Ghoulardifest

Ghoulardifest, A Fun Filled Weekend, Horror Hosts, Television, Big Chuck & Lil John Show, Vendors, Live Entertainment, Music, Food, Ghoulardi, Ernie Anderson, Vintage, Nostalgia, Sci- Fi, Comedy, Cleveland, Ohio, Festival.

Ghoulardi was a fictional character invented and portrayed by disc jockey, voice announcer, and actor Ernie Anderson as the horror host of late night Shock Theater at WJW-TV, Channel 8, in Cleveland, Ohio from January 13, 1963 through December 16, 1966.

Shock Theater featured grade-“B” science fiction films and horror films. Shock Theater was aired in a Friday late-night time slot, but at the peak of Ghoulardi's popularity, Anderson also hosted the Saturday afternoon Masterpiece Theater, and the weekday children's program Laurel, Ghoulardi and Hardy.
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Ernie Anderson, a big band and jazz enthusiast and WWII U.S. Navy veteran, was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, on November 22, 1923.

His irreverent and influential host character was a hipster, unlike the horror character prototype. Ghoulardi’s costume was a long lab coat covered with “slogan” buttons, horn-rimmed sunglasses with a missing lens, a fake Van Dyke beard and moustache, and various messy, awkwardly-perched wigs. Ghoulardi's stage name was devised by Cleveland restaurateur Ralph Gulko, who was making a pun of the word "ghoul," and his own similar last name, suffixed with a generic "ethnic" ending.

During breaks in the movies, Anderson addressed the camera live in a part-Beat, part-ethnic accented commentary, peppered with catchphrases: “Hey, group!,” “Stay sick, knif” (“fink”), “Cool it,” “Turn blue” and “Ova-dey.” Anderson improvised because of his difficulty memorizing lines. He played novelty and offbeat rock and roll tunes, plus jazz and rhythm and blues songs under his live performance. He frequently played the Rivingtons' "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" over a clip of a toothless old man gurning.

Shock Theater drew both a black and white cult audience, who loved Ghoulardi's beatnik costume, the music, and his hip talk, which was a nod to black jazz and R&B artists. More mainstream viewers enjoyed his broad, unpretentious ethnic humor.

Ghoulardi spared no unhip targets: the bedroom communities Parma, Ohio, ("Par-ma?!") which he often called "Amrap" (Parma backwards) and Oxnard, California, ("Remember...Oxnard!"), bandleader Lawrence Welk and polka music, Cleveland television personalities Mike Douglas and Dorothy Fuldheim ("Dorothy Baby"), plus other public figures. In particular, Ghoulardi unmercifully jeered Parma for its ethnic, working-class, “white socks” sensibility, creating a series of taped skits called Parma Place. He adopted a crow and named him “Oxnard.”

He frequently mocked the poor quality films he was hosting: "If you want to watch a movie, don't watch this one," or "This movie is so bad, you should just go to bed." He had his crew comically insert random stock footage or his own image at climactic moments. In movies with chase scenes, for example, they might superimpose a shot of Ghoulardi running away, as if it was Ghoulardi being pursued.

Ghoulardi used friends and members of the station crew as supporting cast: engineer “Big Chuck” Schodowski, film editor Bob Soinski and writer Tim Conway (later of The Carol Burnett Show and “Dorf” fame). He was later assisted by teenage intern Ron Sweed, who had boarded a cross-town bus to try to meet his idol at a live appearance, clad in a gorilla suit. Anderson invited Sweed onstage; to the crowd’s delight, Sweed stumbled offstage into the audience. This, plus some unannounced gorilla-suited visits to the studio, sealed his place as Anderson’s intern.

The station, then owned by Storer Broadcasting, capitalized on Ghoulardi’s wide audience with a comprehensive merchandising program, giving Anderson a percentage as Storer also owned the "Ghoulardi" name. Anderson formed the “Ghoulardi All-Stars” sports teams, which played as many as 100 charity contests a year, frequently attracting thousands of fans.

Anderson openly battled station management. Schodowski was quoted as saying: "[S]tation management lived in daily fear as to what he might say or do on the air, because he was live." In spite of his solid ratings and profitablilty, they worried that Ghoulardi was testing too many television boundaries too quickly, and tried to rein in the character. Anderson responded by, among other things, detonating plastic action figures and plastic model cars sent in by viewers with firecrackers and small explosives on air, once nearly setting the studio on fire.

Induced by greater career promise and Tim Conway, who had already left town, Anderson retired Ghoulardi in 1966 and moved to Los Angeles, California, planning to act in film and television. Instead, he made a successful career in voice-over work, most prominently as the main voice for the ABC TV network during the 1970s and 1980s. He also announced previews for the syndicated program Star Trek: The Next Generation .

