Bob Shreve
Encyclopedia
Bob Shreve was a first-generation television broadcasting personality based in Cincinnati, Ohio
.
-born Robert Gerald Shreve broke into radio following a stint in the U.S. Navy as a singer on Hoosier Hop and Calling All Poets for WOWO
in Fort Wayne. He subsequently appeared on "National Barn Dance
" for WLS
in Chicago, and Club Matinee for ABC
in New York, before accepting an offer from WLW
in Cincinnati. As a staff tenor for WLW, he sang the favorite hits of the day, sometimes duetting with other local talent such as Betty Clooney, the sister of Rosemary Clooney
.
In 1950, WLW added television to their service and Shreve was in the vanguard of talent to make the leap from radio to TV. In August 1950, he appeared in comedy skits on WLWT
's Cincinnati at Sunset, the first local program to receive national broadcast via NBC. Thereafter, he proved himself able to provide whatever the hungry airwaves needed: an on-air announcer, a mellow singing voice, a movie host, an able vaudevillian, a soft-shoe dancer, or a cornpone comedian. It was in the latter category that he made his first significant local success in The General Store, a half-hour comedy show in the style of Lum and Abner that aired on WLWT Mondays through Fridays at 3:30 p.m. Set in the mythic rural burg of Broken Tooth, Measley County USA (Population: 43), The General Store top-lined Bill Thall as store proprietor Willie, but Shreve stole every episode as his brain-dead employee Elmer Diffledorfer, who wore a sideways deerstalker cap and a necktie that stood up of its own accord. Remarkably, except for a basic scripted premise, each of the daily episodes was wholly improvised and the setting of the program allowed for easy accommodation of the sponsors' products. The show was a quirky comic phenomenon of its time, and Thall and Shreve made numerous personal appearances as Willie and Elmer in Cincinnati and other tri-state cities, and sometimes reprised the characters on WLWT's nationally broadcast Country & Western show, Midwestern Hayride
. During his tenure at WLWT, Shreve was also a frequent performer on the popular Ruth Lyons
show, The 50/50 Club.
In 1954, after The General Store Shreve was lured over to fledgling television station WCPO-TV
, where he co-hosted an afternoon show with Wanda Lewis and Colin Male, and played Lucky the Clown and Roger the Robot on the station's long-running morning children's program, The Uncle Al Show
. Circa 1959-60, he hosted The Three Stooges shorts while wearing a trademark bowler hat, plaid coat, and Elmer's old saluting necktie, and Popeye
cartoons while wearing a sailor's suit. Shreve's antics made him one of WCPO's most popular and beloved personalities, especially among children, and his on-air antics sometimes caught the eyes of comedians travelling through Cincinnati.He was joined on the air at various times by such surprise guests as Jerry Lewis
, Doodles Weaver
, and The Three Stooges themselves.
In 1963, Shreve's combined experience in vaudeville, comic improvisation, and salesmanship crystallized when he became one of the pioneers of all-night broadcasting. It was then that Shreve made his first appearance as the bartender host of WCPO's The Schoenling
All Night Theater, which ran from 1:30 am to 6:00 am on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings. Taking a page from Jackie Gleason
's popular skits with Frank Fontaine
on The Jackie Gleason Show
, 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!"
As the show went on, it got zanier and zanier with Shreve lip-synching songs like Irving Taylor's When the Crabgrass Blooms Again and Leona Anderson's Limburger Lover, and sometimes making surprise "cameo appearances" in the movies being shown. The show's crazy 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, and many others. During his commercial breaks, Shreve would also read on the air the names of viewers who called in, and it became the fashion for callers to invent preposterous names for themselves, just to get an amusing reaction from Shreve. Typically, the show mellowed to a more reflective mood around 4:00 am, with Shreve breaking into standards like "Me and My Shadow" and sometimes stepping out from behind the bar to indulge in a little soft-shoe dance. The show became so popular that Shreve was invited to host an identical program (called The Schoenling Nite People Theater) live from the studios of WHIO-TV
in Dayton, Ohio, on Friday nights/Saturday mornings, which lasted for several years.
