The Past Prime Playhouse
Everybody had a local late-night favorite didn’t they?
Back when Saturday Night Live (SNL) was a great show to watch, insomniacs, drunk frat-boys, grounded high school students, second-shift workers, and various other creatures of the night enjoyed continued nighttime comedy antics with Bob Shreve after SNL concluded at 1:30AM.
While Bob Shreve was no Gilda Radner, John Belushi or Dan Aykroyd - to many young 1970-1980’s minds in Cincinnati, he was better.
Bob Shreve was the host of "The Past Prime Playhouse”, a variety and comedy skit show that aired from 1975 to 1985 on WKRC-TV in Cincinnati.
Past Prime Playhouse became known for its unique late-night programming style. The purpose of the show was to show quirky cult type movies, all night long, but during movie breaks there was movie trivia, movie fun facts, comedy skits and guests.
Schoenling All Night Theater
The all night movie format of the PPP usually included classic horror and a comedy from the Thirties and Forties, and a cult type. At each intermission, Bob would give a bit of movie knowledge or history regarding what the viewer was seeing. These were movies one would have never finished watching had it not been for Bob Shreve.
I remember Bob would get progressively more pickled on his favorite brewsky as the night wore on. One time Bob was showing either "Gimme Shelter" or "Woodstock" and Janis Joplin was up on stage shrieking her head off when suddenly her image was replaced by Bob Shreve wearing a mop on his head.
Memorable.
Looking back - cult-like.
Many of your night time creatures were as pickled as Bob and found this sort of entertainment hilarious, especially at that time of night and especially after SNL.
The PPP format grew from the “Schoenling All Night Theater” that began in 1963.
Shreve's combined experience in vaudeville, comic improvisation, and salesmanship crystallized when he became one of the pioneers of all-night broadcasting.
1963 was when Shreve made his first appearance as the bartender host of WCPO's “The Schoenling All Night Theater” sponsored by a local brewery, which ran from 1:30 am to 6:00 am on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings.
Not a bad marketing ploy by a brewery to sponsor an overnight broadcast slot with a host who cuts up all evening and gets progressively drunk thru the night along with the audience.
The Schoenling Brewing Company opened its doors in 1934 in Cincinnati. It was family-owned, and I grew up with the many Schoenlings so there was plenty of Schoenling beer and later ‘Little Kings Cream Ale’ at our house and everyone else’s house.
Little Kings was the brew of choice for Bob Shreve.
In “Schoenling All Night Theater”, Shreve would greet the viewer as a visitor to his bar, and prepare to pour the first of the evening's mugs of Schoenling beer by singing the show's theme song, set to the tune of "Sailing, Sailing": "Schoenling, Schoenling / That is the beer for me / It has the taste of malt and hops / Of finest quality / Schoenling, Schoenling / My choice for purity / I've tried the rest, Schoenling's best / It's Schoenling beer for me!"
In 1975, the show moved to WKRC-TV, then Cincinnati's ABC affiliate, with the new Saturday Night Live-influenced title (SNL was a new program at the time), “The Past Prime Playhouse”.
The show's cast of characters included Chickie, a rubber chicken that Shreve sometimes stretched past the breaking point; Garoro, an ugly severed head; Spidel, a large stuffed spider that would swing into frame to knock hats off Bob's head,
Schoenling beer no longer sponsored the show and was replaced by new advertisers like LaRosa's Pizza, Hemsath Sound Centers, and Mayor's Jewelers, all local Cincinnati businesses.
WKRC would give the show it nicknamed "The PPP" its longest run.
Another Saturday night, another night with Bob and three or four or five Little Kings.
Bob Shreve was a man who could warble a tune, cut a rug, and stretch a rubber chicken while promoting sponsors and presenting movies.
We grew up with him.
It would impossible to recreate his presence today. In that era, knowing that you could switch on your TV at three in the morning to see the creative lunatic live in the studio, joking in between Mexican horror movies and long-forgotten 1950s crime thrillers.
So, was there a late night favorite you grew up on?
Everybody had a local late-night favorite didn’t they?
Radio personalities were the original influencers. My favorite was Larry Lujack & his sidekick, little snot-nosed Tommy.... haven't thought about them in a long time, thanks for the reminder!
You've jogged my memory. As a kid we had the Freddie Freihofer Show sponsored by the local Freihofer Bakery in upstate NY. The show was fueled by cookies instead of beer. How nice to have something regional instead of homogenized for all markets.