Paul Reubens, the actor and comedian whose character Pee-wee Herman became a cultural phenomenon through films and TV shows, has died. He was 70.
Reubens died Sunday night after a six-year struggle with cancer that he did not make public, 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 Monday 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.”
The character with his too-tight gray suit, white chunky loafers and red bow tie was best known for the film “Pee-wee's Big Adventure” and the television series “Pee-wee's Playhouse.”
The Pee-wee character would become a cultural constant for much of the 1980s, though an indecent exposure arrest in 1991 would send him 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 theater 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. In the plot, Pee-wee secretly wishes to fly.
HBO would air the show as a special.
“Pee Wee got his wish to fly,” Steve Martin tweeted after his death. “Thanks Paul Reubens for the brilliant off the wall comedy.”
Reubens took Pee-wee to the big screen in 1985’s “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.” The film, in which Pee-wee’s cherished bike is stolen, was said to be loosely based on Vittorio De Sica’s Italian neo-realist classic, “The Bicycle Thief.” The film, directed by Tim Burton and co-written by Phil Hartman of “Saturday Night Live,” sent Pee-wee on a nationwide escapade. 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.
Both silly and subversive and championing nonconformity, the Pee-wee universe was a trippy place, populated by things like a talking armchair and a friendly pterodactyl. The host, who is fond of secret words and loves fruit salad so much he once married it, is prone to lines like, “I know you are, but what am I?” and “Why don’t you take a picture; it’ll last longer?” The act was a hit because it worked on multiple levels, even though Reubens insists that wasn’t the plan.
“It’s for kids,” Reubens told The Associated Press in 2010. “People have tried to get me for years to go, ‘It wasn’t really for kids, right?’ Even the original show was for kids. I always censored myself to have it be kid-friendly.
“The whole thing has been just a gut feeling from the beginning," Reubens told the AP. "That’s all it ever is and I think always ever be. Much as people want me to dissect it and explain it, I can’t. One, I don’t know, and two, I don’t want to know, and three, I feel like I’ll hex myself if I know.”
Jimmy Kimmel posted on Instagram that “Paul Reubens was like no one else — a brilliant and original comedian who made kids and their parents laugh at the same time. He never forgot a birthday and shared his genuine delight for silliness with everyone he met."
Reubens' career was derailed when he was arrested for indecent exposure in an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Florida, where he grew up. He was handed a small fine but the damage to the character was incalculable.
He became the frequent butt of late-night talk show jokes and the perception of Reubens immediately changed.
“The moment that I realized my name was going to be said in the same sentence as children and sex, that’s really intense," Reubens told NBC in 2004. "That’s something I knew from that very moment, whatever happens past that point, something’s out there in the air that is really bad.”
Reubens said he got plenty of offers to work, but told the AP that most of them wanted to take "advantage of the luridness of my situation," and he didn't want to do them.
“It just changed,” he said. "Everything changed.”
In 2001, Reubens was arrested and charged with misdemeanor possession of child pornography after police seized images from his computer and photography collection, but the allegation was reduced to an obscenity charge and he was given three years probation.
Born Paul Rubenfield in Peekskill, New York, Reubens, the eldest of three children, grew up primarily in Sarasota before going to Boston University and the California Institute of the Arts.
Reubens would also act as non-Pee-wee characters including in Burton’s 1992 movie “Batman Returns,” the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” film and a guest-star run on the TV series “Murphy Brown.”
Associated Press Writer Alicia Rancilio and Film Writer Jake Coyle contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
19 Comments
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John-San
Why do these sicko escapes real gaol time. Reduce charges because he part of the morally corrupt entertainment industry. Epstein escaped justice for 2 decades. There hundreds and hundreds of these sicko in this industry and if you endorse and enjoy their products you need to revaluate your morals.
rainyday
Really sad to see him go. Pee Wee's Big Adventure was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Also loved him in Mystery Men, which is an underappreciated classic.
u_s__reamer
Pee Wee was unlucky to have been caught out in a time before America learned that "when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything."RIP
Strangerland
Wait, I thought now was the time of cancel culture. You're saying it was also around then, and went away? But how is it here?
