Superhost

Superhost was a character portrayed by TV personality Marty Sullivan at independent television station WUAB channel 43 in Cleveland from 1969 to 1989. He wore a baggy suit, cape and red nose (like a clown version of Superman) to host the station's Saturday afternoon monster movie.

Show format

The show would begin at noon with Supe's On!, an hour-long warm-up to the movies, with two Three Stooges shorts, and usually a Laurel and Hardy short as well. Superhost would appear during commercial breaks, cracking jokes, showing skits, and talking to the TV audience.

Superhost greeted fans with his famous "Hello, dere" (pronounced "dare") and follow with sketches like "The Moronic Woman" (a parody of The Bionic Woman) "Caboose Supe" (a Boxcar Willie takeoff), and "Fat Whitman" (a spoof of Slim Whitman). His most famous sketch was a music video based on the popular trucker song "Convoy". He was also known for referring to the movies as "flicks" as in "Let's get back to da flick."

After Supe's On, he would host an afternoon of films under the Mad Theater banner. Generally two films were shown, going from 1 to 4 p.m. The movies would be old horror films like Frankenstein or Japanese monster movies such as Godzilla.