In 1968-69, Shreve would follow a full night's work on the Cincinnati show by sticking around to host Cartoons A Go Go on Sunday mornings. Also during this period, when the popularity of the all-night show seemed at its height, he recorded an album, Good Olé [sic] Bob Doing His Thing for Cincinnati's King Records
with the help of the Dee Felice Trio. The album eschewed his popular comedy routines to present a pleasant, sentimental showcase for Shreve's warm Irish tenor voice and his affection for old-fashioned songs like "That Old Gang of Mine" and "Walkin' My Baby Back Home." With a cover sporting the King Records legend of "A James Brown
Production," the album is now one of the most coveted Shreve (and Brown) collectables; only two or three thousand copies were pressed.
When The Schoenling All Night Theater was unceremoniously cancelled by WCPO in 1970, it was quickly picked up by Shreve's old stomping grounds at WLWT as The Schoenling Nite People Theater. (The Dayton show of the same title was by this time discontinued.) Unfortunately, it did not last there more than a year or two. In 1975, the show moved to WKRC-TV
, then Cincinnati's ABC affiliate, with the new Saturday Night Live
-influenced title, The Past Prime Playhouse. Schoenling no longer sponsored the show, which gave way to new advertisers like LaRosa's Pizza, Hemsath Sound Centers, and Mayor's Jewelers. WKRC would give the show (nicknamed "The PPP") its longest run; it stayed on the late night airwaves for a full ten years, even though Shreve's shenanigans were toned down since the early days. Among the celebrity visitors to the PPP set over the course of that decade were Adam West
, Bill Cosby
, comedian Pete Barbutti
and the buxom stripper then known as "baseball's kissing bandit," Morganna
. During the latter years of the PPP, WKRC introduced a spin-off show-of-sorts for Garoro, Shreve's "gamey" severed head sidekick: Garoro's Theater of Horrors, the channel's weekly horror feature, introduced at the outset by the heretofore voiceless Garoro, who had somehow gained the power of Boris Karloff
-like speech.
It was widely rumored at the time that WKRC was losing sponsors for the show owing to Shreve's tendency to poke fun at and upstage his advertisers, but the truth behind the show's cancellation had more to do with the arrival of home video and infomercial
s. With more and more homes equipped to play movies on videocassette, the "all-night movies" aspect of shows like The Past Prime Playhouse began to shed its appeal. Rather than spend money to produce live all-night programming, stations saw the wisdom of accepting money to roll tape for all-night advertisers. As the PPP disappeared, so did most all original all-night programming across the United States.
A shy man in private life, Shreve didn't take comfortably to retirement. Able to keep himself only intermittently busy with voice work and the occasional Public-access television
interview, his health began to wane. In February 1990, he died at the age of 78 at Jewish Hospital, where he was being treated for cancer, after suffering a debilitating bout with the flu. In 1992, Bob Shreve was posthumously inducted into the Greater Cincinnati Broadcast Hall of Fame. The honor was accepted by his widow Jane (the former Mary Jane Keller, whom he married in August 1948) and son Robert Shreve, Jr.
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
.
Biography
Described by Cincinnati television producer Len Goorian as "the closest thing I've ever seen to a living leprechaun," the Plymouth, IndianaPlymouth, Indiana
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 9,840 people, 3,838 households, and 2,406 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,414.0 people per square mile . There were 4,100 housing units at an average density of 589.2 per square mile...
-born Robert Gerald Shreve broke into radio following a stint in the U.S. Navy as a singer on Hoosier Hop and Calling All Poets for WOWO
WOWO
Located in Fort Wayne, Indiana, WOWO is an independent news/talk radio station transmitting on 1190 kHz at 50,000 watts during the daylight hours and 9,800 watts during the nighttime hours. An application is on file with the Federal Communications Commission to add a fourth tower to the three...
in Fort Wayne. He subsequently appeared on "National Barn Dance
National Barn Dance
National Barn Dance, broadcast by WLS-AM in Chicago, Illinois starting in 1924, was one of the first American country music radio programs and a direct precursor of the Grand Ole Opry...
