Chevy Chase

His mother's ancestors arrived in Manhattan starting in 1624 — among those ancestors are:

According to his step-brother John:

[Chevy] once told me that people who defined themselves in terms of their ancestry were like potatoes—the best parts of them were underground.

He disdained the pretension of his mother's side of the family, as embodied by her mother, Cattie.

As a child, Chase vacationed at Castle Hill, the Cranes' summer estate in Ipswich, Massachusetts.

Chase's parents divorced when he was four; his father remarried into the Folgers coffee family, and his mother remarried twice.

He has stated that he grew up in an upper middle class environment and that his adoptive maternal grandfather did not bequeath any assets to Chase's mother when he died.

His father, Edward Tinsley "Ned" Chase (1919–2005), was a Princeton-educated Manhattan book editor and magazine writer.

Chase's paternal grandfather was artist and illustrator Edward Leigh Chase, and his great-uncle was painter and teacher Frank Swift Chase.

His mother, Cathalene Parker (née Browning; 1923–2005), was a concert pianist and librettist, whose father, Rear Admiral Miles Browning, served as Admiral Raymond A. Spruance's Chief of Staff on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6) at the Battle of Midway in World War II.

Cathalene was adopted as a child by her stepfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane, heir to The Crane Company, and took the name Catherine Crane.

Her mother, also named Cathalene, was an opera singer who performed several times at Carnegie Hall.

Chase was named for his adoptive grandfather, Cornelius, while the nickname "Chevy" was bestowed by his grandmother from the medieval English ballad "The Ballad of Chevy Chase".

As a descendant of the Scottish Clan Douglas, she thought the name appropriate.

Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase (born October 8, 1943) is an American comedian, actor, and writer.

Cornelius Crane Chase was born in Lower Manhattan on October 8, 1943, and grew up in Woodstock, New York.

He has an older brother, Ned Jr.

He ultimately graduated as valedictorian in 1962 from the Stockbridge School, an independent boarding school in the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

At Stockbridge, he was known as a practical joker with an occasional mean streak.

He attended Haverford College during the 1962–1963 term, where he was noted for slapstick comedy and an absurd sense of physical humor, including his signature pratfalls and "sticking forks into his orifices".

Chase transferred to Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, where he studied a pre-med curriculum and graduated in 1967 with a Bachelor of Arts in English.

Chase did not enter medical school, which meant he was subject to the military draft.

He played drums and keyboards for a rock band called Chamaeleon Church, which recorded one album for MGM Records before disbanding in 1969.

To give the album a more soft-rock sound, producer Alan Lorber made several alterations in the mixing, including the muting of Chase's bass drum, and Chase was reportedly incensed when he heard the final mix.

He became the breakout cast member in the first season of Saturday Night Live (1975–1976), where his recurring Weekend Update segment became a staple of the show.

As both a performer and a writer on the series, he earned two Primetime Emmy Awards out of four nominations.

After leaving Saturday Night Live early in its second season, he established himself as a leading man, starring in some of the most successful comedy films of the 1980s, starting with his Golden Globe–nominated role in the romantic comedy Foul Play (1978).

Most famously, he portrayed Ty Webb in Caddyshack (1980), Clark W. Griswold in five National Lampoon's Vacation films, and Irwin "Fletch" Fletcher in Fletch (1985).

He also starred in Seems Like Old Times (1980), Spies Like Us (1985), Three Amigos! (1986), and Funny Farm (1988).

He has hosted the Academy Awards twice (1987 and 1988) and briefly had his own late-night talk show, The Chevy Chase Show (1993).

Chase was not drafted, and when he appeared in January 1989 as the first guest of the just-launched late-night The Pat Sajak Show, he said he had "convinced" his draft board he deserved a 4-F classification by "'falsely' claiming, among other things, that he had homosexual tendencies".

He played drums with the college band The Leather Canary, headed by school friends Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.

Chase has called the group "a bad jazz band"; Becker and Fagen later founded the successful group Steely Dan.

Chase has perfect pitch.

Both of his parents died in 2005.

Chase was educated at Riverdale Country School, an independent day school in the Riverdale neighborhood of The Bronx, New York City, before being expelled.

In a 2007 biography, Chase stated that he was physically and psychologically abused as a child by his mother and stepfather, John Cederquist.

Chase had a resurgence with his role as Pierce Hawthorne on the NBC sitcom Community (2009–2014).

During a 2009 interview on the Today show, he ostensibly verified the oft-publicized urban legend that he was expelled for harboring a cow in his fourth floor room, although his former roommate David Felson asserted in a 2003 interview that Chase left for academic reasons.

Chase is a 14th-generation New Yorker, and was listed in the Social Register at an early age.