Why the Kids Changed in Every National Lampoon’s Vacation Sequel

There is a great interview with the original Audrey Griswold, Dana Barron, on Retro LadyLand.

In the interview Dana talks about what it was like working with Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Anthony Michael Hall, Randy Quaid, John Candy and Harold Ramis.

She also dishes out some trivia that I personally hadn’t heard before.

Why were the actors playing the Griswold children different in each Vacation film?

I actually ended up doing a sequel a while ago for television [Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddies Island Adventure] and it was fun to reprise my role, but what happened was, Anthony Michael Hall was doing very, very well in different films at the time, he was about to film ‘Weird Science’ and because he was contracted to do that and was filming over the summer, when they wanted to do the next Vacation… Was it the summer? yes, I remember now, because it was European Vacation… so he said no, which made me so sad because I basically had my bags packed, waiting by the door and then the director at the time [Amy Heckerling] said ‘Well, just get two new kids, we can’t have an old kid and a new kid, it’ll look strange’… So I was waiting and waiting and waiting by the phone and they went on and filmed without me…

Sigourney Weaver’s character in Ghostbusters is named after Dana Barron.

…Here’s trivia, Harold Ramis, about a year later, called me and said do you mind if I use your name in the Ghostbusters film? I’ll make it close to your name, so I’ll call her Dana Barret and not Dana Barron and I went woo! no problem and Sigourney Weavers characters name is Dana Barret…

For the rest of the interview head on over to Retro LadyLand.

Also make sure you check out Dana Barron’s website for a bunch of cool autographed memorabilia from National Lampoon’s Vacation.