5/18/2023 0 Comments Fritz the night owl![]() ![]() So, Elton John was big at that time, they came up with the idea of the big glasses, and our artist went to Revco and found a $10 pair of Christian Dior sunglasses and added the Masonite horns, then broke a mirror and glued the little shards of mirror to the horns. “We discussed a bunch of ideas on how to put me on camera, including an owl suit that looked like the San Diego chicken. Well, letters starting swarming into the station for Fritz the Nite Owl, despite the fact there was no real character in existence to read them. He began adlibbing over the cartoons and bringing in his own music-typically mellow jazz. The Nite Owl Theater originally bequeathed to Fritz was unhosted, save for a cartoon animation of an owl fixing a late night sandwich. With experience as a radio DJ, I had experience adlibbing, so I just went for it, and it worked.” So I just said, ‘OK, everything I do is going to visually, or musically, or in terms of philosophy or history, relate to the film. It always bothered me that the movie hosts up to that time always seemed like they were never watching the movie that they were showing. Well, I started bs-ing about the movie while it was running. So, I was a booth announcer for several years, until Nite Owl fell into my shift. “After I got out of the service, I was promised a job back at Channel 10. Fortunately, due to his college education at OSU and entertainment experience, the Army put him at the borrowed Paramount studios, where he wrote, narrated, and directed instructional videos for soldiers, like how to transfer petroleum to and from an oil tanker. “But I made it work.”įritz started as a radio production assistant in the ’50s, until he was drafted into the Army. So, instead of growing up to look like Johnny Weissmuller, I grew up looking like Woody Allen,” Fritz laughed. That was Fritz-a voice and personality grown larger than life for a diminutive man who thought he was gonna grow up to be the size of Tarzan. Imagine a man arising from an onscreen coffin in the middle of Night of the Living Dead to warm up the audience. His recognized gimmick, aside from his gaudily flamboyant outfits, was being superimposed into the film, adding his impromptu, waggish commentary into the mix over a bit of light jazz. On Channel 10, from 1974 to 1991, we had Fritz “The Nite Owl” Peerenboom-a gangly, mustachioed man with a deep, mollifying voice and a pair of pointy, shimmering sunglasses that would make Elton John blush. Shock, an on-air magician who is remembered for his iconic catchphrase, “Let there be fright.” In Columbus, we had the best of them all. In Cincinnati there was The Cool Ghoul, who was known for his inimitable tongue fluttering and long, blonde hair. Back in those days, almost every local television station hosted their very own eccentric movie companion. Well, in the golden era of late night cable programming, before the advent of infinite entertainment avenues and all day Netflix benders, there existed a facet of our culture that was soon relegated to relic: the late night movie host-a companion of the night who, after the scheduled commercial breaks, would warm up audiences with insightful commentary, clever observations, and offbeat yarns. For me, having another person to kick around with and reflect on the impeding action or drama makes the experience more valuable. I don’t particularly enjoy watching movies alone.
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