The improv comedy community is mourning John Paragon today. The news that this clever, funny gent passed away last April from unknown causes is just now being circulated.
You probably know him best as "Jambi" the genie in Pee-wee Herman's playhouse but he did an awful lot of movies and TV shows in other roles. I first knew him from The Groundlings, the L.A.-based improv company, where the Pee-wee character and his show were born. John was a major player there…outrageously versatile, capable of playing a wide range of characters. I later worked with him on a short-lived ABC series in 1983 called The Half-Hour Comedy Hour. No matter what we gave him, he always managed to make it work.
I really don't know what John's been doing for the last twenty-or-so years. And what I really don't know is why we never saw him in the cast of Saturday Night Live like Phil Hartman and Jon Lovitz and others with whom he shared that Groundlings stage. I can only point to about eighty SNL cast members he was better than.