Pee wee herman biography

By the fall of 1991, it looked like the end of Paul Reubens and his beloved persona, Pee-wee Herman. After his highly publicized arrest that July on charges of indecent exposure at an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Florida, Reubens had become a national laughingstock, and the actor had retreated entirely from the public view.

CBS immediately pulled syndicated episodes of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, and refused to air the final four episodes of the series, for which production had ended the previous year.

Toys-R-Us removed all Pee-wee toys from their shelves. Reubens would eventually plead no contest to the charges, but in the court of public opinion, many believed his career was over.

Instead, Reubens—who died of cancer on Sunday, at age 70—pulled off one of the most unlikely and unexpected comebacks in show business history. And he did it with five words: “Heard any good jokes lately?” he asked a cheerin