Ghoulardi: Inside Cleveland TV's Wildest Ride (Ohio) - Softcover

Feran, Tom; Heldenfels, R.D.

 
9781886228184: Ghoulardi: Inside Cleveland TV's Wildest Ride (Ohio)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1886228183 ISBN 13: 9781886228184
Verlag: Gray & Company, Publishers, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

The definitive story of the outrageous Ghoulardi TV show and its pioneering creator—on screen and behind the scenes, with rare photos, interviews, original scripts, and trivia.

Ernie Anderson shocked and delighted Northeast Ohio in the mid-1960s, when his Ghoulardi show was not to be missed on Friday nights. More than 30 years later, the Ghoulardi legend is still firmly rooted in the minds of the people who watched and in the pop culture of an entire city.

In early 1963, months before the Beatles arrived in America and years before Howard Stern hit the radio airwaves, Cleveland TV actor Ernie Anderson pioneered the modern counter-culture media celebrity. His offbeat late-night movie show was so popular locally that it got ratings higher than the Tonight Show, and the Cleveland police department reported a significant decrease in crime during its broadcast.

Ghoulardi captured the hearts and minds of Cleveland’s first TV generation and inspired other creative talents, including Tim Conway and Drew Carey.

A great piece of TV history writing.

“Captures a hint of the mania that made Ghoulardi a Cleveland idol in a sleepy era before long hair, drugs, assassinations, war and protests.” — Columbus Dispatch

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Tom Feran has been a writer and editor for The Plain Dealer since 1982. He was named Best Columnist in Ohio in 2007 by the Society of Professional Journalists, and is former president of the Television Critics Association of North America. His work has appeared in publications including Ohio Magazin, Cleveland Magazine, and DirecTV Magazine, and he has been a regular pseudonymous contributor to the tabloid Weekly World News. He is a graduate of Harvard College, where he was president and editor of the Lampoon, and of Cleveland St. Ignatius High School.

Rich Heldenfels is the Television Writer for the Akron Beacon Journal.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

