Froggy’s Tribute to Dr. Paul Bearer
If you grew up in Tampa you for sure remember Dr. Paul Bearer. He still holds the record for the longest-ever continuous run as a TV horror-movie host, 22 years on WTOG’s Creature Feature, which originated in St. Petersburg and was broadcast statewide. Several generations spent their Saturday afternoons in his company. Dr. Paul Bearer’s curious but good-natured blend of gallows humor and groan-inducing puns still hangs in the air, along with his cadaverous smile, enormous facial scar, disproportionate eyeballs and undertaker’s costume.
Dr. Paul Bearer was Ernest Richard “Dick” Bennick, former stage magician, North Carolina “boss jock” and teenage dance-party host and, in his later years, regional sales manager for a pair of Lakeland radio stations.
He created Dr. Paul Bearer while working at WGHP in High Point, N.C. Dr. Bearer replaced Count Shockula, the station’s first horror host, whom nobody (particularly Bennick, who wore the Shockula costume) liked very much.
Dick had a prosthetic left eye – the result of a car accident years earlier – and because he also suffered from Grave’s Disease (a pun he surely must have loved), his right eye had a pronounced bulge.
“We were checking into a hotel in Tampa, for an advertisers’ convention,” his wife recalls. “The girl at the front desk said ‘Are you Dr. Paul Bearer?’ and Dick said yes.
“She said ‘I thought you had a glass eye?’
“He said ‘I do!’ And he pulled it out and showed it to her.”
Patty Bennick cackles loudly at the memory. Just talking about her husband makes her laugh.
“One time I heard the guys on Q-105 talking about him,” she says. “And they called him “Ol’ Blue Eye.’”
Annoyed, she told her husband about it.
Hey, Bennick said, as long as they’re talking about me, I don’t care.
Check Out Froggy’s Video Tribute to Dr. Paul Bearer
