Every Picture Tells a Story 11/19/21

Now appearing in the workspace: The Svengoolie bobblehead.

42 Years Ago Today

It seems like only yesterday...

I'm just kidding. No. It doesn't.

It seems like we've always had Svengoolie on our TV screens every Saturday night--first on WFLD (now Chicago's Fox affiliate), then on WCIU, and now on the ME-TV network.

But no. He had to start somewhere, and on June 16, 1979, he showed up on our TV screens for the very first time as Son of Svengoolie.

His show stayed on for several years, ending in 1986. And that, it seemed, was that.

Until it wasn't.

In January 1995, Son of Sven returned to the airwaves, now on WCIU, the U, and now just Svengoolie, the "Son of" having been lopped off with the permission of the original Sven, Jerry G. Bishop.

He still shows old horror and sci-fi movies--some great, some awful--with the same corny sense of humor and same thorough knowledge of the genres every Saturday night (with reruns the following Saturday at 11 a.m. on--surprise!--WCIU).

Happy Anniversary, Sven. Long may your rubber chickens fly.

Shocktober 10/25/19

This week's Chicago Reader features a nice cover article on Rich Koz--better known to millions of horror-movie viewers ghost-to-gh...er, coast-to-coast as Svengoolie.

Astonishingly, he's been at this horror-hosting gig for 40 years--more than 10 times longer than his predecessor, the late, great Jerry G. Bishop. And longer, I'd wager, than nearly all of his contemporaries. Even Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, started after Son of Sven.

And may he go for many, many more.

This Week's Travel Reading (Shocktober Edition)

While it's good to have a book devoted to Chicago's first official horror host, Mad Marvin (a.k.a. Terry Bennett), much of this territory was already covered in Chicago Horror Movie Shows: From Shock Theatre to Svengoolie by Ted Okuda and Mark Yurkiw.

Also, Don Glut includes a couple of huge factual errors--he claims the late Jerry G. Bishop "abandoned" his role as the original Svengoolie (if, by "abandoned," he means "was let go by WFLD and moved on to other things," then Glut is correct); and he claims the current Svengoolie, Rich Koz, has been at WFLD since 1979 (he was there for six-plus years, but was let go in 1986 and has been part of the WCIU family of stations since New Year's Eve 1994).

Still, Glut does bring a personal perspective to the topic. He saw the programs when they aired live in the late 1950s (no footage is known to exist) and met Terry Bennett and his wife, Joy. He also had access to various documents related to the show, so it's a somewhat more in-depth look than Chicago Horror Movie Shows provided.

RIP: The Original Svengoolie

Back in the days before the home video revolution, cable, satellite dishes and the Internet, if you wanted to see a movie, there were only two things to do: get off your ass and go to a theater, or sit on your ass and watch whatever was playing that night on TV. And, if you were lucky enough to live in a big city like, say, Chicago (which I was), you had a few choices, since most local stations (even the network affiliates) had air time to fill.

And if it was, say, a Friday night in the early '70s? My choice was to tune in to Screaming Yellow Theater on WFLD.

Sure, the initial attraction was the movies, a mixed bag of '40s and '50s B-grade (or lower) horror and sci-fi flicks, but that's not why I tuned in week after week. I tuned in for the man who appeared just before and after the commercial breaks. The man in the long green wig, sunglasses (worn at night) and striped bellbottoms. The man who did little skis, told jokes and, inevitably, got hit by a rain of rubber chickens.

I tuned in for Svengoolie.

Upon the news of his passing this past Sunday of a heart attack at the age of 77, one of the websites for a local network affiliate said his real name was Jerry G. Bishop, but that wasn't true--his real name was Jerry Ghan, who worked in radio and TV for decades as Jerry G. Bishop (or, when he was a DJ in the '60s, just Jerry G.). He was originally from Chicago, but also worked in Cleveland pre-Svengoolie and San Diego post-Svengoolie.

But what we in the Windy City remember him best for is, of course, the shtick he did around awful movies like The Bride and the Beast and Death Curse of Tartu. His humor never seemed mean or overly adult, but something kids could take one meaning from and adults another. And, given how bad most of the movies were, he made them watchable.