Fighto!
I admit to not being very familiar with Pee Wee, having never lived in the US. I imagine he was like an American version of Mr Bean.
RIP.
Gaijinjland
Umm he was no Mr. Bean. No comparing. He was Michael Jackson level strange.
TokyoLiving
Jackpot!!!..
rainyday
Meaning what exactly? Reubens did some weird stuff, but he has never been accused of doing anything remotely like what Jackson has been accused of.
Gaijinjland
@rainyday
I don’t think Jackson was ever accused of being in possession of child porn. This guy was strange is all I’m saying and probably way sicker than Jackson.
rainyday
Guy had a massive collection of tens of thousands vintage kitsch stuff which had a few hundred year old pics (legal when they were made) mixed in with it. This is not generally how people actually into child porn go about getting it. Guy who sold the stuff to him in bulk said he didn’t know the problematic stuff was in there. Police searched his computer, house and found nothing, child porn related charges were dropped.
Think whatever you want about the guy, but nobody ever accused him of doing anything inappropriate to anybody, and saying, based on almost nothing, that he was “sicker” than a guy actually accused of child sex abuse is just unfair.
kaimycahl
Even in death their are good words and bad words about a person. Silence is never for ever because people always has something to say like it or not!
Speed
They forgot to mention his role as the really annoying hotel desk clerk in Cheech and Chong's "Up in Smoke" or "Next Movie." RIP, Pee Wee.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Michael Jackson was accused of doing acts with actual children.
u_s__reamer
Wait, I thought now was the time of cancel culture. You're saying it was also around then, and went away? But how is it here?
America has become much more liberal since the 1960s' cultural revolution: adulterous politicians, presidents with pot-smoking pasts and with a history of indulging in other banned substances, rapists and other sexual offenders, all these famous names have been given get-outta-jail free cards and have been allowed to run for high office in the last 20 years or so. But there IS a cancel culture on the deeply-rooted Amerikan right which has thrived since the time of the Salem witch hunts, the dispossession of First Nation Americans, the dehumanization of enslaved blacks, the Know-nothings of the 19th century (the DNA of MAGA), the anti-immigrant legislation born of stoked public paranoia, anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s that canceled Oppenheimer and many other gifted individuals, just to mention a few egregious examples a long American tradition that has spawned today's fanatical GOP anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ and book-banning palooza. Paul Reuben's peccadillo has been forgiven, posthumously, at least.
Londongoldfish
A great actor. RIP.
starpunk
A slap on the wrist. Porn of any kind is bad enough but this kind of cements his true colors.
Adulterous politicians are nothing new but Clinton's impeachment was more a sick juvenile media circus than a case of justice. Real sex offenders like Epstein, Weinstein, Randy Andy, R Kelly and Marilyn Manson have been given too much leeway for too long before justice finally caught up to them. It's the same way with the Gary Glitter and the late Rolf Harris.
And then there's trump. Need we say more?
lostrune2
It was a slap on the wrist because it was a no-nothing case
He bulk-bought boxes and boxes of vintage and kitsch pornography. The authorities went through it all with a fine-tooth comb until they came up with a handful of pictures that they said were "child porn." The case was so weak that the DA wasn't even going to go forward with charges, but the city attorney decided to file a case on the very last day they could. That's why child porn charges were dropped later because they had no case, and only given probation
TaiwanIsNotChina
If you don't think the right also looked the other way on rapists and sex offenders, I don't know what to tell you. The only thing the right did differently was all of their presidents were too old or too mentally incompetent to engage in such behavior that we know of.
TaiwanIsNotChina
You expect those that work with children to live like monks? In fact monks should be the ones you are most worried about...