Chevy Chase's Parents were Mean Bastards
May 7th 2007 00:16
Chevy Chase
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This is a horrible story...but doesn't this picture look a little bit like a church directory shot?
CHEVY Chase has made us laugh since his first routines on "Saturday Night Live" in 1975, but behind the clownish façade are horrific memories of a childhood of beatings and psychological torture by a mentally ill mom and twisted stepdad.
"I lived in fear all the time - deathly fear," Chase says in a new authorized biography, "I'm Chevy Chase . . . And You're Not," by Rena Fruchter, out next month from Virgin Books. It reveals that Chase's concert-pianist mother, Cathalene, was a "very unhappy woman" who suffered from depression and panic attacks that could set her off at a moment's notice. They had her locking young Chevy in a closet for hours at a time and waking him up in the middle of the night to slap him "continually and hard, across the face," Chase tells the author. "I don't remember what it was for, or what I had done."
One of her other brutal punishments was to whip Chase over a period of days. "She would say to me, 'Ten lashes on the backs of your legs every day for a week at 5 p.m.' How can you hold on to that kind of anger against your kid?" Chase relates to Fruchter. "I knew I was a 'bad boy,' but I didn't know that everybody wasn't punished the same way I was."
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Comment by David
This is a bit of an aside on your story ...
Wouldn't he make the perfect character to play a comedic role in a satrie about George W Bush ... the facial similarities are striking ...
As to the story itself. All of us absued children retreat into humour ... It's our way of dealing with things ...
Davi d...
Comment by Nickoftime's Sanity Corner
have to agree with David on that one...most secessful comedians have suffered really horrific things when they were children, and humor seems to be the balm they need to soothe their tortured souls...
Having been a victim myself, I can so relate to Chase's revellations...
I read a book once on John Belushi...good god how that man stayed sane for so long was absoluetly incomprehensible to me...
At least his brother seems to have survived a bit less emotionally scared...
It's a shame the horrors parents can inflict on their children...
Great post,
Take care,
Nick
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
The only way is up indeed, I also use humour, although meditation is pretty good too.
I do not (as a rule) read modern autobiographies of celebreties, but I will read this one, as I think this man is remarkable in so many ways.
*chuckling* at David's comment about George Bush ... especially since it seems, Bush has just found his sense of humour ...*lol*
Somehow I am not surprised to learn of him being an abused child, humour is the only place to go if you don't go towards the dark side.
I'm sure this book will be as riveting as this post...
Lilla ...