He did something else as well. He inspired an interest in watching movies on a regular basis and, along with Creature Feature over on WGN, began my cinematic education at a very early age.

He also inspired a young college student, who went on to work for Mr. Bishop as a writer and, a few years later, as his replacement--Rich Koz, the current Svengoolie, who has written his own touching tribute to his friend and mentor.

His run as the original Sven lasted a relatively short time--only three years--but his impact is still felt today, in Chicago and, thanks to ME-TV, well beyond.

Rest in peace, Jerry G., and flights of rubber chickens wing thee to thy rest.

Scary Monsters

When I got home after what had been a pretty awful day, I needed something to lift my spirits. And, as luck would have it, something spirit-lifting was waiting for me there (aside from Olivia, of course): The latest issue of Scary Monsters Magazine.

As you can see above, Scary Monsters #87 is a issue-long tribute to Chicago's own horror-hosting legend, Svengoolie, with a very nice cover by veteran comic book artist Terry Beatty. It's full of reminiscences, photos and even a brief essay by the man himself, who continues to recover from a massive heart attack (and subsequent double bypass surgery) he suffered just after Halloween 2012.

That makes this a very special issue. What makes it extra special? I'm in it, too.

When preparing this tribute issue, the published put out an open call to Svengoolie fans for materials--photos, essays, memories, etc. I submitted a written piece, along with three photos--two of the response card Sven sent me (one of the front, another of the back) in answer to a fan letter sent during his original run on WFLD back in the late '70s and early '80s, and one of a similar response card for the original Svengoolie, Jerry G. Bishop--and they decided to use the piece and two of the photos. They even used the explanation/intro I wrote at the head of the email.

It's really nice to see my words in print again, especially in tribute to someone who's given me so much entertainment over the years.

If you can't find the issue at your local newsstand, it's also available via Scary Monsters Store. My essay and photos can be found on pages 85 and 86.

This Week's Travel Reading

Everyone who knows me knows how much I enjoy horror films, especially the classics from the '30s and '40s (and the not-so-classics from those decades as well). JB knows this all to well; he is the only other person besides myself to attend every single HMB (and even hosted the event a few times). So when he picked birthday presents for me from my Amazon Wishlist, he chose carefully--and, as it happens, well.

Within the elegantly wrapped package pictured above were two presents: The box set of third season of Rod Serling's Night Gallery and the book pictured below. I am lucky enough to live in a city with a popular horror host--Svengoolie, who started out in 1979 and is now in his 17th(!) consecutive year on WCIU and now ME-TV (meaning he's now seen all over the country). This book covers him and dozens of others from all over America, from the famous (Vampira, Ghoulardi, Zacherly) to the obscure. So far, it's a very fun read--and very much the kind of book for me.

Throw in my two best fiends...er, friends, JB and Dee, a fine meat loaf dinner (pictured below), several Bloody Marys and a lovely ginger waitress with the appropriate name of Colleen, and my day-later birthday celebration was quite a blast indeed!

The Horror of It All

First, there was the sound--a long, groaning, creaking sound that could only issue forth from a centuries-old coffin lid.

Then came the music--an eerie, bass-driven tune punctuated by shrill, specific guitar notes and accentuated by strings and, perhaps, a harp.

Then the string of black & white images from classic Universal horror films like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man and The Mummy flowed across the screen.

Finally, the title card bearing the freehand-drawn visage of a man with long, flowing hair, a formal top hat, bulging eyes and a smile that seemed to show dozens (if not hundreds) of razor-sharp teeth displayed the name of the program as the voiceover man (initially Carl Greyson, later Marty McNeely, both newscasters handling the late shift) announced the evening's feature presentation.

So began nearly every showing of Creature Features, the weekly WGN horror-movie showcase that stirred the imaginations--and haunted the dreams--of children and adults alike from its premiere on Saturday, September 19, 1970 until May 1976. (The very first and very last movies shown on Creature Features were one and the same: the Tod Browning/Bela Lugosi version of Dracula.)

