Chevy Slips into Prime Time

By Roger Wolmuth

For Chevy Chase, the road to success has been paved with gold banana peels. As one of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players on NBC'S Saturday Night Live, Chase stumbled to stardom with his pratfall impressions of President Ford, and NBC gave him a $2 million-plus contract to create and star in three of his own TV specials. The Chevy Chase Show, which airs this week (May 5,10:00 p.m. E.D.T.), is a series of quick-cut sketches devoted to TV itself.

Chase shows a cheeky sense of the medium's absurdities and a fearless inclination to bite the hand that bred him. With help from Comedian Tim Conway, a few famous jocks, some dancing poodles and "$12,500 worth of extras," Chase takes puckish potshots at TV sports coverage, presidential press conferences, variety and game shows and, of course, advertising. At times, the old Saturday Night wit is in top form. In a takeoff on Let's Make a Deal, one hyperexcited contestant trades a husband, children and an Arizona home for what's behind the door. "Oh oh, Edna, you've been stung!" says Host Chevy cheerily. "It's a spinal tap!"

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 lot.

The 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 a bit."

Nervous Debut. He has spent four weeks putting final touches to the show, sharing office space in the same building as the 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. I'll be going, of course, for the 80-million slot."

Chase is going after movie fame too.

Under a deal with United Artists, he will write his first screenplay--for himself, of course--this summer. He would rather be like Woody Allen than any actor: "Woody Allen writes and acts, and he turns out great things."

Another of Chase's idols was Comedian Ernie Kovacs, the 1950s master of surrealism whose shows are finally being rebroadcast in a series now on public television. Says Saturday Night producer Lome Michaels: "Kovacs was the consummate television comic, and Chevy has that same sense of how to use the medium. I don't think he'll ever leave it completely." Chase does plan to limit his own tube time, hinting at one reason for abandoning his weekly act on SN: "I certainly don't want to get so overexposed on TV that people won't pay $3.50 to see me in a movie theater."

Another incentive for Chase's departure from SN may have been his growing celebrity. In a show that insisted on being a collaboration of equals, Chevy was singled out fast. The other Not Ready For Prime Timers got sick of being asked questions like, "Hey, you're on 'Chevy Chase,' right?" Jokes Comedienne Gilda Radner: "It even reached a point where my own mother would ask me what Chevy had for dinner, not what I had. Then when he got really famous, she began to doubt that I really knew him at all."

These days, relations are fine between Chevy and his old SN gang. The show's audience has actually grown since Chase's leavetaking. What's more, Chevy's controversial fame may prove to be a burden. "You're always on," he sighs, explaining why he now avoids Hollywood parties. "You keep saying, 'Thank you very much,' when maybe you just want to sit down and look at your sunglasses." Paul Wolmuth

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