Christie Brinkley thanks Vacation co-star for saving her from going topless in classic comedy

Christie Brinkley has Beverly D’Angelo to thank for not going topless in “National Lampoon’s Vacation.”The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model appeared in the 1983 comedy as the flirty “Girl in the Ferrari” opposite Chevy Chase.Viewers witnessed how Chase’s character, Clark Griswold, struggled to keep his eyes on the road as the blonde bombshell in the sports car beside him zoomed between lanes.Meanwhile, Griswold’s wife Ellen was asleep in the passenger seat.In Brinkley’s new memoir, “Uptown Girl,” the pinup described how the producers of the film asked her to go topless for a scene, but she refused.“The most memorable part of filming was the scene where I bump into Chevy’s character at a motel pool and talk him into going skinny-dipping, which we shot at two in the morning,” wrote Brinkley in an excerpt obtained by Fox News Digital.“That’s when the production team asked me to go topless for the shot, but I wasn’t comfortable with it: I knew very well by then that part of my appeal as a model was that men had to imagine what was underneath my swimsuit, and I wasn’t about to give that away for what I thought would be a small, goofy movie.

(None of us at the time ever suspected ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’would take off the way it did).”“When the production team asked again about the possibility of nudity — and I couldn’t blame them for trying — Beverly walked out onto set in the nick of time.‘I’ll do it,’ she said.

‘I’ll be the one to go topless! You’ll get your t—ies.’ I couldn’t have loved her more [at] that moment.And in my opinion, the scene between Chevy and me is funnier and cleverer because I throw my bra and panties at him from off camera, and all that the viewers can see are his oversized facial expressions.”Brinkley, 71, told Fox News Digital she was thankful to have D’Angelo, 73, step in and save her that day.“I was so grateful from day one when I got there,” she said.

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