In my memory, such as it is, Creature Features lasted at least two years longer than that, and I could swear that I ran across a late-night version of it that eschewed the usual montage and just presented the title card with the line drawing of Lon Chaney from London After Midnight (ironically, a long-lost silent film that therefore could never be shown on Creature Features--or anywhere else, for that matter) and the spooky Henry Mancini theme lifted from Blake Edwards' Experiment in Terror (also ironically, not a horror film and therefore something that would never be shown on Creature Features).

Regardless of how long the show was actually on the air, it made a deep impression on me and much of my generation growing up in Chicago in the 1970s. It also gave me my first introduction to many of the classics of the genre--in addition to the aforementioned Universal horror classics of the '30s and '40s, Creature Features also ran selections from Warner Bros. (Doctor X), Columbia (The Black Room), 20th Century Fox (The Lodger) and even Japan's Toho Studios (the Americanized version of the original Godzilla and my all-time favorite daikaiju classic, War of the Gargantuas).

As I've mentioned before, I was lucky enough to have grown up in Chicago, where we had many TV stations with lots of programming time to fill, even in the days before all stations ran all 24 hours. (In the 1970s, most stations were off the air by one o'clock in the morning.) And what was one of the most cost-effective way to fill that time? Movies. That meant just about every channel had at least one regularly scheduled movie program. Some, like WGN, had several. So we were lucky enough to have more than one horror-film showcase on the air at the same time.

In fact, the other high-profile monster show in Chicago in the 1970s officially started just one day before Creature Features first stalked the airwaves. Well, sort of.

That Friday night, September 18, 1970, WFLD launched their own horror movie showcase, Screaming Yellow Theater. At first, it didn't really have a host--not even a line drawing standing in for a host a la Creature Features. It just had the voice of staff announcer Jerry G. Bishop doing a Bela Lugosi impersonation--appropriate enough, since the first feature that first night was Ghosts on the Loose, an East Side Kids comedy with Lugosi as a menacing guest star.

According to Chicago TV Horror Movie Shows: From Shock Theatre to Svengoolie, the very entertaining history of our fair city's horror movie showcases by Ted Okuda and Mark Yurkiw, Bishop continued hosting Screaming Yellow Theater off-screen for several months, maintaining the Lugosi impression while adding smart-ass comments about the movies, which weren't nearly up to the fare over on WGN. There were a few certified classics, like the original Night of the Living Dead and Mario Bava's Black Sunday and some unsung gems like Night Tide (starring a young Dennis Hopper) or The Haunter Strangler (starring an old Boris Karloff), but most of the movies on Screaming Yellow Theater were low-budget, no-star garbage that needed all the help they could get. And come that following summer, boy would they get it. When Bishop finally debuted on-screen as Svengoolie, Screaming Yellow Theater completely stopped being about the movies and was now all about the green-haired hippy vampire with the Transylvanian accent. the movies were still there and still bad, but the jokes were worse, which made them that much funnier. Bishop was basically doing stand-up prop comedy (most of the props being rubber chickens hurled at him whenever he made a bad pun, which was often) on a decidedly shoestring budget. He was also obviously having a blast with the gig.

For all good things, though, there is an end, and the end for Svengoolie came rather unceremoniously in the first week of September 1973, when the new owners of WFLD decided to save some money (like they were spending a whole lot of cash on the show anyway), cancel Svengoolie and use the horror host they already had on their payroll in Cleveland and Detroit: The Ghoul, successor to Ghoulardi (a.k.a. Ernie Anderson, father of director P.T. Anderson).

I tuned in the next Saturday, fully expecting to be entertained by the green-haired hippy vampire telling corny jokes and making silly puns, only to find a new guy dressed as a gangster and toting a Tommy gun. (Because he was on in Chicago now. And we think gangsters are hilarious.) At least that's how my nine-year-old mind recorded the event. (Remember what I said above about memory.)

Whatever actually happened that night, three things were verifiably clear: Svengoolie was gone. The Ghoul was here. And the Ghoul was just not amusing to me. (Apparently, it wasn't just me. He only stayed on Chicago airwaves for a few months, though he's been on and off the air in Cleveland and Detroit ever since and even has his own website. More power to him.)

