Chevy Chase
From ArticleWorld
Cornelius Crane Chase, or Chevy Chase, is a comedian, writer, film, and television actor.
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Early Life
Chase was born into a wealthy and distinguished family on October 8, 1943 in Woodstock, New York. Chase was known as the class-clown and was expelled from various private schools in the New York area but finally graduated as the valedictorian of his high school class. He was also expelled from Haverford College for pulling pranks, one of which consisted of bringing a cow onto the third floor of a campus building.
Chase always wanted to be a doctor and majored in pre-med in college. Other than an actor, he also says he was a fruit picker, waiter, busboy, a pianist, jazz drummer, a truck, can, and motorcycle driver, the head of produce at a supermarket, an audio engineer, theater usher, a writer, construction worker, and a salesman in a wine store.
Acting Carere
’’Saturday Night Live’’
Chevy Chase began his acting career on Saturday Night Live and is best known as being one of the original cast members and the star of the show. He was heralded by many as "The first real potential successor to Johnny Carson. He only signed a one year contract with SNL and left in 1976 for the big screen. After resigning as a cast member of the show, Chase came back to host SNL eight times. In 1997, he verbally abused the cast and crew during the week before a show and was banned from the show from then on. Even when he was a cast member he was known for rude and abusive comments made to other certain cast members.
Film Career
The first major film roles Chase landed were Foul Play in 1978 and Oh! Heavenly Dog in 1980. Next came the critically acclaimed Caddyshack. He was filming Modern Problems just a year later and was nearly electrocuted during filming, causing him to go into a stage of deep depression.
In the mid-1980’s he began filming a National Lampoon’s Vacation series that ended up being very successful. He teamed up with Steve Martin and Martin Short to film the comedy Three Amigos! in 1986. At the climax of his film career Chase was earning about $7 million per film.
Late Career
Chase’s career began spiraling downward in the early 1990’s. A former SNL fellow cast member commented on his career jokingly, saying "You made us laugh so much. And then you inexplicably stopped, in about 1978." Chase’s audience and fans left him and his next three films were flops. He hosted a television talk show in 1993, but it was canceled after only five weeks.