Beverly D’Angelo Says the ‘Christmas Vacation’ Cast Had Wear Cue Cards for Chevy Chase Around Their Necks
When Chevy Chase came up against the iconic and climactic rant in the third act of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the Griswold Family banded together to give him an unforgettable Christmas present: his own lines.
In these waning weeks of summer 2025, the annual “Chevy Chase Christmas Nostalgia Tour” has already begun, as, just like the holiday season itself, the period when audiences across the Midwest forgive Chase for his history of douchebaggery seems to start earlier and earlier each year. America has collectively decided that Clark Griswold is, far and away, the single most likable version of Chase from any period in his legendary entertainment career, and Chase’s co-stars from his National Lampoon’s Vacation days are more than happy to join him in monetizing their fans’ cherished memories of the classic comedies.
Each year, the National Lampoon’s Vacation cast brings fresh tidbits and behind-the-scenes stories to spice up the nostalgia tour. During the actors’ appearance at the Chicago Fan Expo last month, Beverly D’Angelo, who played Clark’s wife Ellen throughout the series, revealed that she and her co-stars had to resort to unconventional methods to help Chase through a particularly challenging scene.
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According to D'Angelo, when Chase struggled to remember each filthy phrase in his furious rant following the arrival of Clark’s “Christmas Bonus,” the rest of the cast wore cue cards around his neck to help him finally nail the cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit monologue.
“When Clark has the meltdown, that was a tough scene because (Chevy) had to remember all these lines," recalled Christmas Vacation actor and crackpot conservative conspiracy theorist Randy Quaid during the panel. “It was just impossible for him to do because his brain doesn't work that way.”
As D’Angelo recalled, the rest of the Christmas Vacation cast had to pitch in and feed Chase his lines the same way that Marlon Brando once leaned on his scene partners for support: by wearing cue cards bearing Clark’s speech around their necks like they’re advertising phone deals outside a T-Mobile store. “We had ‘em around our necks because for him to act, there was no point in him thinking about the words,” D’Angelo recalled.
And, while some actors may find wearing a scene partner’s lines on their very body to be a demeaning experience, D’Angelo defended the unconventional methods as a necessary step in Chase’s creative process for the scene, saying, “Chevy’s a comedian, he’s live. That’s how he stays alive. … So we all wore these placards around our necks with the lines so that he could just act, instead of going, ‘What do I say now?’”
Ironically, as Chase recalled, the tricky monologue in question wasn’t just his lines — it was his lines. Chase took credit for writing the rant that he couldn’t remember, saying of the speech, “I just went from dirty word that I wrote to nuts dirty word that I wrote, and this went on like that for a while.” Though, Chase reflected, “It wasn’t actually that dirty, come to think of it. I had to come up with a lot of strange stuff, instead of, like, ‘You f---in’ this or that.’”
Presumably, Chase just censored versions of whatever insults the Saturday Night Live cast hurled at him the first time he returned to host.