Even as good things end, other good things begin. After a few years without either Creature Features and Screaming Yellow Theater and only a few quieter, hostless shows (one of them ironically named Creature Feature and even more ironically on WFLD, former home of Svengoolie) to feed our need for monster mashes, WFLD changes ownership again--in fact, changed back to the previous ownership, which wanted its own horror host again. That's how they wound up with Son of Svengoolie (a.k.a. Rich Koz) in June 1979. That lasted until 1986, but there was life in the ol' Goolie yet: he rose from the dead on New Year's Eve 1994 and has been showing bad movies (and telling worse jokes) ever since.

So this weekend when the 40th anniversaries of Creature Features and Screaming Yellow Theater are upon us, raise a pint (of blood) in celebration and watch a bad movie. Something with Bela Lugosi would do just fine.

Shocktober, 10/29/09, Part 5

The postcard Son of Svengoolie (now just "plain" Svengoolie) sent me back in 1980.

Shocktober, 10/28/09

For Halloween 1981, Sven showed a double feature of The Mummy and House of Horrors. This year? Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Shocktober: Creature Features Intro (sort of)

I was fortunate enough to grow up in Chicago, where I had many local TV viewing options when I was young and impressionable.

Not only could I enjoy the antics of Svengoolie (both the original, Jerry G. Bishop, and his replacement--still going strong after 30 years!--Rich Koz), but I could cower on the couch of what passed for our family rec room as the strains of Henry Mancini's "experiment in Terror" played over the intro to WGN's Creature Features, which played the classic Universal horror films from the '30s and '40s, as well as various sci-fi flicks and even the occasional Godzilla film.

The aforementioned creepy intro was accidentally thrown out by WGN ages ago, and no videotape has turned up (most people didn't have VCRs in the early '70s). However, an enterprising soul has re-created the intro on YouTube, using an audio recording of the program to add the spooky voice of newsman/voiceover guy Carl Grayson to the footage of the Wolf Man, Frankenstein Monster and Dracula stalking the night.

Enjoy.

Monday Miscellania 10/12/09

Last Movie I saw: Whip It. Why did this movie fail at the box office? Was it resistance to the concept of Drew Barrymore as a director? (She does a relatively straightforward job--not bad for a first-timer, but with plenty of room to grow.) Was it a general lack of interest in roller derby? Was it backlash-by-proxy against Diablo Cody because Ellen Page starred in Juno? (At least one review I read felt the need to crack on RS while praising Page--Diablo-as-piñata has become the latest crutch for lazy film critics.)

Whatever. Whip It is an entertaining little flick--the plot is a cliche combo of "teen rebels against tight-assed mom" and "bad-but-plucky sports team becomes good enough to play for the championship," but it's more than slightly freshened by a remarkably deep cast (Page, Daniel Stern, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Zoe Bell and Barrymore herself).

If you can't get out to one of the few theaters still rolling it, look for it on cable or DVD in a few months. It'll be worth it.

Travel Reading: Chicago TV Horror Shows: From Shock Theatre to Svengoolie. This history of local TV shows specializing in horror films given to me as a Christmas present by JB a couple of years ago, and it's been an off-and-on travel companion of mine ever since. Writers Ted Okuda and Mark Yurkiw ramble a bit--they could have used a good copyeditor.

They do, however, hit many the high points of my misspent youth, including Creature Features on WGN (with its creepy Henry Mancini theme music and that drawing of Lon Chaney from London After Midnight that gave me nightmares for years) and both the original Svengoolie, Jerry G. Bishop, and his successor, Son of Svengoolie, Rich Koz, who's still on the air every Saturday night, with bad movies and worse jokes. I couldn't think of a better visual comfort food.

Last, But Not Least: The Chicago Transit Authority announced today that as of February 2010, they're simultaneously raising fares (some as high as $3 per ride) and cutting service. So, we'll be paying even more and getting even less! Happy Monday, everybody!

Every Picture Tells a Story: 8/14/09

A typical Saturday night in La Casa del Terror.

