Saturday, April 19, 2008

How most Clevelander's spent their Friday nights in the 60's & 70's

Hey Gang,
For those in the Cleveland area this is a neat flash back and for those not in the Cleveland area this is how most Clevelander's spent their Friday nights in the 60's and 70's, watching Hoolihan & Big Chuck. In fact in the 60's crime actually went down in Cleveland on Friday nights while the show was on.
Hoolihan & Big Chuck took over about 1963 for Ghoulardi who left Cleveland for greener pastures in California. Ghoulardi (Ernie Anderson) did many commercials and was the voice that said the "Love Boat" a TV series from the 1970's. Both Ghoulardi and Hoolihan & Big Chuck were movie hosts that showed B movies at 11:30 pm on Friday nights on channel 8, CBS. During commercial breaks they would show skits or funnies as we would call them in our family. Their campy humor made them local celebrities. They did many charities, had their own baseball and basketball team made up of local TV personalities. And who can ever forget those cheesy movies. The show always ended with Hoolihan in a leopard print night gown and Big Chuck in a red one telling corny jokes sent in from viewers.
Their favorite skits and jokes would always be about Parma , Polish and Pollocks until political correctness, yes it started way back then, got them in trouble and they had to start saying a person from a certain ethnic background. Whats funny is Big Chucks last name is Shadowski. Does anyone remember them joking about people living in Parma always wear white socks?
In the mid 70's Hoolihan left and was replaced by Lil John. It was never the same, even though they stuck around until last year, 2007, when they finally retired. It truly was an end of an era. Years ago that was about all there was to watch, you had very few channel's. Plus everything is so rehearsed and run by the media conglomerates no way would a show be made like this today. Plain and simple the show was silly fun.
Cleveland had a few other movie hosts but never as popular. On channel 43 on Saturday afternoon's there was Super Host played by Marty Sullivan who was also a newscaster. Likewise, Hoolihan's real name was Bob Wells and was meteorologist for channel 8, his nick name was Hoolihan the Weatherman.
It truly is an end of an era, never to return.
I met Big Chuck twice most recently at the Woolly Bear Festival in 2006. If you want to see a recent photo of him go to http://www.gogobus.cc/ click on snapshots and then click on Celebrities.
Gotta GoGo!!
Carey

Very early 60's. Andy Griffith with Hoolihan & Big Chuck

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSmzveYQngA&feature=related



This are an early and mid 70's clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td_a828CPsc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATwTUhv78sY&feature=related

This is later on when the show switched to Big Chuck & Lil John and became even more cheesy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXJXSlRzhCw&feature=related

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