Big Chuck and Lil' John
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Big Chuck and Lil' John (aka Charles "Big Chuck" Schodowski and "Lil' John" Rinaldi) were late-night hosts on television station WJW in Cleveland, Ohio, United States from 1979 to 2007. In addition to hosting a movie with a live audience, they also performed original sketch comedy routines. At the end of each sketch was a very distinctive laugh voiced by Jay Lawrence.
History
Chuck Schodowski had been a long-time friend of Ernie Anderson, and had worked closely with him on the Ghoulardi show. Schodowski had been instrumental in bringing in the blend of blues and polka music that helped define Ghoulardi's show, adding comic audio drop-ins to enliven the often awful movies, and immortalized The Rivingtons' tune "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" by marrying it to the image of an old man "gurning".
When Anderson left Cleveland for California in 1966, his popular Ghoulardi character was retired, and a talent search ensued to find a replacement. Schodowski agreed to help Bob Wells (WJW's "Hoolihan the Weatherman") with his audition, and the management decided they liked the way the two performed together. They became co-hosts of the Hoolihan & Big Chuck Show.
After Wells left the show in 1979, 4 foot-3 inch (1.3 meter) jeweler John Rinaldi, a regular performer on the show, took over as co-host on the renamed Big Chuck & Lil' John Show.
For many years, the show aired at 11:30pm on Friday nights before moving to midnight on Saturday nights in 1993, then back to Fridays following WJW's affiliation switch to Fox, before ultimately going back to Saturdays following Mad TV. Its final time slot was at 12:30am Saturday nights/Sunday mornings, along with a companion Couch Potato Theatre airing at 10am on Saturday morning (the latter either a movie showing or an all-skits hour show).
On December 2006, Charles Schodowski announced he would retire in June 2007. As part of his farewell, WJW broadcast the hour-long retrospective Big Chuck and Lil' John: The End of an Era.
This also marked the end of the Big Chuck & Lil' John Show, with the last regular episode airing the afternoon of June 16, 2007 and again in the early morning of June 17. In October 2008, Schodowski released his autobiography, Big Chuck: My Favorite Stories from 47 Years on Cleveland TV, co-written by Cleveland Plain-Dealer media writer Tom Feran. The book debuted at the 2008 Ghoulardifest convention.
Some sketches and parodies
- Ben Crazy - a parody of a popular TV medical drama, Ben Casey
- The Certain Ethnic _____ - a play on Big Chuck's Polish heritage (e.g., The Certain Ethnic Driver, who drives through red traffic lights and stops at green lights)
- The Kielbasa Kid - a parody of The Lone Ranger and other popular TV westerns
- Parma Place - a parody of soap-opera Peyton Place
- Soul Man - a parody of Superman
Big Chuck and Little John would use some of WJW's personalities, like station meteorologist Dick Goddard, in their skits. One sketch dealt with Cleveland's weather radar, in which Cleveland's meteorologists compete to see who had better Doppler. As Goddard claims that WJW has radar that can see clearly to a neighborhood, the image reveals a woman taking a bath (strategically covered with bubbles), and Goddard hides the image with his suit jacket.
In an episode of The Simpsons entitled "The Regina Monologues," Bart and Milhouse play a video game called "Hockey Dads" in which one of the characters warns another that he will "feel the drunken wrath of Chuck Schodowski."Template:Fact