RIP: John Callaway

This past Halloween, one of our local Public Television stations, WTTW, was to run an interview with Rich Koz, better known to local TV viewers as Svengoolie. (Yes, we have more than one PBS station. We're Chicago. That's how we roll.) In the course of the interview, Koz was asked detailod questions about his lengthy career; at one point, the interviewer even tossed one of Svengoolie's signature rubber chickens at Koz.

The interviewer was John Callaway.

Callaway was a local broadcast journalism legend who, for 15 years, hosted WTTW's weeknight public affairs program, Chicago Tonight, which features interviews, stories and commentary on local and national news, sports, entertainment and history.

When Callaway retired from the program in 1999, he didn't fully "retire"--he continued to host Chicago Stories, a documentary series covering major events and places in the city's history such as the Eastland disaster, in which an excursion ship capsized in the Chicago river, killing hundreds, or Riverview, the North Side amusement park that entertained children of all ages until its closing at the end of the 1967 season (it was demolished the following year).

Callaway also continued conducting interviews for Chicago Tonight, including many for The Friday Night Show, a half-hour segment within the weekly Chicago Tonight: The Week in Review in which Callaway spoke with newsmakers of all kinds: Politicians, actors, athletes, writers and fellow journalists.

The interview with Rich Koz didn't air as scheduled on Halloween--it would up being broadcast weeks later--because Studs Terkel, the legendary Chicago author, had died that day, and WTTW reran Callaway's last interview with Terkel instead.

Now Callaway, unquestionably the most thorough, insightful and intelligent interviewer I've ever seen, has himself died of an apparent heart attack while shopping in Racine, WI. He was 72.

Sven Addendum

Yesterday at work, I put in overtime (for the second day in a row) and developed a massive headache toeing the border of a migraine (also for the second day in a row). And by the time I left work? It was raining. Sideways.

By the time I got back to La Casa del Terror, I was soaking wet--yes, I had an umbrella, but it had little effect on the driving rain--and Charlie Watts, Keith Moon and Ringo Starr were all pounding the same steady beat in my aching skull. (Bonzo Bonham may have been in there as well, for all I know.) In short, I was pretty miserable and wanted little more than a bite to eat and a few minutes of productive peace while looking through old videotapes in order to figure out just what the hell I have.

I'd taped a lot of movies off of Turner Classic Movies, especially silent movies (which, thank goodness, they show fairly often), and many of the older tapes included episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Lost World (mmm, Jennifer O'Dell). Some of the programs were taped for one-time viewing and then forgotten about (like when Oprah ripped James Frey a new one for making up large parts of his "memoir"), while other programs were taped for historical purposes (like the last episode of Bozo's Circus, the longest running show in the history of children's television).

On the last tape I checked, though, I found something that I not only do not remember taping, but that I was thrilled to have at all: The very first "Svengoolie" show on WCIU. The movie that day, January 7, 1995, was C.H.U.D., a low-grade horror flick about cannibal mutations living under the streets of New York. Rich Koz started the show by popping open the coffin, explaining that he used to be known as "Son of Svengoolie" (but now was all grown up) and being buffeted with rubber chickens after making an awful joke (nothing new there).

These first couple of minutes are noticeable different from the way the show looks today. The set decoration was minimal--not that it's a Cecil B. DeMille production now, but at least the set has actual wall, instead of black curtains behind the coffin taking the place of walls. Also, the studio assistants on that first broadcast actually ran out of rubber chickens to toss, something that would never happen today (because one of the show's sponsors provides the chickens, there is a much larger supply than when Koz was buying them himself).

There was also another hidden treasure on this tape: A couple of minutes of footage of Koz's very first appearance on WCIU a week earlier, when the station switched from ethnic and business programming to more standard entertainment programming. The station formally switched over as 1994 became 1995, but it ran a brief "preview" of upcoming programming (mostly sitcom reruns, plus the aforementioned Svengoolie) hosted by Koz in full Sven costume; the videotape captures those first moments of Koz introducing an episode of Leave It to Beaver.

the videotape in question is not in the best of shape--it is, after all, nearly 15 years old. Also, my videotaping skills weren't quite as sharp then as they are today--the end credits of the Svengoolie episode were clipped off by whatever I taped after that. But the next opportunity I get, I will have a friend burn the contents of that tape onto a DVD. It's local TV history. It should be preserved.

