If you're around my age, you probably grew up watching someone in costume hosting a horror movie show on tv, usually on Friday or Saturday night. In the Cleveland market, which included Lorain, that person was...Ghoulardi.
I included the video clips because Ghoulardi is hard to explain; he was sorta like Craig Ferguson for kids, nearly fifty years earlier, 1963-66. He did a lot more than just run bad movies and bad jokes...he was a cultural phenomenon, just at the time when the culture was about to be turned upside down, from every direction.
I don't think it was planned, but Ghoulardi encouraged us to question the established order, to poke fun at and de-Olympusize the status quo, without being vulgar or mean-spirited.
Ernie Anderson did this for three years, then moved out to the Coast, for greener pastures, becoming one of the highest paid announcers on tv. Still, he left a legacy on the North Coast that still endures, not just in makeup and bad movies, but even in the way we think, and see the world.
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