“Forgotten Hollywood”- The Passing of The Cool Ghoul…

Posted on October 29, 2016 by raideoman1 | No Comments

Manny P. here… zach

   John Zacherle was a television and radio personality, and voice actor. He was best known for his long career as a horror host, often broadcasting movies in Philadelphia and New York City in the 1950s and 1960s. He also did voice work for the movies, and also recorded the Top 10 novelty song Dinner With Drac in 1958.

youllfindout   In 1954, he gained his first television role at WCAU-TV in Philadelphia. Three years later, he was hired as the host of Shock Theater, which debuted on October 7th, 1957. The show ran for 92 broadcasts through 1958. The purchase of WCAU by CBS prompted Zacherle to leave Philadelphia for WABC-TV in New York. In 1963, he hosted Chiller Theatre on WPIX-TV. Some of his programs were later syndicated to KHJ-TV, the RKO station in Los Angeles. Many of the B-Movie screenings featured luminaries of the chill-fest genre, such as Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, John Carradine, and Otto Kruger.

   Zacherle was a close colleague of Philadelphia broadcaster Dick Clark, and sometimes filled in for Clark on road touring shows of American Bandstand in the 1960s. Clark reportedly gave Zacherle his nickname of The Cool Ghoul. Partly with the assistance and backing of Clark, Zacherle cut Dinner with Drac for Cameo Records.

zacherley   Zacherle edited two science fiction short story collections for Ballantine Books in 1960. He returned to Chiller Theatre on the WPIX airwaves on October 25th, 2008 for a special showing of the 1955 Universal Pictures classic, Tarantula! The Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia inducted John into their Hall of Fame in 2010.

   A Hallow’s Eve salute to John Zacherle; a man who devoted much of his life to monster culture. His lasting influence was helping to pioneer the entire genre of television hosts presenting the cheapest film packages in a creative way in an attempt to find viewers for cheesy cinema.    JOHN ZACHERLE –>

   John Zacherle was 98.

Until next time>                               “never forget”

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 29th, 2016 at 12:06 am and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


Bookmark this post:
Digg Del.icio.us Reddit Furl Google Bookmarks StumbleUpon Windows Live Technorati Yahoo MyWeb



Comments are closed.