Word: chases
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Though he did some of his own writing and prides himself on it, Chase's best comedy is visual. He can inspire laughs with a lubricious wink or a self-assured smirk, and his patented tumbles are the best since those in silent movies. One of the program's high points is a put-on of the Hertz Rent-A-Car ad featuring high-stepping Football Star O.J. Simpson. Low-stepping Chevy looks like a disintegrating Tinkertoy, ricocheting through a crowded air terminal on his way to the parking...
...show does not always move with the same skill as its star. Chase's long opening monologue proceeds from the disingenuous assumption that no one has heard of him-and does not recover from it. Despite moments of squirrelly inspiration, a few skits are silliness rather than satire. And for some viewers, there will be too many Chase scenes and not enough other faces. This time the mistakes will probably be forgiven. After all, the path to prime time may have been a little more slippery than Chevy realized...
Away from the cameras, Chase looks more like a laid-back graduate student than a TV star. His shirt is rumpled, his hair unruly and his eyes filled with mischief. Even in casual conversation, he is a shameless put-on artist, a comic con man negotiating for a laugh. If he wanted, Chevy Chase could probably sell aluminum siding to a roaming wagonload of gypsies...
Since leaving Saturday Night Chase, 33, has acquired both a California tan and a new wife. She is Jacqueline Carlin, 28, a TV actress who is no relation to Comedian George Carlin, says Chevy, "except for the beard." Despite the couple's hideaway in the Hollywood hills, Chase is homesick for New York City. "I came out in October and I've been here four years," he grumbled about L.A. "There is no input from anything but show biz out here. I feel like the brain starts to atrophy...
...Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman crew. He hands visitors who come to his messy office a business card that reads, MY CARD. He is nervous about his prime-time debut, convinced, like the new boy in school, that he won't find any buddies. If he is too outrageous, Chase fears, "people will switch channels and watch the semifinals of the archery." But confidence does not desert him for long. "When you're talking about a prime-time television special, you're thinking in terms of anywhere from 30 million to 80 million people...