What better time than Halloween to turn to our city’s own longtime crypt keeper and ambassador of corny yet creepy movies?
Svengoolie picked up in 1970 where Chicago’s original horror-movie host Mad Marvin (played by Terry Bennett) left off.
Here’s a look back at the men who have portrayed the now iconic ghost host through the decades.
The Chicago Ghoul Who Would Not Die! How horror host Svengoolie has stayed on the air for decades
Chicago history headlines
- Oct. 31, 1911: Cornerstone is laid for Medinah Temple ‘at the mystic hour of midnight.’ It opens the following year.
- Oct. 31, 1934: The Century of Progress closes on Northerly Island. The Chicago World’s Fair attracted more than 40 million visitors.
- Oct. 31, 1974: The Chicago Sting, named after the popular movie “The Sting,” is born. Chicagoan Lee B. Stern pays $250,000 for a franchise team with the North American Soccer League.
- Oct. 31, 1983: Chicago Bears founder, coach and player George Halas dies at 88.
- Former Illinois Black Panthers celebrate a new heritage trail commemorating their legacy
Sept. 18, 1970: A groovy ghoul emerges
The show, originally named “Screaming Yellow Theater,” premiered at 10 p.m. on WFLD-Ch. 32 and showed, “Ghosts on the Loose.” Viewers were welcomed to the antics by the opening song “Rumble” by Link Wray and the Wraymen, and a load of rubber chickens. The original host was Jerry G. Bishop, who donned green hair and a beard and mustache to portray a coffin-dwelling hippie with a wacky sense of humor named Svengoolie.
In an early advertisement, the Friday night feature was described as including, “Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi at their hair-raising best.” Other films screened during the first season included “Corridors of Blood,” “Strangler of the Tower” and “Horrors of the Black Museum.”
Just two years later, the Svengoolie-hosted late-night presentation was among the most popular TV genre — horror. Chicago Cubs pitcher Fergie Jenkins and Bears teammates Bobby Douglass and Bob “Smasher” Asher were guests.
“The trend started when trends do not often start — on local stations, whose desperate efforts to capture viewers from the talk shows led to such programs as ‘Creature Features’ and ‘Screaming Yellow Theater,'” Tribune TV critic Clarence Petersen wrote in February 1972. “In Chicago, ‘Creature Features’ on WGN-TV is second in popularity only to WBBM-TV’s ‘Best of CBS’ movie series on Saturday nights, and ‘Screaming Yellow Theater’ on WFLD-TV (suffering the impediment of UHF channeling) ranks higher on Friday nights than Merv Griffin — and the ratings were taken before ‘Svengoolie,’ host of the show, went live.”
Bishop’s popularity rose too. He also led the post-midnight talk show “What’s Happening?” and the 11 a.m. “Newstalk” on WFLD. But his groundbreaking spooky show was canceled by WFLD in 1973. He moved to San Diego in the late 1970s to host a weekend morning TV show. Bishop died there in 2013 at the age of 77.
June 16, 1979: ‘Son of Svengoolie’ debuts
Rich Koz, who landed a spot on the original show after mailing Bishop ideas for jokes then became Bishop’s co-writer and protege, launched the new take on Svengoolie — with Bishop’s blessing. The then-20-something writer, who grew up in Morton Grove and attended Northwestern University, was responsible for many of the jokes and antics (produced on a tight budget and filmed in a modest WFLD studio in Marina City) that new viewers came to love about the character — including dodging rubber chickens hurled at him by stagehands and delivering pronouncements in a really bad take on a Transylvanian accent.
“You can’t just pretend to be a vampire who comes out of the coffin once a week to show a film,” he told the Tribune in 1983. “It’s got to work on a lot more levels than that, otherwise you’re doing the same thing week after week and you get stale.”
After its launch, the show won a string of consecutive local Emmy Awards for outstanding achievement in local entertainment. When it reached its 200th episode, Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote, “The reason Svengoolie has lasted 200 shows, gathered an impressive audience and won all those awards is that Koz augments the random-motion badness with carefully thought-out bad comedy sketches and bad satirical film clips.”
Koz seemed delighted but also surprised by the following his character had created.
“You know, I never expected this to be a full-time thing,” he told the Tribune. “My interests are actually a lot broader. I’d like to do something along the lines of ‘SCTV’ or ‘Saturday Night Live’ in which I wouldn’t be limited by the Svengoolie character in keeping the show fresh.”
The final episode aired in early 1986.
Dec. 31, 1994: ‘Svengoolie’ revived
Koz grew up and so did his character. Both moved to the new independent station WCIU-Ch. 26 and have remained there ever since.
“It’ll be like Ed Begley Jr. dropping the Junios,” he told the Tribune at the time. “We’ll drop the ‘Son of’ and I’ll just be Svengoolie.’ Even at the end of the first run of ‘Sven,’ there were people who wondered who ‘Svengoolie’ was. A lot of people weren’t conscious of the station when Jerry was doing his stuff.”
Neal Sabin, executive vice president of Weigel Broadcasting, sought to add more locally produced shows to the lineup when he took over WCIU in 1994.
“(Rich) was someone we pinpointed as being underutilized in the market and whose program was already established.”
April 2, 2011: ‘goolie goes national
For the first time, “Svengoolie” was broadcast across the country on Weigel Broadcasting’s Me-TV network.
But how would Berwyn (which named Koz an honorary citizen in 1982) play in Peoria, Phoenix or Portland?
“The first shows will have a little piece that explains you’re going to hear about Berwyn,” Koz told the Tribune. “It’s like any TV show. Once people start watching it, people will pick up on things.”
October 2024: A ghoul looks at 45
Koz has been Svengoolie for 45 years now. But at 72, he’s never been hotter.
“Svengoolie” is so successful that its place in the Saturday programming block — which includes the ‘60s iterations of “Star Trek” and “Batman” as well as Three Stooges films — was expanded in the past year from two solid hours to two and a half hours.
One reason for this popularity, perhaps, is that Koz and Svengoolie — and they truly are one and the same — are among the last of their breed, throwbacks to the early days of local television. “He’s a little Borscht Belt,” said Sabin, “but also, a little vaudeville, too. And a little UHF basement programming, and there is a real charm to that in 2024.”
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