The late-night sketch comedy series “Saturday Night Live” is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025. With five decades of television history behind “SNL,” it should come as no surprise that there has been plenty of drama behind the scenes. Aside from all the chaos depicted in Jason Reitman’s movie “Saturday Night,” depicting the evening of the show’s premiere back in October 1975, the early seasons of “SNL” sparked a lot of tension backstage, especially when the series became a hit, and previously unknown comedians started becoming famous.

Chevy Chase was the first and biggest benefactor of the success of “SNL” right out of the gate, largely because, as the host of the news satire Weekend Update segment, he was the only one saying his name on the show on a regular basis (“I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not” was his sign-off at the desk). As has been recounted by many who worked at “SNL,” Chase’s newfound fame did not sit well with fellow cast member John Belushi, who resented Chase’s quick rise, especially when he left the show to kick off a career in movies. This was not only because Belushi wanted to become the star of the show himself (despite almost refusing to sign an “SNL” contract at one point), but also because it pushed everyone else to the side in what was inherently an ensemble effort. The rest of the cast and crew weren’t pleased with his attitude in the aftermath either.

Chase left “SNL” during season 2, and season 3 brought in Bill Murray, who was constantly referred to as “the new Chevy,” much to the chagrin of both comedians. So there was already some built-in tension when Chase returned to “SNL” to host the 11th episode of the third season in February 1978. That tension was fomented by none other than John Belushi, though Chase’s reputation after leaving the show didn’t do him any favors. The result was a fight that erupted between Murray and Chase just before the show went to air.

In the book “Live from New York” by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, an oral history of “SNL,” Chase admitted that his first mistake was assuming that he would do Weekend Update, despite the fact that cast member Jane Curtin had taken over the desk since his departure from the show. Chase said, “That was somewhat egocentric of me because Jane had been doing it all year.”

According to Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad’s book “Saturday Night,” Chase was more direct and rude in his expectations. The book details a meeting in the office of “SNL” creator and showrunner Lorne Michaels in which Chase is quoted as saying, “Jane, let’s face it, you can’t be on the screen with me at the same time.”

This didn’t sit well with Bill Murray. As Chase recalled in “Live from New York,” “John had also, as I later found out, been spreading some pretty apocryphal stories about me out of his jealousy and anger or whatever to Billy Murray, who was protective of Jane and also, generally speaking, a feisty fellow and I’m sure Billy wanted to take me down, you know.”

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Why did it fall on Bill Murray to take Chase down a peg or two? In “Live from New York,” Murray explained:

“That was because I was the new guy, and it was sort of like it was my job to do that. It would have been too petty for someone else to do it. It’s almost like I was goaded into that, you know, I think everybody was hoping for it. I did sense that. I think they resented Chevy for leaving, for one thing. They resented him for taking a big piece of the success and leaving and making his own career go.

Everybody else was from the improvisational world where you didn’t make it about you. You were an ensemble. You were a company. So when he left, there was resentment about that. It was a shock. At the same time, Chevy was the big potato in the stew. He got the most sketches. He had the most influence, he got the most publicity, all of those things. So they didn’t miss that part of it. But there was still a hangover feeling that he shouldn’t have left until everybody had that.”

Of course, it wasn’t just the “SNL” cast’s resentment of Chase that created the issue. Along with Chase’s fame came even more arrogance, and he already had a big head to begin with. Murray noted as much when recalling the fight in “Live from New York,” where he said, “I remember just sort of a general animosity that they felt, and he did come back as a star. When you become famous, you’ve got like a year or two where you act like a real a**hole. You can’t help yourself. It happens to everybody. You’ve got like 2 years to pull it together or it’s permanent.”

Chase was still in that early stage of fame — many would probably argue that he never shook that conceited ego — but he was at least willing to admit as much while recounting the scuffle with Murray. In “Live from New York,” Chase reflected:

“I think Billy was trying to take me down a rung, and I was probably up a rung. I was probably a little too full of myself, you know. I realized when I left that maybe I hadn’t been such a great guy. Maybe we weren’t so close. Maybe I’d been somewhat of an a**hole. I left with self-doubts, and as time went on, it was a little easier to do it over the years because, you know, it was water under the bridge, but it did change my perception because my perception had been all along that that first year was really a tight close-knit family and that I just happened to emerge because of something someone had written and because people were responding to me as the first breakaway star.”

