, becoming the marquee star of the “National Lampoon’s” series and “Caddyshack.”
His behavior first sparked controversy in 1978 when he returned to “SNL” as a host and instantly clashed with his replacement, Bill Murray, in a feud that allegedly turned physical in Belushi’s dressing room.
Murray reportedly jeered, “Go f—k your wife. I hear she needs it,” prompting Chase to bark back with a comment about Murray’s face, escalating to a fist fight, according to the 2015 book “Live From New York.
“It was ugly,” Newman recalled in the book. “I’d never seen guys fighting like that, let alone people I knew.”
Chase downplayed the fight in a interview with Esquire magazine, saying: “Billy Murray and I came to fisticuffs, but we never really ended up hitting each other. We tried, but Belushi got in the middle and we both ended up hitting John.”
It was hardly Chase’s first offense. The actor insulted Robert Downey Jr. when he was on Season 11 of “SNL,” in 1985, bashing his late father, Robert Downey Sr.’s, career.
“Didn’t your father used to be a successful director? Whatever happened to him? Boy, he sure died, you know, he sure went to hell,” Chase allegedly said, according to “Live From New York.” Downey Sr. was still very much alive at the time.
That same year, “SNL’s” first openly gay cast member, Terry Sweeney, called Chase a “monster” after allegedly becoming the brunt of Chase’s cruel humor when he guest hosted in 1985, he claimed in the book “Live From New York.”
Chase was addicted to cocaine at the time.
“When we were in Hawaii, he had someone ship him many ounces of coke in a shaving cream can, which you could twist in a certain way to get to the coke,” film producer Alan Greisman, who worked with Chase on “Fletch” and “Modern Problems,” recalls in the CNN documentary.
Still, his career continued to thrive with lead roles in the 1985’s “Fletch” and 1986 blockbuster “Three Amigos,” all the while continuing his reputation for being a nightmare to work with.
“Not being obsessed with being loved by everyone made Chevy an outlier in Hollywood, particularly for a comedian. You just don’t see a lot of people built like Chevy, and if he had employed traditional guardrails, his career may not have been the same,” Miller told The Post.
His problematic behavior continued as the movie successes dwindled. In 1997, Chase reportedly slapped cast member Cheri Oteri on the back of the head during a rehearsal for “SNL” — the last time he was invited back to host the show, Rolling Stone reported.
This August, Chase’s “National Lampoon’s Vacation” co-star Anthony Michael Hall recalled during a cast reunion in Chicago how Chase, who played his on-screen father Clark Griswold, taunted him for hitting puberty at the end of filming, Entertainment Weekly reported.
One of Chase’s most inflammatory career moments came in 2013 while starring on NBC’s sitcom, “Community” in which he portrayed millionaire Pierce Hawthrone. He was fired for using a racist slur during filming after an altercation with show creator, Dan Harmon.
Chase reportedly used the N-word while disputing his character’s direction during a scene, involving him using a “blackface” hand puppet. Chase did not use the expletive in relation to black cast members Donald Glover or Yvette Nicole Brown; though the feud upset the cast, according to director Jay Chandrasekhar, who was on set at the time.
Chandrasekhar claims in the CNN documentary Chase then had a “full meltdown,” saying, “Who f—ed me over? … My career is ruined.” He apologized, but was immediately removed from the cast.
One of Chevy’s daughters, Caley Chase, 40, recalled in the documentary an embarrassing moment when she and her mom, Jayni Chase, 68, attended one “Community” wrap party.
“My dad was super excited to bring me and my mom to the wrap party. We walk in, [Harmon], he had had some drinks. He had gotten the whole cast and crew to yell, ‘F–k you, Chevy!’ ‘F–k you, Chevy!’”
Chase has previously been open about his battle with depression, and physical and psychological abuse he endured as a child at the hands of his mother and stepfather.
“I feel a lot of what we see of Chevy, and what he’s been through, and how he’s handled things — and even how he’s dealt with people, stems from his really rough and brutal childhood,” Rena Fruchter, author of the 2007 biography, also called “I’m Chevy Chase … and You’re Not,” told The Post.
Chases battles with addiction continued until fairly recently, with him checking into rehab in 2016 for alcohol abuse, according to his rep. Chase did not return a request for comment for this article.
Morrison recalled to The Post how she felt Chase has started to miss the mark more often.
“I spent the day with Chevy – he would go into these phases where I sensed that there was something almost neurologically amiss,” she said.
“He would be saying something he thought would land as a funny deadpan statement. But instead it just came off as blunt. I felt that he had perhaps lost control of how his humor was landing.”
