Paul Reubens who most of us know as Pee-Wee Herman, with a whimsical home and the lots of adventures that young viewers of the ’80s and ’90s couldn’t get enough of.
Reubens was born on Aug. 27, 1952, New York. in the ’70s he joined the Los Angeles-based troupe the Groundlings and started his career as an improvisational comedian and stage actor.
When he was 11, Reubens joined the local Asolo Theater. Then, after graduating, he attended University for one year before deciding to move to Hollywood.
During that time, Reubens grew his career with small roles in theater productions, gigs at local comedy clubs, and guest appearances on The Gong Show.
This all prepared for the birth of our famous Pee-Wee Herman. After Reubens joined an improvisational comedy troupe called The Groundlings and performed many characters, none of them got the interaction Pee-Wee Herman received from the audience.
“I probably had eight or 10 pretty solid characters and maybe four or five of those were very popular and featured in the show. But when I debuted Pee-wee Herman onstage, that got a completely different reaction. This was a reaction that made me think, Wow, this means something.” Reubens told Vanity Fair.
The Pee-wee Herman Show premiered at The Groundlings Theatre in 1981, then later moved to The Roxy on Sunset Strip before becoming an HBO broadcast that year.
In 1985, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, written by Paul Reubens, Phil Hartman, and Michael Varhol, premiered. It was the first movie directed by Tim Burton.
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure was followed by the series Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Late ’80s, Pee-wee was brought to the big screen once in Big Top Pee-wee.
In 1991, Reubens was arrested in Sarasota, Florida, for incident exposure at an adult movie theater. The actor entered a no-contest plea, was fined and ordered to community service. After the arrest, CBS withdrew reruns of ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse’ from its Saturday morning children’s lineup
“I certainly wasn’t thinking to myself, You’re a children’s show host. Your show is [still] on television. I wasn’t making those lists. I felt like they were insinuating like, well, I was sitting in you know, a darkened movie theater, in my Pee-wee suit.” Reubens told NBC News
CBS stopped producing any new episodes, but Reubens brought back Pee-wee Herman Show as a live Broadway production in 2010, and later in the feature film, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, produced by Netflix in 2016.
On July 31, 2023, the official Pee-wee Herman Instagram account posted that the actor had died at 70 years old. The caption read, ” Paul bravely and privately fought cancer for years with his trademark tenacity and wit.”
Reubens died from acute hypoxic respiratory failure, which is a sudden lack of oxygen caused by acute myelogenous leukemia and lung cancer, which he privately fought for six years without making it public.
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