Paul Dixon was Cincinnati’s most outrageous TV personality whose antics were beloved by stay-at-home housewives in the 1960s and inspired David Letterman and many young Cincinnati comedians.
“Paul Baby” — who died from a ruptured aneurysm 50 years ago on Dec. 28, 1974, at age 56 — is best known for his craziest TV stunt, devoting his entire WLWWT-TV show to the wedding of two rubber chickens, Pauline and Harry, on March 11, 1969. Here’s a clip.
The witty, self-deprecating former radio disc jockey was also known as “the Mayor of Kneesville” from looking at the legs of women in his studio audience with binoculars on every show. He also gave out “knee ticklers,” personally attaching a pendant to a lady’s short skirt; handed out an Oscherwitz Kosher Salami to a guest; joked with bandleader Bruce Brownfield; and made fun of his hairpiece or his bad heart. Sometimes he gave out garters, too.
"It was the stupidest show,” Letterman once told me. Letterman watched The Paul Dixon Show on WLWI-TV (Channel 13) in Indianapolis after graduating from Ball State University in 1969. “And he would just say, 'This is the stupidest show!' And housewives from the Tri-State area would just love this guy. He would do the same show, minute to minute, Monday through Friday, and it was hilarious. People just exploded.”
Letterman said he “was just out of college and I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And then all the sudden I saw him doing it (on TV). And I thought: 'That's really what I want to do!' " Letterman told me. Other Cincinnati comedians told me they were inspired to pursue a career in comedy from watching Dixon or late-night movie host Bob Shreve.
Cincinnati Post reporter Dick Perry, who had been a Dixon Show producer, said Dixon’s death ended a 30-year love affair with his fans. “It is as if thousands upon thousands of viewers each had a death in the family,” Perry wrote.
Born Gregory Schleier on Oct. 2, 1918, in Earling, Iowa, Dixon dropped out of Drake University in Des Moines in 1938 to become a radio announcer. He later changed his name legally to Paul Dixon.
WCPO radio manager Mort Watters was driving through Chicago in 1944 when he heard Dixon on WAAF-AM. He called Dixon and offered him a radio news job in Cincinnati. Dixon’s first claim to fame was crawling through the rubble of a collapsed Downtown building at Third and Pearl streets to interview a trapped man. Soon after that, he switched to spinning records. Cornett magazine named him one of the top 10 disc jockeys in the nation in 1951.
Dixon easily transitioned from WCPO radio to television in 1949, when WCPO-TV went on the air. He pantomimed to records with Dotty Mack, Len Goorian, and Wanda Lewis, before she joined her husband on the Uncle Al children’s show. He was an instant hit. Dixon’s TV show was simulcast by WCPO-TV from Cincinnati on the ABC or DuMont networks.
Here’s a clip from WCPO-TV’s Paul Dixon Show circa 1951 that opens with Goorian, and then Dixon, Mack and Lewis pantomiming to Perry Como’s “No Boat Like A Rowboat.”
Dixon quit WCPO-TV in a dispute with management in fall 1954 and moved to New York to host a DuMont show. It was canceled in 13 weeks, and Dixon came back to Cincinnati to work at WLWT-TV, which sparked rumors that Ruth Lyons, Channel 5’s biggest star, was upset about Dixon joining her station.
Lyons told Post columnist Mary Wood that “rumors about my disliking Paul are downright silly,” but she also revealed that WCPO-TV and WKRC-TV took the talk seriously and made her offers to leave WLWT-TV.
Until his death, Dixon presided over an irreverent hour of sheer goofiness weekday mornings with singers Colleen Sharp (Murray) and Bonnie Lou (Okum) as his sidekicks. The daily Channel 5 broadcast also aired on sister stations in Indianapolis, Dayton, and Columbus.
“His breezy chatter and love of people made him a natural for live TV," the Post said in its obituary on Dec. 30, 1974. "His program combined corniness, friendliness and wild antics, and was a favorite among Cincinnati housewives.”
“He clowned with reporters, swapped news tips and hid beneath a carefree manner a serious, thoughtful and conscientious man,” the Post said.
His masterpiece was the “chicken wedding.” Most of Channel 5’s stars participated in the production: Talk show host Bob Braun; main news anchor Tom Atkins; singers Marian Spelman, Sharp and Bonnie Lou; bandleader Cliff Lash; Bob Braun Show producer Elsa Sule; features reporter Rosemary Kelly; and producer-director Dick Murgatroyd. Busken Bakery sent over a six-tier wedding cake, and 400 people attended the wedding reception at Covington’s famous Lookout House. Years later, WLWT-TV sold VHS copies of the show to benefit the Ruth Lyons’ Children’s Fund.
Dixon officiated in a torn tux, bent eyeglasses and ripped top hat as the Mayor of Kneesville.
"Pauline and Harry, I want to remind you that this marriage is taking place as a result of the audience and viewers of The Paul Dixon Show, who have forced us into marrying you two dumb chickens,” Dixon said. “I as Mayor of Kneesville do pronounce you husband and wife…. Now Harry, you may peck your bride!"
When the chickens and wedding party had left the studio, a relieved Dixon turned to the studio audience and said: "We pulled it off, didn't we? And if you think this was easy, you're crazy."
Dixon wrote two books, an autobiography called Paul Baby (1968) and Letters to Paul Dixon (1970). Some Paul Dixon Show fans also have a Dixon wrist watch, lamp, knee tickler, garter or his record album, 25 Of The Greatest Popular Songs of All Time: My Kind of Music – Paul Dixon.
In 1970, Dixon suffered a heart attack after his son, Greg, died in an auto accident. Ten days before the TV star's death, Dixon was admitted to Bethesda Hospital on Dec. 18, 1974, for aneurysm surgery. He was transferred to Christ Hospital during his recovery when the artery ruptured, according to news reports.
Dixon was one of five inducted into the WLWT-TV Hall of Fame last month. His daughter, Pam Sibcy, accepted the award for her late father by saying, “His enthusiasm was absolutely contagious.”
At the ceremony, Sharp said he “was just funny. He had a funny bone from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He had binoculars to look at ladies’ legs. It got a little bit spicy. He had Hot Pants Day, Big Girls Day, and Baby Day for mothers with babies eight months or younger. He was just a funny, funny guy.”
Murgatroyd said viewers — and Dixon’s staff — “never knew what Paul was going to do until he came out (to start the show). And Paul could get away with anything you could think of doing on the show, and the women loved it. He gave out huge salamis. He had ‘Kneesville,’ and he’d look at them with binoculars.”
When I interviewed Letterman in 1997, I noted how Dixon gave a huge salami to a studio guest years before Dave starting giving out Big Ass canned hams.
"That's right!” Letterman said. “It's a similar kind of deal — but he was much funnier that I am.”
Here's one more clip, from Dixon's "Talk Girls" show in May 1972.
