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Pee-wee’s Playhouse is an American comedy children’s television series starring Paul Reubens as the childlike Pee-wee Herman that ran from 1986 to 1990 on Saturday mornings on CBS, and airing in reruns until July 1991. The show was developed from Reubens’s popular stage show and the TV special The Pee-wee Herman Show, produced for HBO, which was similar in style but featured much more adult humor.
In 2004 and 2007, Pee-wee’s Playhouse was ranked No. 10 and No. 12 on TV Guide’s Top Cult Shows Ever, respectively.[2][3][4] It was also named to Time’s list of the 100 Best TV Shows in 2007.
The Pee-wee Herman character was developed by Reubens into a live stage show titled The Pee-wee Herman Show in 1980. It features many characters that would go on to appear in Playhouse, including Captain Carl, Jambi the Genie, Miss Yvonne, Pterri the Pterodactyl, and Clocky. While enjoying continuous popularity with the show, Reubens teamed with young director Tim Burton in 1985 to make the comedy film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. It became one of the year’s surprise hits, costing a relatively modest $7 million to make but taking in $40 million at the box office.[6][7]
After seeing the success of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, the CBS network approached Reubens with an ill-received cartoon series proposal.[8] In 1986, CBS agreed to sign Reubens to act, produce, and direct his own live-action Saturday morning children’s program, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, with a budget of US$325,000 per episode (comparable to that of a half-hour prime-time sitcom),[9] and full creative control, although CBS did request a few minor changes over the years.[10]
Reubens assembled a supporting troupe that included ex-Groundlings and cast members from The Pee-wee Herman Show, including Phil Hartman, John Paragon, Lynne Marie Stewart, Laurence Fishburne, and S. Epatha Merkerson. Production began in New York City in the summer of 1986 in a converted loft on Broadway, which one of the show’s writers, George McGrath, described as a “sweatshop”.[1] Reubens moved the production to Los Angeles for season 2 in 1987, resulting in a new set and a more relaxed work atmosphere.[11]
The creative design of the show was concocted by a troupe of artists including Wayne White, Gary Panter, Craig Bartlett, Nick Park, Richard Goleszowski, Gregory Harrison, Ric Heitzman, and Phil Trumbo. The first day of production, right as Panter began reading the scripts to find out where everything would be situated, set workers hurriedly asked him, “Where’s the plans? All the carpenters are standing here ready to build everything.” Panter responded, “You just have to give us 15 minutes to design this thing!”[12] When asked about the styles that went into the set design, Panter said, “This was like the hippie dream …. It was a show made by artists …. We put art history all over the show. It’s really like …. I think Mike Kelley said, and it’s right, that it’s kind of like the Googie style – it’s like those LA types of coffee shops and stuff but kind of psychedelic, over-the-top.”[13] Several artistic filmmaking techniques are featured on the program including chroma key, stop-motion animation, and clay animation.
Pee-Wee’s Playhouse was designed as an educational yet entertaining and artistic show for children. Its conception was greatly influenced by shows Reubens had watched as a child, like The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, The Mickey Mouse Club, Captain Kangaroo, and Howdy Doody. The show quickly acquired a dual audience of kids and adults.[14][15][16] This proved especially important to CBS in the late 1980s when people meters were introduced; the vice president of rival network ABC, which had targeted its cartoons toward preschoolers, observed that ABC “got killed” in the ratings by Pee-Wee’s Playhouse because ABC’s younger audience could not operate the people meters. In 1988, ABC would shift its programming to shows that would draw both children and adults, helping to begin that network’s recovery.[17][18]
Reubens, always trying to make Pee-wee a positive role model, sought to make a significantly moral show that would teach children the ethics of reciprocity.[16] Reubens believed that children liked the Playhouse because it was fast-paced, colorful, and “never talked down to them”, while parents liked the Playhouse because it reminded them of the past.