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| Charles Claverie (nee. Charles Rocket) |
The actor Charles Rocket, who died in 2005 at the age of 56, never really became the star in Hollywood that he dreamed of being.
Part of the notorious group of unlucky comedians who replaced the likes of Bill Murray and Gilda Radner on the 1980, post Lorne Michaels season of Saturday Night Live, Rocket famously got himself fired after saying the word "Fuck" live, on air.
Still throughout the 1980's, 90's and into the new century, Rocket worked steadily, with several good roles in films such as Earth Girls Are Easy and the television series Max Headroom, normally playing complete Yuppie Douche Bags, a part he was able to pull off to perfection.
A few years before moving to New York and his ill-fated move to late night comedy, Rocket, under his real name, Charles Claverie while working as the local weatherman and sometime human interest reporter for KOAA television in Pueblo, Colorado, created what is one of the great forgotten local television shows of all time, the KOAA Super Show.
For two hours every weekday afternoon Rocket would run public domain cartoons, old movie serials, classic but little seen television series such as I Led 3 Lives and My Living Doll. And all the while Rocket would hold court, telling bad jokes, taking live phone calls, bringing on strange local talent and the occasional street crazy. The Super Show was two hours of daily insanity.
I truly wish I had some kind of video to show you or even still pictures, but if any tapes of the series exist, I've never been able to find them. Even the folks at KOAA told me they didn't have any surviving episodes recorded when I contacted them and asked.
And who knows, maybe if I did find the tapes the show wouldn't be nearly as good as my memories, but still the insane world that was the Super Show was a real highlight for 1978.
Thanks for the memories. I grew up in southern Colorado. My family watched all their news on KOAA. When the station got a new owner in the 70's, they replaced all the veteran newscasters with (as my dad was fond of saying) "those damn hippies." I remember watching Charles Claverie and the Super Show every afternoon.
ReplyDeleteSchool and college caused me to lose track of KOAA and I never heard about Charles Claverie again. I did hear about an actor named Charles Rocket and that he had gotten fired from SNL. Much later, I heard that Charles Rocket had died and it was only then that I got the connection with the "damn hippie" from KOAA and the semi-famous actor.