Glen Plaid and a Red Bow Tie, Pee-wee Herman’s Suit Heads to Auction at the Groundlings
Julien’s will exhibit Paul Reubens’ archive on Melrose from October 14, then auction his gray suit and hundreds more lots October 28.
Few outfits in Hollywood are as instantly readable as Pee-wee Herman’s. The slate gray glen plaid suit, the white shirt, the red bow tie, the white loafers. This month the suit heads to auction on Melrose Avenue, at the theater where the character was born.
Julien’s Auctions and The Groundlings will show highlights from Paul Reubens’ archive at The Groundlings Theatre from Wednesday, October 14, through Wednesday, October 28. The run opens on October 14 with a screening of episodes of the original Pee-wee’s Playhouse and a panel discussion on Reubens’ life and work, with tickets going on sale today, Friday, October 2, at groundlings.com. Paul Reubens’ Big Auction then goes live at the theater and online on October 28 at 10 a.m.
The headline lot is the suit Reubens wore in 2016’s Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, sold with the white shirt, red bowtie, pocket square and white loafers that finish the look. It is expected to sell for $8,000 to $10,000, Rolling Stone reports. More than 400 items from his estate are in the sale, including original production costumes and props, stop-motion puppets, scripts and storyboards, and rare limited-edition dolls from his JCPenney line. A 40-inch Pee-wee doll from that 1989 line, one of only 2,000 made, is estimated at $300 to $500. A full-scale replica of the red Schwinn DX from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which he rode to accept his 2011 Visionary Spike TV Scream Award, is packaged with that award and estimated at $5,000 to $7,000.
The address is the point. Reubens invented Pee-wee at the Groundlings, and his big breakout came in 1981 as the star of The Pee-wee Herman Show, a long-running live show at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip, Los Angeles magazine reports. For years he appeared on talk shows only in the bow-tie-clad persona.
Catherine Williamson, managing director of entertainment at Julien’s, described Reubens as a gifted improviser and a meticulous writer who built entire worlds around his characters. “This collection is a remarkable archive of that artistry and his enduring impact on audiences of every age, and there is no more fitting place to celebrate it than The Groundlings, where it all began,” she said.
