[ Known for his character of "Roland/Zacherley", he also did voice work for films, and recorded the top ten novelty rock and roll song "Dinner with Drac" in 1958.]
Biography
Zacherle was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1954, he gained his first television role at WCAU-TV in Philadelphia, where he was hired as an actor playing several roles (one was an undertaker) in Action in the Afternoon, a Western produced by the station and aired in the New York City market.
He was a close colleague of Philadelphia broadcaster Dick Clark, and sometimes filled in for Clark on road touring shows of Clark's American Bandstand in the 1960s. Clark reportedly gave Zacherle his nickname of "The Cool Ghoul".
Move to New York
The purchase of WCAU by CBS in 1958 prompted Zacherle to leave Philadelphia for WABC-TV in New York, where the station added a "y" to the end of his name in the credits.
In 1963, he hosted , as well as Chiller Theatre on WPIX-TV.
In 1965, he hosted a teenager dance show for three years at WNJU-TV in Newark called Disc-O-Teen, hosting the show in full costume and using the teenage show participants in his skits.
In December 1968, Zacherle moved to radio as the morning host for progressive rock WNEW-FM. In the summer of 1969, he became the station night broadcaster (10 pm–2 AM); in June 1971, he switched his show to WPLJ-FM, where he stayed for ten years.
On February 14, 1970, he appeared at Fillmore East music hall in New York City to introduce the Grateful Dead; his introduction can be heard on the album Dick's Picks Volume 4.
1980s and beyond
In the early 1980s, he played a wizard on Captain Kangaroo, appearing without his Roland/Zacherley costume and make-up. He continued to perform in character at Halloween broadcasts in New York and Philadelphia in the 1980s and 1990s, once narrating Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven while backed up by the Philadelphia Orchestra.
In 1983, he portrayed himself in the feature-length horror comedy Geek Maggot Bingo produced and directed by Nick Zedd in sequences shot in Zacherle's apartment on the Upper West Side.
In 1985, he hosted a special for Newark, New Jersey music video station WWHT U68 entitled "The Thirteenth Hour".
In 1986, he hosted a direct-to-video program called Horrible Horror, where he performed Zacherley monologues in between clips from public domain sci-fi and horror films.
In 1988, he struck up a friendship with B-movie horror director Frank Henenlotter. He voiced the puppet "Aylmer", a slug-like drug-dealing and brain-eating parasite, one of the lead characters in Henenlotter's 1988 horror-comedy film Brain Damage, and made a cameo in his 1990 comedy Frankenhooker, appropriately playing a TV weatherman who specializes in forecasts for mad scientists.
In late 1992, Zacherle joined the staff of "K-Rock", WINS-FM, at a time when the roster included other free-form radio DJs including Pete Fornatale, Jimmy Fink, Vin Scelsa (with whom he'd worked at WPLJ) and Meg Griffin. For the next four years he hosted a Saturday morning show called "Spirit Of The Sixties". He departed in January 1996 when the station switched to an alternative rock format and hired all new jocks.
In 2010, Zacherle starred in the documentary, The Aurora Monsters: The Model Craze That Gripped the World. The film was written and produced by Dennis Vincent and Cortlandt Hull, owner of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Bristol, Connecticut. The documentary includes a number of short pieces featuring Zacherly and his puppet co-host Gorgo, of Bill Diamond Productions. The film went on to win a Rondo award.
Zacherle continued to make appearances at conventions through 2015, and his collectibles, including model kits, T-shirts, and posters, continue to sell. The book Goodnight, Whatever You Are by Richard Scrivani, chronicling Zacherle's life, debuted at the Chiller Theatre Expo in Secaucus, New Jersey, in October 2006. Scrivani and Tom Weaver followed it up with the scrapbook-style "The Z Files: Treasures from Zacherley's Archives" in 2012.
The comic book anthology, Zacherley's Midnite Terrors (created by Joseph M. Monks, and featuring top artists like Basil Gogos, Ken Kelly, William Stout and Mike Koneful), was created solely as a tribute to "Zach". Three issues were published, and Zacherley acted in a commercial to promote them.
Zacherle continued to make occasional on-air appearances, usually around Halloween, including a two-hour show at WCBS-FM with Ron Parker on October 31, 2007. (By this point, the 89-year-old was one of the very few people left in radio that was older than the medium itself.) Zacherley and Chiller Theatre returned to the WPIX airwaves on October 25, 2008, for a special showing of the 1955 Universal Pictures science fiction classic Tarantula!.
The Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia inducted Zacherle into their Hall of Fame in 2010.
He died on October 27, 2016, at his home in Manhattan at the age of 98.
Legacy
He was the uncle of My Little Pony creator Bonnie Zacherle.
Partial Zacherley at Large episode guide
Channel 9's resident film historian Chris Steinbrunner compiled a listing of all Zacherley's shows from their start to New Year's 1960:
These shows were later syndicated to KCAL-TV, the RKO General station in Los Angeles.
Short story collections
Zacherle edited two short story collections for Ballantine Books in 1960. Listed here are their contents.
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Zacherley's Vulture Stew
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L. Ron Hubbard, "He Didn't Like Cats"
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Mindret Lord, "Dr. Jacobus Meliflore's Last Patient"
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Manly Wade Wellman, "The Devil Is Not Mocked"
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Donald A. Wollheim, "Bones"
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Charles R. Tanner, "Out of the Jar"
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A. E. van Vogt, "The Witch"
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Anthony Boucher, "They Bite"
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E. Everett Evans, "The Shed"
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James Blish, "There Shall Be No Darkness"
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Zacherley's Midnight Snacks
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Richard Matheson, "Sorry, Right Number"
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Jerome Bixby and Joe Dean, "Share Alike"
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Theodore Sturgeon, "Talent"
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Wallace West, "Listen, Children, Listen"
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William F. Temple, "The Whispering Gallery"
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Robert Moore Williams, "The Piping Death"
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A. E. Van Vogt, "The Ghost"
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Philip James, "Carillon of Skulls"
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Henry Kuttner, "Pile of Trouble"
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Discography
Albums
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Spook Along with Zacherley (Elektra: EKL-190) 1960
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Monster Mash (12 songs) (Parkway LP P-7018) 1962
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Scary Tales (Parkway LP P-7023) 1963
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Monster Mash (10 songs; partial re-issue of Parkway album) (Wyncote LP W-9050) 1964
Singles
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"Igor"/" Dinner with Drac" (Cameo 130-1)
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"Dinner with Drac Pt.1"/"Pt.2" (Cameo 130-2)
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"Eighty-Two Tombstones"/"Lunch with Mother Goose" (Cameo 139)
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"Hurry Burry Baby"/"Dinner With Drac" (Parkway 853)
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"I Was a Teenage Cave Man"/"Dummy Doll" (Cameo 145)
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"Surfboard 109"/"Clementine" (Parkway 885)
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"Scary Tales from Mother Goose"/"Monster Monkey" (Parkway 888)
CDs
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Twist Collection (OOZ 617) 2001
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Monster Mash/ Scary Tales (ACE CDCHD 1294) 2010
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Monster Mash Party (Transylvania 4-5709)
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Dinner With Zach (Transylvania 6-5000)
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Spook Along with Zacherley (Collector's Choice Music)
See also
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Maila Nurmi
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Elvira, Mistress of the Dark
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Dr. Gangrene
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Morgus the Magnificent
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Dr. Shock
External links
