The stupidest thing Chevy Chase ever said, according to Chevy Chase
Chevy Chase is a comedian, actor, and writer known for his body of indiscretions, which are almost as much as his body of work. You might only know him for the former. He was a staple of Saturday Night Live in the mid-1970s and an object of salacious news items from then until today, to the very moment of this article’s publication. His struggles with drugs and alcohol are well documented alongside testimonies from colleagues and friends that he wasn’t easy to be with or work with.
However, on Bill Maher’s podcast Club Random, Chase made known what he considered his biggest indiscretion. It was an incident when he appeared on Tom Snyder’s talk show in 1980 and let himself down as an entertainer, and not for the last time.
“[Tom] said, ‘People say you’re going to be the next Cary Grant,’ and I said, ‘That’s crazy, there’s nobody like Cary Grant and there will never be another Cary Grant and I understand he was a homo,’” Chase tells Maher of the appearance, during which he also said “what a gal” about Grant. “It was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever said.”
You may be the judge of that. There’s no denying that a prime Chase resembles a young Cary Grant, the same cleft chin, born kicking and screaming into this world with a hairline that would start to make triangular shapes on their foreheads. And it’s not really known whether Cary Grant was gay, although his daughter denies it, the homophobic slurs are disquieting to most people (hopefully), whether they enjoyed Chase’s off color style of comedy or not.
It’s also debatable if that’s his greatest offence. Chase got his start in National Lampoon: Lemmings, a parody of Woodstock, alongside his friend and partner John Belushi. They were a well-liked comedic duo, but reportedly, clashed behind the scenes in every which way until it boiled to frothing into on-air confrontations, with each man accusing the other of jealous, vindictive and inappropriate, unprofessional behaviour.
There are two sides of every story about creative partners, especially comedians, turning on one another. But this isn’t the first, nor the last time Chase would court unflattering headlines. He got into a backstage fist fight with Bill Murray in 1978, witnessed by several of their SNL co-stars. Accounts vary as to the inciting incident, but Laraine Murphy said, “I think they both knew the one thing that they could say to one another that would hurt the most and that’s what I think incited it.”
This kind of recidivism of angry, irresponsible behaviour speaks to the fact that some people can turn the faucet off in their professional career, for the most part, but droplets always trickle down. It’s worth noting that Chevy Chase has been disinvited from reprising his role as Pierce Hawthorne in the upcoming film sequel to the sitcom Community because of his unceremonious departure, although Chase claims that it just wasn’t funny enough for him. Believe who you will, but one incident comes straight form the horse’s mouth.
