Steve Martin, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Robin Williams, Penny Marshall, Regis Philbin, George Carlin, and Lily Tomlin were a few of the “warm bodies” that packed the house at the Groundling Theatre to see the show in its opening weeks.
[Abe Perlstein]
“At first, it was purely industry,” Pohlman recalls. “It was a showcase and nobody was really attracted to it. It was kind of a hidden thing. The mainstream public didn’t know anything about it. I took lots of people to the show and some of them hated it. They just didn’t know what to make of the show.”
Before working on The Pee-wee Herman Show, Guy Pohlman was a student at California State University, Northridge, and he went to see the show after reading a review in the Herald Examiner. He recognized Pee-wee Herman from a television appearance the character had made and wanted to experience the comedian live.
“It was always sold out, but if you waited around and someone didn’t show up, you might be able to get in,” he recalls. “So I waited with about six or seven people ahead of me in line and I got in and loved the show. I kept going back.”
After one of his repeated viewings, Pohlman struck up a conversation with Kaufmann about his interest and experience in puppeteering. His enthusiasm convinced her to offer him a job on the technical crew. Pohlman’s experience was not unique; many minor cast and crew changes occurred during the show’s run.
While the run at the Groundling Theatre was successful, it came with its problems. Kaufmann and Reubens wanted to let in more of the public so that excitement would continue to build. Additionally, the set had to be dismantled after every performance to accommodate the regularly scheduled Groundlings programming that took place during the week. As a result, the decision was made to move the show to The Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip, where just a few years earlier, The Rocky Horror Show had made its American debut and become a cult classic.
“The Groundlings had a smaller stage. It was harder to fit things on,” Pohlman recalls. “The Roxy has a bigger stage and you could light it better. We had a more professional-looking production.”
Pee-wee Herman poses for publicity photos with Joan Leizman, Lynne Stewart, and Nicole Panter [© Ronn Spencer]
While the bulk of the show was the same, some changes were made before its Roxy debut. Nicole Panter joined the cast as Susan, a next-door neighbor who falls victim to Pee-wee’s shoe mirrors, and Tito Larriva, another musician from L.A.’s punk scene, played Hammy, her nebbishly perverted brother. And a new segment was created to incorporate Groundling Joan Leizman as an audience member who is hypnotized and convinced to undress by a puppet named Dr. Mondo.
Pee-wee shares the stage with Kap’n Karl, Miss Yvonne, Dr. Mondo, and Joan Leizman [© Abe Perlstein]
“People really thought I was an audience member,” Leizman recalls. “Paul didn’t want my name in promotional material because he didn’t want people to know I was an actress. I have to admit, when I saw myself on tape I did really look spaced out.”
Before joining as a full-fledged cast member, Leizman acted as an understudy for all the female characters in the show. Although cast members rarely missed performances, on the last performance at the Groundling Theatre, Lynne Stewart was a no-show.
“I was about to go home and someone told me to stay and wait,” Leizman recalls. “I was asked if I thought I could fill in for Miss Yvonne, and I said sure.”
The show was pushed back a half hour to give the actress more time to run lines. Within what felt like no time, the very nervous Leizman prepared to take the stage for her Pee-wee debut.
“They made an announcement before the show that an understudy would be playing one of the parts, but they didn’t mention my name or which part would be understudied,” Leizman recalls. “The performance went pretty well so the audience probably didn’t even know which part was being filled in.”
Stewart arrived at the theater moments before the show was over.
“At first Paul was a little suspicious,” Leizman recalls. “He thought [Lynne and I] had arranged it so I would have a chance to go on, but once he heard that she was upset because her boyfriend’s dog had been put down that afternoon, he backed down.”
While Reubens and Stewart have maintained a genuinely strong relationship since the start, there were other disputes between Reubens and the cast and crew behind the scenes of The Pee-wee Herman Show.
Although their creation was proving successful with Hollywood heavyweights, Reubens and Kaufmann disagreed over whether the show should be opened up to celebrity special guests. Kaufmann had envisioned the show as being slightly unpolished, with the actors free to improvise lines and make the show slightly different from night to night, but Reubens disagreed with this idea, wanting to ensure that there were no surprises on stage that may draw the audience’s focus away from the Pee-wee–centered plot.
[© Abe Perlstein]
“I always wanted to have someone knock at the door, have Pee-wee answer it and not know who it would be,” Kaufmann recalls. “I could have arranged for Steve Martin to walk out or Burt Reynolds. I thought it would be a hoot to have different people popping up and doing a little improv, but he always vetoed that. He didn’t want anything that wasn’t scripted.”
In addition to these arguments over the basic format of the show, there were occasional altercations between Reubens and John Paragon.
“John was a really talented performer who could do somersaults from standing still,” Kaufmann remembers. “He was an excellent dancer and could create songs out of thin air. He had an excellent singing voice. His only issue was that he had really bad skin. So what does Paul do? Put John in a role where only his face is visible.”
