- - Beverly D’Angelo Reveals She and Chevy Chase Improvised Lewd Hand Gesture in “Christmas Vacation”

Jack SmartDecember 26, 2025 at 2:08 AM

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Warner Bros

Beverly D'Angelo and Chevy Chase in 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation' -

Beverly D’Angelo and Chevy Chase starred in the 1989 holiday comedy National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

D’Angelo said in a new interview that a moment involving her character freezing with her hand on Chase’s crotch was improvised

The filmmakers “didn’t have a choice” but to include that “subtle” gesture in the film, recalled the actress

Beverly D’Angelo is recalling getting handsy with Chevy Chase in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

"It was not in the script for me to guard the family jewels when the police came to stick us up," the actress, 74, quipped in a new interview with Fox News Digital about the 1989 holiday comedy.

The climactic jewel-guarding moment in question involves D’Angelo and Chase’s married characters, Ellen and Sparky Griswold, reacting to police breaking into their home and ordering them to “freeze.” In the scene, D’Angelo freezes with her hand on Chase’s crotch, a moment she now says was “definitely improvised.”

“I threw that in,” she said. “That was my little touch.” And, she continued, because it was the end of the day shooting that scene, director Jeremiah S. Chechik “didn’t have a choice” but to include it in the final version of the film.

Warner Bros

Beverly D'Angelo and Chevy Chase in 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation'

"I said, ‘I bet nobody catches this,’ ” D’Angelo recalled. “We did the shot, freeze, and I put my hand there. It was like, ‘Okay, that’s a wrap. Everybody go home.’ It was subtle. And it had to stay in the film because it was the only shot left! What are they going to do?”

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The actress previously recalled that Christmas Vacation moment in a 2023 interview with Forbes, revealing then that Chase, now 82, agreed to the comedic bit. “He went, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Well, you can't do that.’”

But D’Angelo knew audiences — or Chechik — weren’t going to be looking at the placement of her hand, with focus on Chase and costar Randy Quaid. “It's true, when you first look at it, you aren't looking at what I'm doing down there,” she told Forbes. “But now that people have really big screens, they're noticing these details that weren't apparent... you can see (the crotch grab) on a big screen.”

Written by John Hughes, Christmas Vacation has become a perennial holiday favorite since its 1989 release. It's the third in National Lampoon magazine's Vacation film series. This November, D'Angelo told PEOPLE that “nobody imagined that 40 years down the line or however long it's been, that the Griswolds would be part of our culture.”

Back in 2022, the mother of two told PEOPLE that when she was first approached to play Ellen, she wanted to turn the role down. "I was so sure that I wasn't the right person," she said, in part because she had mostly done dramas, and because, at 30, she felt too young to play the mom of a teenager.

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Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo at Fan Expo Chicago 2025 on Aug. 17

But her agent told her it was “very funny,” and when she met Chase, she found they had "great chemistry… It was like meeting my brother.”

Among D'Angelo's upcoming screen projects are the films Sleepwalker (in theaters Jan. 9) and Last Hand.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”