<h3>Life Begins at 11:20</h3> <h4> Late in 1962, in the dark depths of Cleveland’s coldest and snowiest winter in 100 years, the management of Cleveland television station WJW (Channel 8) asked journeyman announcer Ernie Anderson to host a late-night horror-movie show planned for early in the new year . . .</h4> <p> God, thought the thirty-nine-year-old veteran </p> <p>of a checkered career in radio and TV. Comfortable in his staff job, he had lucrative side gigs as an on-camera spokesman for Ohio Bell Telephone and other companies, and he still entertained dreams of being an actor.</p> <p>He later would say he didn’t mind going on camera because of the performing opportunity and the extra money—about sixty dollars a week to start. Still, he knew that his more prestigious work could dry up if he became too closely associated with the likes of The Leech Woman.</p> <p>So he put on a fake mustache and beard, adopted a weird voice, and took on an assumed name: Ghoulardi. </p> <p>Almost instantly the persona became more famous than the man cracking wise behind it. Adults shared his comments at work the following Monday, some shaking their heads in dismay. Newspaper columnists took sides—for and, more often, against him. Kids treated him like God, his face lodged in their minds, his hip lines becoming playground mainstays. Some left reel-to-reel audio tape recorders rolling during his show to capture the moments; they still cherish these precious bits more than thirty years later.</p> <p>WJW had launched the show as, both literally and figuratively, a shot in the dark, hoping it might draw a bit of attention and a few more viewers at a time when the station ranked third (and last) in local ratings. They created an icon of popular culture whose legacy, decades later, would defy the disposable standards of modern media.</p> <p>Television was growing, still rough around the edges, into the common thread of community consciousness. Ghoulardi would first conquer it, amassing an audience of a size unimaginable today; and then transcend it, surviving in the memories, attitudes, and language of a generation who would carry him to even wider attention.</p> <p>In a self-doubting city ever in search of an identity, and in the unsuspecting calm before the storm of Beatlemania, he landed with an impact surpassing that of any other local broadcaster, before or since.</p> <p>The magic began, in that winter of the century, on Friday nights at 11:20, in the old Channel 8 studios at Playhouse Square on Euclid Avenue.</p> <p>City Camera news would be winding down and Ernie Anderson would just be cranking up. Most likely, he was at the Seagram Bar, informally known as “the Swamp,” finishing off a Ballantine Ale and a cheeseburger; or at Pierre’s, sipping martinis and playing dominoes with Pat the bartender, watching the clock as well as the game. He usually waited until the last possible moment and then had to hurry to work.</p> <p>As the Shock Theater logo appeared on TV screens across Northeast Ohio, viewers heard strains of Ghoulardi’s theme song, a Duane Eddy B-side called “Desert Rat.” As the song rang through the hallways of Channel 8, Ernie’s footsteps thundered an accompaniment. He grabbed the gear laid out by his teenage gofer Ron Sweed—a mustache, beard, fright wig, and glasses with only one lens—and transformed himself while still in motion, hitting the door of the studio at a dead run and almost sliding out of range as he zoomed in front of the camera. What’s tonight’s movie? he might wonder, then, Bleep it. Doesn’t matter. </p> <p>He now perched on a stool, a light at his feet casting eerie shadows on his Ghoulardi face, the omnipresent smoke in hand—a Philip Morris cigarette, sometimes in a holder; occasionally a cigar—and began to speak in a voice combining a hint of Bela Lugosi with liberal doses of hepcat—man, baby, diggin’ and the all-purpose group or groups, as in "Hey, groups, we're gonna have fun tonight..."</p> <p>He would not promise a great movie. It was a point of personal pride to assure the audience that the movie was bad, spectacularly so, even when it wasn’t. Whether the feature was The House on Haunted Hill or Attack of the Crab Monsters, a grade-B effort or something tumbling to Z, or not even a movie at all (sometimes old TV shows were substituted), it would be mocked by Ghoulardi.</p> <p>While hundreds of thousands watched Ghoulardi in Northeast Ohio, the late-night studio audience was much smaller, occasionally including a few teenage fans. Off-camera, Sweed would be helping out (and soaking up information he would use years later, as the Ghoul). Sometimes an old friend of Ernie’s dropped by, like actor Tim Conway, on a return visit from Hollywood, or local acquaintances like Bill “Smoochie” Gordon from WEWS (Channel 5) and KYW radio deejay Jay Lawrence. Jack Riley, another buddy, then on WERE radio, might be on hand—or on the phone from his Lakewood home, trying to satisfy Ernie’s pleas for jokes.</p> <p>There was a director—Ken Clark the first year, but over time whoever was on shift for the telecast, Ernie later said—and one or two cameramen, who could draw Ghoulardi’s derision. On the air, if there was a foul-up, Ghoulardi snapped “Can’t you take a picture? Dummy!” at the cameraman. It was supposed to be a joke, and off the air, demeaning comments were sometimes lightened by his admission that the technicians, too, were part of the Ghoulardi team. One cameraman, Don Quigley, Ernie delighted in tormenting on air and off, according to Ron Sweed; Ernie would set up Quigley for a small electric shock, or blast him in the face with a squirt gun during the telecast. </p> <p>The inner circle consisted of three men: Ernie, his sound man and sounding board Chuck Schodowski, and projectionist/editor Bob Soinski. The job of the latter two was to organize the chaos around Ernie, to figure out where to drop joking film clips into the movies—in fact, to find the clips, not to mention the music that would become as familiar to fans as the pictures. They were also involved with the filmed sketches in which Ernie starred (and Chuck sometimes co-starred) and—a high honor from Ernie—the butt of his practical jokes. </p> <p>As Ghoulardi talked to one camera, a second focused on a nearby table which held a model to be blown up with a firecracker—sometimes a car, an airplane, the new Revell line of Beatles (action figures only because Ernie gleefully sent their parts flying), or an unknown construction of a viewer’s own devising. There was also a cutout of talk-show host Mike Douglas punctured with dart holes, with still more punctures likely. On Fridays, there wasn’t much more visible; the Saturday and weekday shows had a complete, and constantly growing, set. </p> <p>Besides the night’s movie, another film often waited for telecast: a public appearance by the Ghoulardi All-Stars, the traveling softball-basketball-football team that was Ernie’s pride. The movies of the team playing local schools, community groups, and other celebrity teams were a favorite with audiences as viewers recognized themselves in the crowds at the games. </p> <p>Ghoulardi’s monologues during and between the movies consisted of rambling jokes about local matters, staccato bursts of catchphrases— “stay sick,” “turn blue,” “purple knif,” “cool it with the boom-booms”—or a shot at his target du jour. That could be the legendary...

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Verlag
Gray & Company, Publishers
Erscheinungsdatum
1997
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1886228183
ISBN 13 
9781886228184
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
174
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