Nicole Panter concurs. “It’s really interesting that John Paragon was put in a box,” she says. “He was an incredibly physical performer and if he wasn’t confined to a box, he might well have stolen the show away from Paul. ”
While Kaufmann and Panter believe that Reubens sought to outshine Paragon, Monica Ganas remembers sharing the stage with Reubens as a positive experience, where his talent and creativity allowed her to shine even brighter. “The first time I interacted with him on stage was a really strong moment. It was really terrific to not be the strongest person on stage and to really concentrate and create. You really had to rise to his level.”
[© Abe Perlstein]
Going Through Changes
Paul Reubens with his assistant Leslie Williams [© Abe Perlstein]
As the show moved to The Roxy and attracted more public attention, the cast and crew began getting paid $25 per performance. However, for most of them, the money was irrelevant. They had been promised since day one that The Pee-wee Herman Show ever made good money, they would all be taken care of.
“We all trusted Paul,” Nicole Panter says. “We were all supposed to get a piece of that show.”
After opening at The Roxy to huge success, Reubens began consulting with Kaufmann less and with his agents more. APA brokered a deal in which HBO came in and videotaped a performance, to be broadcast as part of its On Location comedy series. Kaufmann was less than enthusiastic about the news.
“I was not involved in those meetings,” she explains. “I think we could have run it as a stage show for another year and built up an even bigger frenzy. We [had only been] doing the show for six months. That’s not a very long time when you’re just working weekends. I think there was a real hastiness to just sell it to the first interested person.”
According to Nicole Panter, the cast was less than enthusiastic about the news as well. “You have to remember, to do an HBO show in 1981 was not to be in the company of The Sopranos,” she explains. “We thought we were going to get a network deal for an ongoing show and all we managed to get was this one-off that was going to sink like a stone because they’d run it for a week and then nobody would see it. It was a consolation prize, but most of us
figured it was better than nothing.”
[© Abe Perlstein]
Backstage, the mood began changing as the cast and crew felt the show’s momentum shift away from its relaxed origins.
“I knew that it was starting to get more serious,” Pohlman recalls. “We were really getting into work mode, like a professional sports team headed into the finals. There were bigger people coming in and it felt like things were actually picking up.”
Monica Ganas remembers feeling particularly anxious before the HBO taping. “It was so odd because we were in the same venue, but all of a sudden there were lots of cameras,” she recalls. “It had a different feel. I remember the producers all looking very stern and I kept thinking, ‘My God, I hope I don’t do anything to get in trouble.’”
Although the show was gaining momentum, it was decided that The Pee-wee Herman Show would end its run the night HBO came to film the show. The show’s income was barely enough to cover the cost of paying the cast, crew, and venue. Most importantly, Kaufmann and Reubens, who once started the show with enthusiasm, were falling out of professional love with each other. With the show’s run coming to a close, the cast and crew pressed Reubens for the long-delayed written agreements promising that they would remain a team.
“There kept being excuses why the contracts didn’t come down, which I now know is an old trick,” Nicole Panter explains. “On the eve of filming we were given contracts that were different from what Paul told each of us we would be getting and we were told to sign or tough shit. We all signed, including Dawna, including me, including Gary. It was done in a very underhanded, but standard, show-business way.”
The cast members were all paid nominal royalties for their writing credits, because the pie had to be split so many ways, and they were given no additional compensation for their acting work. Kaufmann, who had originally approached Reubens about the concept — her concept — was hit even harder. She received a one-time fee as a producer and was barred from receiving any future money from Pee-wee Herman properties. The deed to Pee-wee’s playhouse was officially transferred to Reubens.
“What they did to me was nothing in comparison,” Nicole Panter recalls. “What they did to her was unspeakable. She was a cocreator. The entire kiddie-show-for-adults concept was her idea. Before he met her, [Paul] was doing a five-minute routine between scene changes at the Groundlings. It’s tragic what they’ve done to her. And I don’t think it would have been as easy to do if she wasn’t a woman, and a nice woman at that.”
Some would beg to differ with Panter’s opinion. For others who worked on the show, the success of The Pee-wee Herman Show had more to do with Reubens than the playhouse concept. Guy Pohlman remembers the way Reubens would get everyone excited before going onstage. “There was a huddle right before every show. Everyone would put their hands in and Paul would get into this thing where he would give a little pep talk and we would scream at the tops of our lungs. We were all so excited about the show.”
[© Abe Perlstein]
According to Pohlman, most of the cast saw Paul as the leader of their group and the show’s driving force. “Paul was the lead man,” Pohlman says. “He was in charge. It was his character, his show. The title was The Pee-wee Herman Show. It was his baby. There was even a Star of David on his dressing room door at the Roxy as kind of a funny thing. Because he was the star, people would adorn it with things. That door was our way of saying that he was the boss.”
Although the process of bringing The Pee-wee Herman Show began as a fun ride for many involved, several people still harbor misgivings about the emergency brake being pulled before the ride was at a complete stop.
“For me, the first part of the Pee-wee thing was incredibly fun; to be on stage in Los Angeles in a show during the early eighties that everyone famous wanted to come to was a blast,” Nicole Panter recalls. “For that, I’m grateful. But it ended really badly for me and a lot of people.”