" for WLS
WLS (AM)
WLS is a Chicago clear-channel AM station on 890 kHz. It uses C-QUAM AM stereo and transmits with 50,000 watts from transmitter and towers on the south edge of Tinley Park, Illinois....
in Chicago, and Club Matinee for ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
in New York, before accepting an offer from WLW
WLW
WLW is a clear channel talk radio station located in Cincinnati, Ohio, run by Clear Channel Communications. The station broadcasts locally on 700 kHz AM...
in Cincinnati. As a staff tenor for WLW, he sang the favorite hits of the day, sometimes duetting with other local talent such as Betty Clooney, the sister of Rosemary Clooney
Rosemary Clooney
Rosemary Clooney was an American singer and actress. She came to prominence in the early 1950s with the novelty hit "Come On-a My House" written by William Saroyan and his cousin Ross Bagdasarian , which was followed by other pop numbers such as "Botch-a-Me" Rosemary Clooney (May 23, 1928 –...
.
In 1950, WLW added television to their service and Shreve was in the vanguard of talent to make the leap from radio to TV. In August 1950, he appeared in comedy skits on WLWT
WLWT
WLWT, virtual channel 5 , is an NBC-affiliated television station in Cincinnati, Ohio, the station is owned by Hearst Television...
's Cincinnati at Sunset, the first local program to receive national broadcast via NBC. Thereafter, he proved himself able to provide whatever the hungry airwaves needed: an on-air announcer, a mellow singing voice, a movie host, an able vaudevillian, a soft-shoe dancer, or a cornpone comedian. It was in the latter category that he made his first significant local success in The General Store, a half-hour comedy show in the style of Lum and Abner that aired on WLWT Mondays through Fridays at 3:30 p.m. Set in the mythic rural burg of Broken Tooth, Measley County USA (Population: 43), The General Store top-lined Bill Thall as store proprietor Willie, but Shreve stole every episode as his brain-dead employee Elmer Diffledorfer, who wore a sideways deerstalker cap and a necktie that stood up of its own accord. Remarkably, except for a basic scripted premise, each of the daily episodes was wholly improvised and the setting of the program allowed for easy accommodation of the sponsors' products. The show was a quirky comic phenomenon of its time, and Thall and Shreve made numerous personal appearances as Willie and Elmer in Cincinnati and other tri-state cities, and sometimes reprised the characters on WLWT's nationally broadcast Country & Western show, Midwestern Hayride
Midwestern Hayride
Midwestern Hayride, sometimes known as Midwest Hayride, was an American country music show originating in the 1930s from WLW-AM and later from WLWT-TV in Cincinnati, Ohio. During the 1950s it was carried nationally by NBC and then ABC television...
. During his tenure at WLWT, Shreve was also a frequent performer on the popular Ruth Lyons
Ruth Lyons (broadcaster)
Ruth Lyons, was a pioneer radio and television broadcaster in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is said Ruth Lyons accidentally invented the daytime TV talk show...
show, The 50/50 Club.
In 1954, after The General Store Shreve was lured over to fledgling television station WCPO-TV
WCPO-TV
WCPO-TV, virtual channel 9 , is an ABC-affiliated television station in Cincinnati, Ohio. WCPO's studio is located in the Mount Adams neighborhood of Cincinnati, just outside of Eden Park. Its transmitter is located along Symmes Street, just south of East McMillan Street in Cincinnati.The station...
, where he co-hosted an afternoon show with Wanda Lewis and Colin Male, and played Lucky the Clown and Roger the Robot on the station's long-running morning children's program, The Uncle Al Show
The Uncle Al Show
The Uncle Al Show was a children's television program originating in Cincinnati. The show was hosted by Cleveland native Al Lewis , and later was co-hosted by his wife, Wanda.The show enjoyed a remarkable 35-year run on WCPO Television, making it one of the longest-running local...