It's also personal history: that program was recorded while I was still living in the small second-floor apartment in my parents' house. It was recorded while Dad was still alive. That makes the tape more special than it would have already been.

And? I found the tape on the anniversary of both Rich Koz's Sven premiere and Dad's passing.

Svengoolie

June 16 is, as it happens, a a sad personal anniversary: 14 years ago on this date, my dad passed away while recovering from triple bypass surgery. He was just 60 years old.

Most years, I keep to myself on this day except, perhaps for a brief phone call to or from Mom--it may have been 14 years, but that doesn't mean she misses her husband, her life partner, any less.

This year, though, I'm reminded that June 16 is not just a sad personal anniversary. It's also a very happy anniversary for many other people: Today marks 30 years since Rich Koz first hit the airwaves as the Son of Svengoolie.

For those of you who aren't steeped in Chicago entertainment lore, a brief history lesson: In 1970, local radio/TV personality Jerry G. Bishop began hosting a Saturday night horror movie show called Screaming Yellow Theater as a hippy vampire character named Svengoolie; he had long green hair, wore sunglasses and a red sweatshirt, and bookended the movie segments with goofy skits and occasional celebrity appearances (like comedians Mort Sahl or Pat Paulson). Bishop played this role at WFLD-TV until 1973, when Kaiser Broadcasting bought the station from Field Communications and ended much of WFLD's local programming, including the much, beloved BJ and Dirty Dragon Show and the equally adored Svengoolie. Kaiser replaced the original Sven with another horror host they already had under contract, The Ghoul, who was popular in Cleveland and Detroit. I remember tuning in to catch Sven on Saturday night, as usual, finding instead this brash, obnoxious loudmouth who, as I remember, was dressed like a gangster (because he doing a show in Chicago, ho ho!) and dissed his predecessor. It was the first time I'd watched The Ghoul--and, also, the last. (I wasn't alone--The Ghoul only lasted a few months in Chicago, while his career continued elsewhere.)

Flash forward a few years. Kaiser gave up its ownership of WFLD, with Field taking over again. They wanted a horror host again, and the young man they chose, Rich Koz, had been an assistant to/collaborator with the original Sven, Jerry G. Bishop. Koz's look was different--more like a mortician than a hippy--but the humor and sense of fun were pretty much the same. Koz played the Son of Svengoolie from 1979 until 1986--more than doubling Bishop's original run--and won a few local Emmys along the way before Fox bought WFLD and brought down the axe again.

But, proving that you just can't keep a good ghoul down, Sven rose from the dead yet again in 1995, when WCIU, which had been a Spanish-language/business ticker station for years, switched back to English-language programming and plugged Koz back into a Saturday afternoon slot, this time performing sans the "Son of" in his name; now, he was "just" Svengoolie.

Koz has gone on pretty much as before--his makeup is less elaborate, and he makes more of an effort to provide tidbits of information on the films he shows (from classics like Frankenstein and Night of the Living Dead to disasters like Plan 9 from Outer Space and Robot Monster), but the goofy comedy and song parodies are still part of the festivities. He's on every Saturday night (with reruns Sunday morning on WCIU's sister Station, WWME), cracking wise with his jokes, cracking windows and eardrums with his singing voice and cracking up his viewers. And we wouldn't have him any other way.

My dad wasn't a horror-film fan--he much preferred John Wayne westerns while Mom loved Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chan. But both parents encouraged a love of movies in general and didn't stand in the way of spending Saturday nights watching a guy dressed up as a vampire telling groaners to hundreds of thousands of people sitting in the dark, laughing along with him.

Congratulations, Mr. Koz. And Happy Anniversary, Svengoolie!

(P.S.--Sven's 30th Anniversary show airs this Saturday, June 20, featuring the Bert I. Gordon "classic," Attack of the Puppet People. Tune in, won't you? I know I will, if only via the "magic" of videotape.)