People Are Celebrating The Birthday Of Large Marge Of ‘Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure’ Fame

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is an embarrassment of riches. It might even be director Tim Burton’s finest film. But among its most beloved moments — up there with Amazing Larry’s new hair, that epic studio lot chase finale, and the basement at the Alamo — is this: Large Marge, the ghost trucker who gives our man-child hero a terrifying ride, and whose stop motion-assisted corpse reveal has traumatized generation after generation. Well, it’s her birthday.

The news was shared by Pee-wee himself — or, rather, star Paul Reubens, in character — on Twitter, with a photo that shows the memorial in a truck stop populated by those who remember her well. Born on December 5, 1937, she turns 83 — or she would have had she not met a grisly end on January 11, 1974, at only 37.

And with that news, a lot of Pee-wee fans chimed in to pay tribute to one of cinema’s great one-scene wonders.

Some noticed that 37 seems pretty young.

And some remembered the scene scarring them for life.

Large Marge was played by actress Alice Nunn, who was actually ten years her senior and who appeared in movies like Mommie Dearest and Who’s That Girl as well as shows like Murder, She Wrote, Happy Days, and WKRP in Cincinnati. She died in 1988, three years after Adventure came out. Also, fun fact: Burton, who gave it a loving handmade quality, only directed it because the film he was going to make as his debut, the dark comedy After Hours, wound up being helmed by Martin Scorsese. So you can thank Scorsese for Pee-wee’s finest film being as great as it is.