How Chevy Chase, SNL, and One Pratfall Changed a Presidential Election

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The voice was provided by an unknown, at that time, comedian by the name of Vaughn Meader. The question is, would you want your son to be president? Definitely not. I think he should finish school first. And he managed to capture pretty much the charm, the charisma, that Kennedy captivated much of America with. You know, they called the period Camelot for a good reason because the nation was in love with this young, charming president. Kennedy's assassination kind of shut down the whole enterprise for a while. The nation was in shock. And frankly, comedians didn't really know what to do next. Lyndon Johnson became president. This was a guy who was far more mockable in terms of his comedic traits than Kennedy was.

But for a year or more, impressionists didn't want to touch it. It was just too insensitive, considering what had happened with Kennedy. But eventually, the comedians started. There was a guy named David Fry. My fellow Americans, I come here tonight with a heavy heart. We would do something to end the problems in this great land of ours.

I have decided to take the following step. And he did a pretty pointed LBJ. And in fact, along with the Smothers brothers, who were comedians and entertainers, they were also very politically focused against the political against the president they didn't care for, which was LBJ. Don't forget, this was a period where the Vietnam War was just ripping our country apart. And the civil rights movement was also a big deal. It was a very tough time for Lyndon Johnson to be president and a very easy time to make comedy about Johnson.

Live from New York, it's Saturday night. I'd say good comedians never shy away from controversy, and they're always looking to push the envelope. And as the presidents came and went, it just seemed like a logical avenue for comedy.

But really, the big turning point came in 1975. Right at that time, Saturday Night Live had its television debut. And right on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live, although they did not do a presidential impersonation on that first show, Chevy Chase anchored Weekend Update and set the stage immediately for criticizing the president. He said one line that was so damning to Gerald Ford, Ford's new campaign slogan. Mr. Ford was on the campaign trail announcing in Detroit that he has written his own campaign slogan.

The slogan, if he's so dumb, how come he's president? Three weeks later, they decided on SNL to do a sketch that would involve Gerald Ford, and they decided that Chevy Chase would play the part. Now, Chevy Chase really isn't an impressionist. He is a comedian.

He's not an impressionist. And the beauty part of his Gerald Ford was he made no effort to sound like the guy, no effort to look like the guy. In fact, nothing he did about Gerald Ford actually rang true, except that it was so funny. Chevy Chase, an up-and-coming comic, had made his mark falling down. He loved to do pratfalls. Well, Gerald Ford had had some unfortunate mishaps, the most infamous of which was slipping and falling on the steps of Air Force One.

For President Ford, the year seemed full of snags. In June, he fell down the plane's steps on arriving in Austria, and he quickly got an impression among the public as kind of a klutz. Now, parenthetically, he was not a klutz, and he did not fall down a lot, even though he did on one or two occasions. But Chevy Chase and the writers at SNL ran with this. Chase would play Ford, and he'd bumble, drop things, and really act like a clown, and the payoff was invariably that he'd fall down. And that's what Chevy Chase was so good at, and it just became funnier and funnier each week, so much so that the public began to think that maybe this guy who's president is a klutz.

And then, if you project that further, well, if he's so clumsy, maybe he ain't very smart either. And it began to work against Gerald Ford. Arguably, actually contributed to Ford's defeat. So there we have the first example of presidential impersonations affecting the presidential election, and it's sort of gone on a roller coaster ever since. And by the way, what Chevy Chase didn't include and what America didn't know was that Gerald Ford may have been the greatest athlete to ever become and be president.

He was on the championship football team at the University of Michigan when he was an undergrad, and he was also a tremendous golfer. But the facts never get in the way of good comedy. The story of playing POTUS here on Our American Stories. When you travel with Amex Platinum, the stops on your bucket list come with a room upgrade when available and guaranteed 4 p.m. checkout at fine hotels and resorts properties booked through AmexTravel.com so you have enough time to check out the pool and the spa and anything on the menu before flying off to what's next. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms apply.

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