Chevy Chase lived in fear

Funny, happy guy Chevy Chase spills some dark secrets from his childhood in his book titled "I'm Chevy Chase ... And You're Not."

Chase says that when he was just a kid, panic attacks would cause his mother to lock him in the closet for hours on end. She would also "abruptly wake him up in the middle of the night just to slap him continually and hard, across the face- for no reason at all."

Chevy says his mom also used to whip him. "She would say to me, 'Ten lashes on the backs of your legs every day for a week at 5 p.m.' How can you hold on to that kind of anger against your kid?" Chase says in the book.

Chase's half-brother John confirms the sadness, "My mother, at her worst, was like an unleashed animal. It was at her hands, in her feral states, that Chevy suffered the darkest of his secret torments."

Chase, now 63, says, "You would think a grown man could shake it off, as the coffin was being lowered, to say, 'I forgive you.' I don't forgive," he says.