How ‘The Chevy Chase Show’ Sabotaged Stand-Up Comics

The Chevy Chase Show was a mess in so many ways. Time Magazine’s critic hated how Chase’s comedy recycled old jokes and relied on predictable pratfalls. Other outlets panned Chase’s “boring, gushing, pointless” celebrity interviews. And it somehow played before “the worst behaved crowd in late-night television,” said another review. 

In addition to those faults, The Chevy Chase Show went out of its way to make life miserable for stand-up comics, according to Ritch Shydner in his book, Kicking Through the Ashes: My Life As A Stand-up in the 1980s Comedy Boom. The sabotage wasn’t by design, but the show’s stupid choices made life miserable for everyone.

Shydner, a comic who’d appeared on Late Night With David Letterman, Evening at the Improv and Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, knew something about doing stand-up on a late-night show. The Chevy Chase Show did not. “As part of their effort to reinvent the late-night talk show, Chevy’s producer decided not to have the comics enter from behind a stage curtain but from a single door perched atop three flights of stairs,” he wrote. “Somebody was a Twilight Zone fan. This surreal structure dominated the stage. More of an art piece, The Door in the Sky presented a bit of mystery, as if it was part of a magic act.”

Shydner said even getting to the door could take the wind out of a guy. While Chase “bombed a desk piece,” Shydner had to climb the hidden stairs, a process that took the entirety of Chase’s bit. “I’m sure if the show had succeeded,” he wrote, “the producers would have added an oxygen tank, power bars and a Sherpa guide.” 

Things got worse after Chase introduced the comic. 

“I opened the door and walked down the steep and narrow stairway. The applause ended three steps into my descent. A bigger name might have gotten two or three more steps of applause, but the audience undoubtedly viewed me as a high-wire act more than a comic and didn’t want to be the distraction that caused my 50-foot fall,” Shydner said. “The music play-on from the band ended with the applause.”

Shydner kept descending those stairs in silence, “grinning and waving at the audience like a guy chasing a bus.” By the time he finally reached the microphone, he joked, his five minutes were nearly up.

An exaggeration? Sure, but not by much. Check out this episode when Chase introduces comic Rita Rudner at the 9:05 mark. She opens the Door in the Sky, a full story above Chase, and waves to the crowd.

Rudner grabs the railing — slide down? No, better take the stairs.

Then the long descent:

An endless walk across the stage past not one, but two pianos:

Then a greeting from Chase, who meets her along her journey:

Before both comedians make their way back to the set. Elapsed time from Chase’s introduction to Rudner settling in her chair? A full 30 seconds. 

Don’t think 30 seconds sounds like a long time? Stop reading this story right now and begin counting. One thousand one. One thousand two. You’ll start feeling Shydner’s (and the audience’s) pain long before you get to 30.

In the comic’s hyperbolic memory, the stairs gave him time for just one joke before the red light on the camera signaled for him to wrap it up. “I should have forged a new career,” the comic joked. “The One and Done Comedy of Ritch Shydner.”