During the week leading up to the show, Murray and Chase had already been poking and prodding each other. The book “Saturday Night” recounts some of the barbs they threw at each other throughout writing and rehearsal. At one point, Murray interrupted a meeting to air some grievances from the cast and crew about his presence during the show’s first season. But perhaps the deepest cut was Murray taking aim at Chase’s publicized relationship issues by saying, “Go f*** your wife. I hear she needs it.” Chase, keeping his cool, fired back with a jab at Murray’s looks, making a comment about Neil Armstrong landed on his face, a pointed insult at boxcar scars on the comedian’s face.

Everything came to a head on the night of the live show, and just before Chase was supposed to hit the stage as President Gerald Ford for the show’s cold open, he went into Murray’s room for a showdown.

However, while both Murray and Chase took swings at each other, neither of them seemed to have landed a punch, instead only shouting and rough-housing each other a bit. During the scuffle, it was actually John Belushi who ended up taking a couple of hits, as he was hanging out in Murray’s dressing room at the time. In fact, Chase recalled one telling detail that incriminates Belushi’s place in all this, “John was like the Cheshire Cat, sitting there like, ‘Mission accomplished.'”

Director John Landis (“The Blues Brothers”) happened to be at “SNL” during this kerfuffle, and he relayed his memory of the incident in “Live from New York,” saying, “Chevy and Billy were having a huge screaming fight in the hallway, and [writers] Michael O’Donoghue and Tom Davis were holding them back, and John and Danny [Aykroyd] jumped in because Chevy and Billy were really going to come to blows.” But perhaps the funniest detail he recalled was that Murray took the time to call Chase a “medium talent,” which is such a specific, thoughtful, and hilarious insult.

Of course, Chase and Murray had a show to do. In “Live from New York,” Chase maybe patted himself on the back too much when it came to staying on track going straight to live television:

“This happened, but I’ve got a show to do. Others might have withered. I had a certain tensile strength about me from childhood with an older brother who had already kicked the crap out of me through much of my younger life, and there’d been a number of times when I was in violent situations, so it wasn’t as if I was simply some guy who had never seen the other side of the tracks. I had. And so I guess I simply weathered it. In other words, rather than be filled with the adrenaline that gives you the shakes and doesn’t allow you to concentrate on what you’re doing, that simply passed, and it may be because I was in shape and I played a lot of soccer and had been in situations where I could calm down readily after something like that happened.”

All right, we get it, Chevy.

While this feud between Chase and Murray would last for years, they’d eventually squad their beef during production on the classic comedy “Caddyshack.” Director Harold Ramis, who would later have his own beef with Bill Murray following “Groundhog Day,” cast both Chase and Murray in his “slobs vs. snobs” golf movie. In fact, their famous scene together (seen below) is the reason the two actors were able to put their differences behind them.

In Chris Nashawaty’s book “Caddyshack: The Making of a Hollywood Cinderella Story,” Murray said he found the collaboration easy:

“I’d never really done anything with Chevy. We’d always had sort of a… funny relationship. But it was like, ‘O.K., I liked that when you did that. Let’s just keep going.’ We kept going, and it was funny because Ty Webb’s not far from who Chevy is. So he was pretty comfortable in his space. And I was comfortable as Carl. So he could be free to laugh at me. And if Ty laughed, Carl thought it meant, ‘Hey, he’s my friend!’ It’s a really fun, self-aware example of whatever the heck Harold maintains the movie is about – status.”

Chase agrees, as he said in a self-congratulatory way that only someone like him can say, “We got over everything. The tension was short-lived. I have nothing but admiration and affection for Bill. He still can be a surly character, to say the least. But ultimately, he’s a good guy. Even though I’m the number one star in the movie under the title, I’ll always think of Caddyshack as Billy’s movie.” It’s hard to disagree, especially when Bill Murray improvised one of the funniest scenes in the movie.

The good news is that they’re still on good terms, at least as far as we know. During an appearance on “The Howard Stern Show” back in September 2008, Chase reflected on their conflict and said, “We’ve never been close, but we’ve been very friendly, we play golf together. […] I think we’ve made an effort over the years to get to know each other better and to put that stuff behind.”