Pee-wee Herman creator and fan-favorite character actor Paul Reubens is taking a memorabilia company to court, claiming theft. As reported by TMZ, the former-Groundlings star has filed a suit against The Comisar Collection, alleging that some mirandize and memorabilia tied to his hit TV show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” is stolen. According to the suite, Reubens lent the items to Comisar, believing that they would be making their way into a “Museum of Television” display. The actor’s suite goes on to reveal he discovered that no such museum exists and the items had instead entered the “private collection” of the company.
The report goes on to reveal that Reubens asked for the items to be returned, only to be told that they had been “gifted” to The Comisar Collection, and some had even been sold at profit. Some of the items that Reubens took from the Pee-wee’s Playhouse set included “the Dog Chair, the Floory puppets, and Mr. Window,” in addition to cue cards and autographed photos from the set. Reubens’ suite is seeking to stop the further sale of any items, have the ones remaining returned to him, and whatever proceeds were collected from selling others.
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Reubens first started portraying the Pee-wee character on stage with The Pee-wee Herman Show becoming so popular that HBO made a deal to film and broadcast it as a comedy special in 1981. From there Pee-wee would continue to appear on the stage, selling out New York City’s Carnegie Hall and making multiple appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in character.
From there Pee-wee went to the movies as Warner Bros. Pictures gave him a deal to develop a feature film based on the character, resulting in 1985’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, the feature film directorial debut of Tim Burton, which became an instant hit. After this Pee-wee’s Playhouse debuted in 1986 and would run for five seasons on CBS, with a big-screen sequel, Big Top Pee-wee, arriving in 1988. Reubens’ career came to a halt in the early 90s after he was arrested, but he quickly bounced back after making an appearance at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards where he arrived on stage and asked “Heard any good jokes lately?”
Reubens didn’t appear as the character again for decades after this, appearing in minor roles or only providing voice work. His casting in the 1999 movie Mystery Men would bring him back to the public eye for the first time in years, and even saw him doing his first interviews out of character on television. He continued to act after this but in 2010 revived The Pee-wee Herman Show on Broadway, which in turn lead to another feature film, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday on Netflix.
