‘He was brought back from the edge’: The comedy legend was in eight days in a medically induced coma during the health crisis.

Chevy Chase experienced a “life-threatening” heart failure that led to him being put into an medically induced coma in 2021, according to a recent documentary about the American actor and comedian.

Featured in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, the star of films such as Caddyshack and the National Lampoon series, who emceed the Oscars on two occasions, was hospitalized for five full weeks in the medical facility.

“Something was wrong, and he was unable to describe to me what was wrong. So, we headed to the ER. His heart gave out. During those years he was drinking, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy; when the heart muscles get weaker, and they are unable to pump as much blood through the body with each beat.”

Medical professionals then put him into a coma for over a week, before cautioning his child, his daughter: “He may not recover. We are unsure how present he’ll be. Prepare yourselves for the worst.”

“When he woke up, all he could do was use his voice,” she stated further. “He has essentially come back from the dead.”

He himself has said that he has suffered recall difficulties since his hospital stay, and in the documentary he cannot remember some of his past professional and personal incidents, including a fight with Bill Murray in a Saturday Night Live backstage area.

The comedian noted he was “disappointed” by his omission from the 50th anniversary special of SNL earlier this year, at which he was in the crowd but not on stage.

“Honestly, it was quite upsetting,” he said. “I'm only now voicing this. But I assumed that I should have been on the stage too with all the other actors. When former castmates Garrett Morris and Laraine Newman were called up, I was wondering as to why I was not. I wasn't invited. Why was I left aside?”

The 82-year-old, came close to death in 1980 when he was subjected to an electrical shock on the set of Modern Problems, an incident which precipitated a period of clinical depression.