Chevy Chase Puts Himself on the Comedy Mount Rushmore
In the history of recorded comedy, several iconic personalities have made the masses double over in hysterics. How could anyone narrow that list down to only four influential comedians?
Chevy Chase either couldn’t pull it off or couldn’t count, naming five funny guys for his personal comedy Mount Rushmore. The first comedian, of course, was easy: “I’d want to be on it,” Chase told the Peoria Journal-Star.
Who would join Chase on the mountain? “I’d want to have Danny Aykroyd, Richard Pryor, Ernie Kovacs and Charlie Chaplin with me,” he explained. “Those are the ones. They really are.”
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That’s quite a list — a silent film star, a pioneer of early TV comedy and three comics who appeared on a single episode of Saturday Night Live back in 1975.
Not to nitpick Chase’s list but — no women? No comic who’s made a cultural dent over the past 50 years? Did comedy just stop after Chase’s single season of SNL? At least he chose one comedian of color to join him on the pantheon.
The only problem: Pryor wouldn’t want to be on the mountain with Chase. “Chevy Chase was the doll-baby … the darling of the discotheque with straight teeth, and Richard wanted to knock them out,” said Pryor’s longtime collaborator Paul Mooney in Becoming Richard Pryor. By most accounts, Mooney wrote that electric sketch above, based on Lorne Michaels’ tone-deaf questioning of Mooney’s writing credentials.
Chase, however, maintains he wrote it.
He presumably has a better relationship with Aykroyd, although his Spies Like Us costar ripped him pretty good at a New York Friars’ Club roast. “Chevy Chase — a comedian with all of the charisma of the Hillside Strangler,” Aykroyd joked.
It’s all love between friends, right? “Chevy Chase is Hollywood’s foremost brownnoser and locker suck,” Aykroyd continued. “For the lead role in Caddyshack, he blew Jon Peters’ pet pit bull. And even though Peters had nothing to do with Fletch, Chevy went back and blew the same dog because he enjoyed it so much the first time.”
Chase’s love of Kovacs is sincere — he shouted out the comedian when he accepted his 1976 Emmy for Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actor in Variety or Music. “I’d just like to say that I sort of got a break on that show because of Lorne Michaels,” Chase told the crowd. “There is a cast of Not Ready for Prime Time Players, all of whom are awful good, and it’s been great working with them. And I also would like to thank Ernie Kovacs — I swear.”
As for Chaplin? Chase told AFI that the silent film star was his first influence. “It was his ability to suddenly change your emotion from the laugh to the tears,” he explained. “The timing, the little things that you do with your hands. All of that was very strong for me.”
Then there’s Chase’s favorite comedian: Chase. He deserves to be carved in stone, despite Michaels no longer allowing him to host SNL. Chase told the Washington Post that he doesn’t get it: “It’s like denying that I was the guy who made this show really go that first year.”
