Actor/comedian Paul Reubens, best known to the world for his Pee-wee Herman persona, passed away yesterday of cancer, a diagnosis he kept secret for the last six years of his life. Reubens died a month shy of his 71st birthday.
Reubens was the son of Milton Reubenfeld, a fighter pilot for both the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Air Force who became a founding member of Israel's nascent Air Force who played a critical role in keeping the Egyptian Army from reaching Tel Aviv.
The younger Reubens found his flight of fancy on stage and in the early 1970's would become part of L.A.'s top Improv group The Groundlings. While with The Groundlings, he developed the Pee-wee Herman character. After being rejected by SNL, Reubens put on a full-fledged Pee-wee Herman show in L.A. which became an underground sensation. By the early 1980's, Pee-wee Herman would appear on HBO as well as in Cheech and Chong's Next Movie and was a frequent guest of David Letterman. By the mid-1980's, Pee wee Herman was a household name with the hit movie Pee-wee's Big Adventure in 1985 and the Saturday morning show Pee-wee's Playhouse which ran from 1986 to 1991.
During this period, for all intents and purposes, Paul Reubens and Pee-wee Herman were one in the same even though many people knew Reubens had a small role as a waiter in The Blues Brothers. Still, it was jarring to hear his own voice. I remember one interview with Letterman in which Letterman told Reubens something to the effect of, "You know you're going to have to dress this way for the rest of your life."
In that respect, perhaps his arrest for "public indecency" in an adult theatre in Sarasota, Florda in Juy 1991 was a cry for help. Many came to Reuben's defense including the late comedian Gilbert Gottfried who said, "If masturbation is a crime, I should be on death row." There were also questions as to whether the Sarasota Police Department had anything better to do with its hands. Nevertheless, Reubens was out of the public limelight for several years.
When Reubens did return, it was as Paul Reubens and he would make appearances on shows like Murphy Brown, Everybody Loves Raymond, Ally McBeal and 30 Rock and in film playing characters very unlike Pee-wee Herman such as a rapist and killer in the Dwight Yoakam film South of Heaven, West of Hell and a drug dealer in Blow. Reubens' career was dealt a second blow when in 2002 he was accused of possessing child pornography though those charges would be dismissed in exchange for pleading guilty to one count of misdemeanor obscenity though he was not permitted to around children for several years without supervision. Considering no one ever accused Reubens of behaving inappropriately with a child, this did seem out of proportion.
At the end of the 2000s, Reubens revived the Pee-wee Herman character doing stage shows and one last film on Netflix titled Pee-wee's Big Holiday, but most of his employment in this period was as a voice actor.
Now that it has all been said and done, Paul Reubens will be remembered for his creation of Pee-wee Herman, a child-like man whose innocence and improvisational skills entertained and amused children and adults alike bringing the world much joy. That is a worthy epitaph. R.I.P.
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