. Circa 1959-60, he hosted The Three Stooges shorts while wearing a trademark bowler hat, plaid coat, and Elmer's old saluting necktie, and Popeye
Popeye
Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons in the cinema as well as on television. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929...
cartoons while wearing a sailor's suit. Shreve's antics made him one of WCPO's most popular and beloved personalities, especially among children, and his on-air antics sometimes caught the eyes of comedians travelling through Cincinnati.He was joined on the air at various times by such surprise guests as Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis...
, Doodles Weaver
Doodles Weaver
Winstead Sheffield Weaver , who used the professional name Doodles Weaver, was an American actor and comedian on radio, recordings, and television. He was the brother of NBC executive Sylvester "Pat" Weaver and the uncle of actress Sigourney Weaver.Born in Los Angeles, Weaver was given the nickname...
, and The Three Stooges themselves.
In 1963, Shreve's combined experience in vaudeville, comic improvisation, and salesmanship crystallized when he became one of the pioneers of all-night broadcasting. It was then that Shreve made his first appearance as the bartender host of WCPO's The Schoenling
Hudepohl Brewing Company
Hudepohl Brewing Company was a brewery established in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1885 by founder Ludwig Hudepohl II. Hudepohl was the son of Bavarian immigrants and had worked in the surgical tool business before starting his brewery. Hudepohl combined with Schoenling Brewing Company in 1986...
All Night Theater, which ran from 1:30 am to 6:00 am on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings. Taking a page from Jackie Gleason
Jackie Gleason
Jackie Gleason was an American comedian, actor and musician. He was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, especially by his character Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, a situation-comedy television series. His most noted film roles were as Minnesota Fats in the drama film The...
's popular skits with Frank Fontaine
Frank Fontaine
Frank Fontaine was an American comedian and singer.Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he is best known for his appearances on television shows of the 1950s and 1960s, including The Jackie Gleason Show, The Jack Benny Show, and The Tonight Show.One of his earliest appearances was on the radio show,...
on The Jackie Gleason Show
The Jackie Gleason Show
The Jackie Gleason Show is the name of a series of popular American network television shows that starred Jackie Gleason, which ran from 1952 to 1970.-Cavalcade of Stars:...
, 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!"
As the show went on, it got zanier and zanier with Shreve lip-synching songs like Irving Taylor's When the Crabgrass Blooms Again and Leona Anderson's Limburger Lover, and sometimes making surprise "cameo appearances" in the movies being shown. The show's crazy 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, and many others. During his commercial breaks, Shreve would also read on the air the names of viewers who called in, and it became the fashion for callers to invent preposterous names for themselves, just to get an amusing reaction from Shreve. Typically, the show mellowed to a more reflective mood around 4:00 am, with Shreve breaking into standards like "Me and My Shadow" and sometimes stepping out from behind the bar to indulge in a little soft-shoe dance. The show became so popular that Shreve was invited to host an identical program (called The Schoenling Nite People Theater) live from the studios of WHIO-TV
WHIO-TV
WHIO-TV, virtual channel 7, is the CBS-affiliated television station licensed to Dayton, Ohio, serving that state's Miami Valley area. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on UHF channel 41 from its transmitter on Germantown Street in western Dayton....
in Dayton, Ohio, on Friday nights/Saturday mornings, which lasted for several years.
In 1968-69, Shreve would follow a full night's work on the Cincinnati show by sticking around to host Cartoons A Go Go on Sunday mornings. Also during this period, when the popularity of the all-night show seemed at its height, he recorded an album, Good Olé [sic] Bob Doing His Thing for Cincinnati's King Records
King Records (USA)
King Records is an American record label, started in 1943 by Syd Nathan and originally headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.-History:At first it specialized in country music, at the time still known as "hillbilly music." King advertised, "If it's a King, It's a Hillbilly -- If it's a Hillbilly, it's a...
with the help of the Dee Felice Trio. The album eschewed his popular comedy routines to present a pleasant, sentimental showcase for Shreve's warm Irish tenor voice and his affection for old-fashioned songs like "That Old Gang of Mine" and "Walkin' My Baby Back Home." With a cover sporting the King Records legend of "A James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...
