Anthony Michael Hall recalls ‘Vacation’ dad Chevy Chase mocking him

Anthony Michael Hall was just 14, with only a few professional acting credits to his name, when he played the original Rusty Griswold in National Lampoon’s Vacation.

So it was tough for him to reshoot the ending of the movie more than half a year later, after test audiences wanted something other than what had been captured, he explained this month during a cast reunion at Fan Expo Chicago.

“Puberty kicked in for me,” Hall said. “I was a foot taller and like a different kid.”

He added dryly, “Guess who pointed the s— out right away and made me feel really good about it on set.”

The answer, of course, was Chevy Chase, who’d been part of the original cast of Saturday Night Live and was known for his wicked sense of humor.

Chase played Hall’s dad, Clark, in the 1983 comedy about a family’s summer road trip to an amusement park that goes wrong in every possible way. Beverly D’Angelo played his mother, Ellen. Written by John Hughes and directed by Harold Ramis, Vacation spawned several more films in which the actors playing Rusty and his sister Audrey, who was originally played by Dana Barron, would be swapped out with others.

While Chase’s teasing was memorable to Hall, he needed to be reminded of what exactly he had said at the time.

“I just remember the autograph you wrote me when we wrapped,” Hall said. “He goes, ‘To Anthony, you’re a regular Robby Benson,” Hall said of the handsome actor who was chosen to voice the Beast in Disney’s animated film Beauty and the Beast in 1991. “No mas, no mas.”

Chase wasn’t done.

“And then it was also,” Hall continued, “‘If you’re going blind, you’re doing it right.”

Later in their conversation, Barron was asked about her recollections of the station wagon the family rides in for much of the film. She remembered the vehicle fondly.

“I loved that car. It was its own character. It should have been first billed,” Barron said.

And it was where she had seen her on-screen brother eating food that “stuck in his braces.”

“By the way, you forgot the pimples,” she said to Hall. “Remember, Chevy mentioned all the pimples on your face.”

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But Hall didn’t harbor any hard feelings.

“This is why I love being your son for 40 years,” he told Chase. “I love you.”

Future Brat-Packer Hall would soon use his awkwardness to his advantage, as he played a scene-stealing character known only as “Geek” in the 1984 movie Sixteen Candles and nerdy “brain” Brian Johnson in the following year’s The Breakfast Club. Both films were directed by Hughes and are considered ʼ80s classics, though some of their characters, dialogue, and plot devices are now considered dated and problematic.