Pohlman considers the psychology to be fairly common in show business. “When things are starting out, you need people and you’re generous. The excitement is genuine and you’re kind,” he says. “And then when you start to see a path to success, that’s when you start to alter yourself. Whoever is in power starts to change the dynamic of their relationships according to their needs. It’s like when you’re trying to get someone to work on an independent film. In the beginning, it’s ‘It’ll be great, why don’t you help out, it’ll be a lot of fun.’ And then when it makes money, it’s ‘Well, there was never a contract, but at least you can say you worked on it.’”
For Dawna Kaufmann, whom the Hollywood Reporter described as the “mastermind” behind the production in their announcement of the show, it was particularly difficult to see everyone cast aside.
“It made me humiliated and depressed that I couldn’t make good on the promises that Paul and I made to the artists that came in to be puppeteers and crew members on the show,” she admits. “This really was a family and we were all supposed to get to the next step together. Instead, the kids saw their parents get divorced and they were left to fend for themselves.”
While she has never achieved notoriety for her contributions, Kaufmann was instrumental in creating what went on to be a pop culture phenomenon. As Reubens wrote to her in 1981, “to say The Pee-wee Herman Show wouldn’t exist without [her] would have been the understatement of the year.”
“One thing that Dawna indisputably is, which is essential for a producer to be, is that she’s a fabulous cheerleader, especially when [people] look weak in spirits,” says Nicole Panter. “There were times when it was ‘Oh my God, how are we going to do this?’ and she was up there on the deck of the Titanic saying, ‘We can do this.’ It was her baby, and it was taken away from her, and not for any reason; she was swimming with sharks and didn’t know it.”
In the years following The Pee-wee Herman Show’s run, Reubens has stated that he alone came up with the idea for a live show on the plane ride home from his snl audition, and that he called his parents from Los Angeles International Airport to ask them to wire him money.
“Dawna’s a very good friend and Paul’s a very good friend, and I know there’s a lot of animosity between them,” Cassandra Peterson explains. “It’s made it very difficult over the years, because I love them both.”
“I’ve thought about why I haven’t sued him in retrospect,” Kaufmann muses. “But I loved John Paragon. I loved Lynne Stewart. I just adored them. I wouldn’t have wanted to put them on the stand, especially knowing that they’re intrinsically tied to Paul economically. He might call them up twenty years later, as he has, and offer them work. Had I put them on the stand to talk about the inception of the show and what my contributions were, I don’t think they would have lied, but I think they wouldn’t have been as forthright as they could have been.”
Starting an Adventure
When The Pee-wee Herman Show wrapped, Reubens’ star appeared to be on the rise. The remainder of the cast and crew went their separate ways while Reubens worked to turn the buzz about his show into a movie deal. Thanks to Marty Klein, Reubens’ other agent who worked with Doug Draizin at APA, the actor took regular bookings on Late Night with David Letterman. Sometimes he would be interviewed by the host, who would play the straight man for Pee-wee’s antics, and sometimes he was simply a featured guest comic.
Pee-wee on the set of Pee-wee’s Lemonade Stand, an unreleased short film from 1983 [© Bruce Shaw]
With Pee-wee a regular presence on national television, his agents landed him a development deal at Paramount Pictures for a feature film. Despite the team’s optimism that a film would get the green-light, the script they presented, which Reubens cowrote with Gary Panter, failed to excite the studio. Paramount rejected the script, and that ended any hope that the studio would produce Pee-wee’s first feature.
In the winter of 1983, while Reubens was continuing his regular stints on
David Letterman, Bill McEuen and Richard Abramson, two film producers who worked with Steve Martin and ran a marketing company, found themselves snowed in in Denver, Colorado. They were there for an advanced screening of Martin’s The Man with Two Brains. To take their minds off their missed flight home, they turned on the television and saw Pee-wee playing with toys in front of a stone-faced Letterman while the audience laughed excitedly. The two found themselves transfixed by the sight.
According to Abramson, when they returned to Los Angeles, McEuen was still extolling the virtues of the comedian they had seen on David Letterman. He discovered the booking was made through APA and called Marty Klein to request a meeting with the actor and offer his services as a manager. Although Klein was willing to broker a sit-down between the two parties, he offered a word of warning.
Abramson remembers the strange advice his friend got: “Marty said Paul’s a talented guy, but he’s difficult to work with. If you want to give it a try, go ahead.”
Reubens agreed to sign on with McEuen as manager. He also left APA for Abramson, a partner of McEuen’s. Together, the new team crafted a plan to get the actor a feature film deal.
“We laid out a program like we were marketing a film and set out to market this character,” Abramson explains. “The idea was to take him on the road, get a development deal with a studio, make a film, and then do a television series. Most of the time, even the best-laid plans don’t happen, but this time, things went completely according to plan.”
After a failed attempt to land a development deal with Universal Pictures, McEuen reached out to Robert Shapiro, the former president of theatrical film production at Warner Brothers who had recently resigned to become an independent producer. McEuen pitched him the idea of a Pee-wee feature, and the idea was appealing enough that it prompted Shapiro to sign on as executive producer and campaign to get the project under development at Warner Brothers.
Inside Pee-wee's Playhouse Page 3