Pee-wee Herman became a 1980s pop cultural phenomenon and delighted fans in three films, as well as on the TV series Pee-wee's Playhouse.
ADVERTISEMENTUS actor and comedian Paul Reubens, whose Pee-wee Herman character — an overgrown child with a tight grey suit and an unforgettable staccato laugh — became a 1980s pop cultural phenomenon, has died at 70.
Reubens, who’s character delighted fans in the film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and on the TV series Pee-wee’s Playhouse, died on Sunday night after a six-year struggle with cancer that he kept private, his publicist said in a statement.
“Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years,” Reubens said in a statement released with the announcement of his death. “I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”
Created for the stage, Pee-wee with his white chunky loafers and red bow tie would become a cultural constant in both adult and children's entertainment for much of the 1980s, though an indecent exposure arrest in 1991 would send the character into entertainment exile for years.
Reubens created Pee-wee when he was part of the Los Angeles improv group The Groundlings in the late 1970s. The live Pee-wee Herman Show debuted at a Los Angeles theatre in 1981 and was a success with both kids during matinees and adults at a midnight show.
The show closely resembled the format the Saturday morning TV Pee-wee's Playhouse would follow years later, with Herman living in a wild and wacky home with a series of stock-character visitors, including one, Captain Karl, played by the late Saturday Night Live star Phil Hartman.
HBO would air the show as a special.
Reubens took Pee-wee to the big screen with 1985’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which takes the character outside for a nationwide escapade. Directed by Tim Burton and co-written by Hartman, the movie was a success, grossing $40 million, and continued to spawn a cult following for its oddball whimsy.
A sequel followed three years later in the less well-received Big Top Pee-wee, in which Pee-wee seeks to join a circus. Reubens’ character wouldn’t get another movie starring role until 2016’s Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, for Netflix. Judd Apatow produced Pee-wee’s big-screen revival.
His television series, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, ran for five seasons, earned 22 Emmys and attracted not only children but adults to Saturday-morning TV.
After the 1991 arrest at an adult movie theatre in Sarasota, Florida, for allegedly touching himself inappropriately – charges which would later dropped but the incident tarnished his reputation – Reubens played primarily non-Pee-wee characters, including roles in Burton’s 1992 movie Batman Returns, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film and a guest-star run on the TV series Murphy Brown. He also appeared in the 1999 comedy film Mystery Men and Johnny Depp's 2001 drug-dealer drama Blow.
Director Guillermo del Toro tweeted Monday that Reubens was “one of the patron saints of all misfitted, weird, maladjusted, wonderful, miraculous oddities.”
“His surreal comedy and unrelenting kindness were a gift to us all,” tweeted US talk show host Conan O'Brien. “Damn, this hurts.”
