Puppets are fun

The Bob Baker Marionette Theater (covered in this previous Boing Boing post) is celebrating their 50th Anniversary all year. The Bob Baker theater, the longest running theater of its kind in the US, is the only surviving puppet theater in downtown Los Angeles which was home to thirty puppet theaters in the 1930's. Bob Baker bio & interview for the DVD release of Pinocchio.

Baker himself loves recounting stories. He tells of walking through Disneyland with "Walt" on the day before the park opened. He remembers birthday parties for the children of Old Hollywood: Danny Kaye, Jack Benny, Eleanor Powell. His puppetry was featured on "Star Trek," "A Star Is Born" and "G.I. Blues" with Elvis Presley. He sold his hand-crafted marionettes at stores including Bullocks Wilshire and FAO Schwarz. He says he can look at any of the 3,000 puppets in his catalog and tell which one it is just from looking at the controls.

I run librarian.net and metafilter.com. I am a techie librarian who lives in Vermont and travels the world.

MORE: Entertainment • guestblog • puppetry

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t3hmadhatter

malcovich, malcovich malcovich, racial stereotyping.
Anonymous

that’s cool. they used to have a puppet theater at the santa cruz beach boardwalk. parts of that show have stuck with me for 35 years
Anonymous

Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich?
EH

Pretty cool, but what I’ve been looking for for years is more subtle puppetry like that in “Being John Malkovich.”
Ross

Because everyone still loves those good ole racial stereotypes – always good for a laugh, right?
Hopefully the kid that takes over the company can turn it around
MelSkunk

thanks so much for posting this! I guess not a lot of people are interested in puppets (besides me) but I’m happy to see more about Bob Baker!
Jessamyn West

Yeah the video, and especially the frame captured in the embedded video is weirdly stereotypical and I sort of wonder if they picked that because of the Hispanic kid later in the program who says he never sees people like him in these sorts of things. I agree, weird juxtaposition and makes the puppet theater seem weirdly behind the times and at the same time reaching the community? I went back and forth on even picking this video for that reason.
cameronh1403

That is awesome! Now I want to go to LA just to see that.

Thank you!