The Pee-wee Herman Show is a stage show developed by Paul Reubens in 1980. It marks the first significant appearance of his comedic fictional character, Pee-wee Herman, five years before Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and six years before Pee-wee's Playhouse. The act initially took place at the Groundlings theater, but in time it was moved to Los Angeles' The Roxy Theatre, where the HBO cable network taped one of the shows and aired it in 1981. This nightclub show had more adult humor than the later children's TV series.

Development

The roots of that stage show were in 1981 when Reubens was one of 22 finalists to be chosen as a regular on Saturday Night Live (the famous first season of an all-new cast, and one of five seasons without Lorne Michaels as a producer). Reubens lost to actor Gilbert Gottfried and thought his career was over. According to Reubens, he was about to return home when he came up with the idea of a stage show featuring the character he premiered back in 1977, Pee-wee Herman. That year, the character had made his first appearance to a national (but mostly adult) audience when he made a cameo in Cheech & Chong's Next Movie. With $3,000 (mostly money wired from his parents), and help from 60 people working for him (including his fellow Groundling Phil Hartman), Reubens created the show.

Plotline

The Pee-wee Herman Show begins with the same routine of "show & tell" toy demos that Reubens did as Pee-wee when he premiered the character four years earlier (before he started to tell jokes).