Production," the album is now one of the most coveted Shreve (and Brown) collectables; only two or three thousand copies were pressed.
When The Schoenling All Night Theater was unceremoniously cancelled by WCPO in 1970, it was quickly picked up by Shreve's old stomping grounds at WLWT as The Schoenling Nite People Theater. (The Dayton show of the same title was by this time discontinued.) Unfortunately, it did not last there more than a year or two. In 1975, the show moved to WKRC-TV
WKRC-TV
WKRC-TV is the CBS-affiliated television station for the Tri-State area of Southern Ohio, Northern Kentucky, and Southeastern Indiana that is licensed to Cincinnati. It broadcasts a high definition digital signal on VHF channel 12 from a transmitter at its studios on Highland Avenue in the Mount...
, then Cincinnati's ABC affiliate, with the new Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
-influenced title, The Past Prime Playhouse. Schoenling no longer sponsored the show, which gave way to new advertisers like LaRosa's Pizza, Hemsath Sound Centers, and Mayor's Jewelers. WKRC would give the show (nicknamed "The PPP") its longest run; it stayed on the late night airwaves for a full ten years, even though Shreve's shenanigans were toned down since the early days. Among the celebrity visitors to the PPP set over the course of that decade were Adam West
Adam West
William West Anderson , better known by the stage name Adam West, is an American actor best known for his lead role in the Batman TV series and the film of the same name...
, Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby
William Henry "Bill" Cosby, Jr. is an American comedian, actor, author, television producer, educator, musician and activist. A veteran stand-up performer, he got his start at various clubs, then landed a starring role in the 1960s action show, I Spy. He later starred in his own series, the...
, comedian Pete Barbutti
Pete Barbutti
Pete Barbutti is an American comedian and musician . He made at least twelve appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, from 1971 through 1992...
and the buxom stripper then known as "baseball's kissing bandit," Morganna
Morganna
Morganna Roberts is an entertainer who became known as Morganna or Morganna, the Kissing Bandit in baseball and other sports from 1970 through the 1990s...
. During the latter years of the PPP, WKRC introduced a spin-off show-of-sorts for Garoro, Shreve's "gamey" severed head sidekick: Garoro's Theater of Horrors, the channel's weekly horror feature, introduced at the outset by the heretofore voiceless Garoro, who had somehow gained the power of Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
-like speech.
It was widely rumored at the time that WKRC was losing sponsors for the show owing to Shreve's tendency to poke fun at and upstage his advertisers, but the truth behind the show's cancellation had more to do with the arrival of home video and infomercial
Infomercial
Infomercials are direct response television commercials which generally include a phone number or website. There are long-form infomercials, which are typically between 15 and 30 minutes in length, and short-form infomercials, which are typically 30 seconds to 120 seconds in length. Infomercials...
s. With more and more homes equipped to play movies on videocassette, the "all-night movies" aspect of shows like The Past Prime Playhouse began to shed its appeal. Rather than spend money to produce live all-night programming, stations saw the wisdom of accepting money to roll tape for all-night advertisers. As the PPP disappeared, so did most all original all-night programming across the United States.
A shy man in private life, Shreve didn't take comfortably to retirement. Able to keep himself only intermittently busy with voice work and the occasional Public-access television
Public-access television
Public-access television is a form of non-commercial mass media where ordinary people can create content television programming which is cablecast through cable TV specialty channels...
interview, his health began to wane. In February 1990, he died at the age of 78 at Jewish Hospital, where he was being treated for cancer, after suffering a debilitating bout with the flu. In 1992, Bob Shreve was posthumously inducted into the Greater Cincinnati Broadcast Hall of Fame. The honor was accepted by his widow Jane (the former Mary Jane Keller, whom he married in August 1948) and son Robert Shreve, Jr.