Anderson died of cancer on February 6, 1997.


More than 40 years after Ghoulardi signed off, his legacy endures: Clevelanders still associate polka music, white socks, and pink plastic flamingo and yard globe lawn ornaments with Parma, Ohio.

In the mid-1960s, Ghoulardi's irreverance overtook the rarefied Severance Hall, where Cleveland Orchestra conductor George Szell introduced one of his musicians as being from Parma, Ohio. According to Tim Conway, the concertgoing audience replied: "Par-ma?!"

As a tribute, jazz organist Jimmy McGriff wrote, recorded and released his song "Turn Blue."

Storer Broadcasting still owned the "Ghoulardi" name.


Big Chuck and Lil' John (aka Charles "Big Chuck" Schodowski and "Lil' John" Rinaldi) were late-night hosts on television station WJW in Cleveland, Ohio, United States from 1979 to 2007. In addition to hosting a movie with a live audience, they also performed original sketch comedy routines. At the end of each sketch was a very distinctive laugh voiced by Jay Lawrence.

Chuck Schodowski had been a long-time friend of Ernie Anderson, and had worked closely with him on the Ghoulardi show. Schodowski had been instrumental in bringing in the blend of blues and polka music that helped define Ghoulardi's show, adding comic audio drop-ins to enliven the often awful movies, and immortalized The Rivingtons' tune "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" by marrying it to the image of an old man "gurning".

When Anderson left Cleveland for California in 1966, his popular Ghoulardi character was retired, and a talent search ensued to find a replacement. Schodowski agreed to help Bob Wells (WJW's "Hoolihan the Weatherman") with his audition, and the management decided they liked the way the two performed together. They became co-hosts of the Hoolihan & Big Chuck Show.Motown group The Fantastic Four's song " To Share Your Love" was used as the show's opening theme song.

After Wells left the show in 1979, 4 foot-3 inch (1.3 meter) jeweler John Rinaldi, a regular performer on the show, took over as co-host on the renamed Big Chuck & Lil' John Show.

For many years, the show aired at 11:30pm on Friday nights before moving to midnight on Saturday nights in 1993, then back to Fridays following WJW's affiliation switch to Fox, before ultimately going back to Saturdays following Mad TV. Its final time slot was at 12:30am Saturday nights/Sunday mornings, along with a companion Couch Potato Theatre airing at 10am on Saturday morning (the latter either a movie showing or an all-skits hour show).

On December 2006, Charles Schodowski announced he would retire in June 2007. As part of his farewell, WJW broadcast the hour-long retrospective Big Chuck and Lil' John: The End of an Era. This also marked the end of the Big Chuck & Lil' John Show, with the last regular episode airing the afternoon of June 16, 2007 and again in the early morning of June 17.

In October 2008, Schodowski released his autobiography, Big Chuck: My Favorite Stories from 47 Years on Cleveland TV, co-written by Cleveland Plain-Dealer media writer Tom Feran. The book debuted at the 2008 Ghoulardifest convention.

Some sketches and parodies

* Ben Crazy - a parody of a popular TV medical drama, Ben Casey
* The Certain Ethnic _____ - a play on Big Chuck's Polish heritage (e.g., The Certain Ethnic Driver, who drives through red traffic lights and stops at green lights)
* The Kielbasa Kid - a parody of The Lone Ranger and other popular TV westerns
* Parma Place - a parody of soap-opera Peyton Place
* Soul Man - a parody of Superman
* Mary Hartski, Mary Hartski - a parody of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

Big Chuck and Lil' John would use some of WJW's personalities, like station meteorologist Dick Goddard, in their skits. One sketch dealt with Cleveland's weather radar, in which Cleveland's meteorologists compete to see who had better Doppler. As Goddard claims that WJW has radar that can see clearly to a neighborhood, the image reveals a woman taking a bath (strategically covered with bubbles), and Goddard hides the image with his suit jacket.

Newscaster Robin Swoboda appeared as the main villain in "Batguy & Rinaldi" (a parody of Batman & Robin), and sportscasters Casey Coleman and Dan Coughlin made a cameo in a Super Bowl-based skit. Other later skits featured WJW station announcer Bill Ward announcing introductions to skits or for faux testimonial advertisements in the style of Hoolihan.

Owing to the station's long affilation with the CBS television network, CBS stars like Buddy Ebsen and Andy Griffith made cameos in several skits, as well as Tim Conway - who by then was a star on CBS' The Carol Burnett Show. Athletes like Muhammad Ali, Earnie Shavers and Jack Lambert also made guest appearances on skits.