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Chevy Chase Checks Self Into Rehab

By Reggie Reiner
Published on: 22:22 PST, Sep 5, 2016

Former SNL star Chevy Chase is back in rehab. The actor and comedian is seeking treatment for a problem with alcoholism.

Chase, the star of many movies and television shows, most recently the hit NBC sitcom Community, has checked into the Hazelden Addiction Treatment Center in Minnesota, AP reports. The news was revealed Monday as Chase’s publicist Heidi Schaeffer described the rehab visit as a “tune up.”

It is not clear yet if this new trip to rehab will cause any delays in the production of Chase’s latest movie Dog Years which is now filming.

“I’m Chevy Chase and you’re not,” were the words which made him a star. They were uttered every week – at least at the beginning – on Saturday Night Live before Chase hosted the show’s fake news segment Weekend Update. Chevy also gained notoriety for his pratfalls. These began when Chase did his infamous “bad” impression of President Gerald Ford back in 1975.

Since President Ford was seen as a bumbler after he had visibly tripped several times in public, falling a lot was the best way for Chevy Chase to portray the former President. Chase also did pratfalls in a number of different sketches for SNL’s cold open.

The pratfall had become so expected of him that Chevy Chase was forced to reprise his Gerald Ford impression several times when he returned to host Saturday Night Live. But could this have been the root cause of what eventually sent Chevy to rehab?

This may be just another humiliation for Chase, who has been more notable over the last 30 years for his failures than his few successes. People still talk about how awful his late night talk show The Chevy Chase Show was, lasting for a mere three weeks back in 1993.

Such a public disaster could send anyone into rehab.

As for Community, on which Chase Portrayed wealthy businessman Pierce Hawthorne, Chevy was forced off the show not because of a need to return to rehab or a drug abuse problem, but because he just could not get along with the program’s producer and creator Dan Harmon.

This will not be the first trip to rehab for the 72-year-old Chevy Chase. That was back in 1986 when Chase entered the Betty Ford drug rehabilitation center. At the time, reps for Chevy stated that the actor was seeking treatment for an addiction to pain killers. Said addiction was blamed on Chase’s need when on Saturday Night Live to deal with all the back pain which he suffered as a result of doing all of those pratfalls.

This claim was met with ridicule and incredulity at the hands of just about all of Chase’s former co-stars, especially the people who worked with him on Saturday Night Live. Many of those who had worked on SNL in the beginning said that Chevy, along with everyone else, used all manner of recreational drugs; and not for any back pain.

Senator All Franken, who was a writer on SNL in its early years, probably said it best in an interview. Not speaking about Chevy specifically, but about the environment of the world of entertainment in the mid-1970s in general, Franken explained that while the people on SNL would claim that it was not possible to go through such a grueling schedule with little or no sleep each week and still do drugs, “the exact opposite was true.”

Then there was the Friars Club Roast of Chevy Chase in 2002, televised on Comedy Central, in which Chevy showed that he could not take a joke. People lambasted Chase’s rehab history over his claims that his addiction resulted from treatment for back problems.

The roasters suggested that drug abuse is what brought down Chevy’s career by the end of the 1980s.

Al Franken mused that Chase ruined his career by overestimating his own talent and because Chevy had taken too many back pills. That reference to Chase’s rehab stint was made sarcastically, calling out what many believed to be the spin that Chevy’s people told to avoid acknowledging that he a simply an addict like so many other celebrities.

Late comedian Greg Giraldo quipped at the roast, “Chevy is living proof that you could actually snort the funniness right out of yourself.”

Chase was anything but amused. Comedy Central notoriously was forced to cut most of Chevy’s response to end the roast. This is when the roastee gets a chance for some payback on the roasters.

But Chevy Chase could not handle having his rehab stints mocked by people who were themselves, as he said, drug abusers.

Eight years after the roast, Chevy Chase spoke about his drug use and rehab stint in an interview in Esquire. “I never shot things up or freebased. I was pretty low-level when it came to drug abuse. I checked myself into the Betty Ford Clinic after my nose started to hurt.”

So now the former SNL star’s many fans are waiting to see what the results will be of this the latest Chevy Chase rehab stretch. And Chevy’s detractors are wondering if Chase will reveal the real reason why he checked into rehab again.

[Photo by Kevin Winter for Getty Images]

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