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Known For

John Paragon is known for:

  • Pee-wee's Big Adventure
    The eccentric and childish Pee-wee Herman embarks on a big adventure when his beloved bicycle is stolen. Armed with information from a fortune-teller and a relentless obsession with his prized possession, Pee-wee encounters a host of odd characters and bizarre situations as he treks across the country to recover his bike.
  • Honey, I Blew Up the Kid
    Wayne Szalinski is at it again. But instead of shrinking things, he tries to make a machine that can make things grow. As in the first one, his machine isn't quite accurate. But when he brings Nick & his toddler son Adam to see his invention, the machine unexpectedly starts working. And when Adam comes right up to the machine, he gets zapped along with his stuffed bunny.
  • UHF
    The eccentric new manager of a UHF television channel tries to save the station from financial ruin with an odd array of programming.

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Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. John Dixon Paragon (born 9 December 1954-April 3, 2021) is an American actor, writer, and director. He was born in Anchorage, Alaska, on an Army base. He grew up and attended schools in Fort Collins, Colorado. Paragon is probably best known for his work on children's show Pee-wee's Playhouse where he played Jambi the Genie and voiced Pterri the Pterodactyl. In addition to writing many of the regular season episodes of Playhouse, Paragon also co-wrote (with Paul Reubens) the acclaimed Pee-wee's Playhouse Christmas Special in 1988, for which they were nominated an Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Children's Special. Some of Paragon's other memorable roles include Cedric, one half of the gay couple Bob and Cedric on the television series Seinfeld; the title character in the children's movie The Frog Prince; the sex shop salesman in the cult favorite Eating Raoul; and the owner of a Strip-o-gram business in the 1986 film Echo Park. Paragon got his start in the Los Angeles-based improvisation group The Groundlings alongside Reubens and Phil Hartman. He also collaborated with fellow Groundling Cassandra Peterson on numerous Elvira projects, including the recurring role of The Breather, an annoying caller, for her first television series on KHJ-TV-Los Angeles. In recent years, Paragon has worked with Walt Disney Imagineering on ways to incorporate improvisational performance into attractions at Disney parks. In this capacity, he performed as the keeper of Lucky the Dinosaur during the test runs of the animatronic figure. Paragon returned to his performance as Jambi the Genie in the Broadway outing of the new Pee-wee Herman stage show that began performances 26 October 2010 at the Stephen Sondheim Theater. Paragon died on April 3, 2021, at his home in Palm Springs, California, at the age of 66. His cause of death was heart disease and chronic alcoholism. News of his death was not made public until June 18 of that year.[2][6][7][8][9] He was cremated and his ashes were in the possession of Cassandra Peterson until they were interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on November 15, 2022.[10] His urn is "a perfectly crafted depiction" of the purple-and-gold Jambi the Genie box Description above from the Wikipedia article John Paragon, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.