A Puppet Master

Here’s what you do: You eat yourself some mushrooms and then you go on down to the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in downtown LA and have yourself a magical little experience. Or fine, skip the mushrooms part—you probably don’t even need them because the puppet shows themselves are surreal enough, like taking a time machine back to an eerie world of childhood innocence that probably never even existed—a sparkly world full of floating fairy princesses and rollerskating teddy bears and creepy clowns aplenty.

The theater was established in 1961 by Bob Baker, a puppetry and stop-motion-animation pioneer who has done stuff for about a million movies and TV shows, ranging from

Snow White & the Three Stooges

to

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

. He had his own TV puppet show in the 50s called

The Adventures of Bobo

, he was head animator for George Pál’s

Puppetoons

, and a young Liza Minnelli once hugged him and said, “I love you, puppet man!”

We visited him in his historical workshop, where over 3,000 hand-crafted puppets lay smiling and dormant in the daylight and then come to life at night to murder you in your dreams. We assume.

Vice: When did you first know that you wanted to be a puppeteer?

Bob Baker:

At age six, my dad took me to see a penny puppet show down at Hal Roach Studios. It was the Depression, so people did shows with blankets as curtains. I fell in love with them and shortly after, I decided to put on my own puppet show. I drove everybody crazy and I finally got a puppet for one dollar from a novelty shop. Then I saved up to get a Mickey Mouse puppet. That still wasn’t enough, so a few months later my mother took me back and I picked two soldier puppets. Then it was lessons and practice every day for a year.

Wow, that’s dedication.

I would say, “If you’re gonna buy me a gift, it has to be a puppet.” No more Lincoln Logs, no more Erector sets. Those were all passé. I sold all my toys and got a puppet stage. At eight years old I would walk to the Bullocks-Wilshire department store on Saturdays and work the puppets. They thought it was cute, a little boy working the puppets. After I developed some serious acts, the manager called and asked if I would do a birthday-party show in Bel Air. Turned out to be for Mervyn LeRoy, director of

Wizard of Oz.

We set the stage right on their front doorstep—a grand entrance for an eight-year-old puppeteer. A star had arrived! The kids loved it. And I think I got a whole $15 for the thing, which was a lot of money in those days.

So you were a successful puppet master before you even hit puberty.

Well, I was making lots of money during the height of the Depression performing private shows for all the movie stars’ children. When I was ten, the Theater of Magic Strings opened. It was a Depression relief program to stimulate the arts so you had to be broke to work there. I really wanted to work there so I had to dirty myself up. I tore my trousers a little bit so I wouldn’t look too prosperous.

You were an inspiration for Walt Disney and you’re the only authorized puppet maker for Disney to this day. How did you meet him?

We were making film mock-ups of our puppet shows down in the basement of JW Robinson’s department store. We did a rendition of

Dumbo

based on the movie and Walt came in one day and we showed it to him and he loved it. We had a couple of fade-outs and he wanted to know how we did that. So when I told him we just turned the lights away from the camera. He laughed and said, “We gotta remember to do that, we could save the studio a lot of money!”

Which is your favorite puppet character?

We have over 3,000 puppets here, all handcrafted, and we use over 100 in each show, so picking one isn’t easy. If I have to choose… let’s say my pirates and the dodo bird.

Some of your marionettes are wearing my dream outfits!

Our costumer, Ursula, came to us from James Galanos and did Nancy Reagan’s inaugural gown. She’s the same size as Nancy so she tried it on to make sure it would fit. When she saw the dress on Nancy at the inauguration she said, “I had it on first!”

Where do you get the materials?

Paramount used to save all their scraps, things they would use to make tiaras—rhinestones and whatnot—and they’d put them aside for little old ladies who wanted to make potholders. One day they call me and said, “You want some leftovers?” When I went down there they said, “Are you the little old lady that makes potholders?” and I said, “I sure am!” Warners would call me too, when they had leftover drapery material. I got over 750 tablecloths and bedspreads from

The Poseidon Adventure

.

I love the glow-in-the-dark sequences that you do.

While attending Hollywood High School, I worked for Shannon Glow. I dipped the fringes and flowers in flourescent paint for the Ice Follies. This taught me a lot of techniques I would use later on, like when I manufactured a whole set of black-lit puppets called “Toys in Technicolor” for Radio City Music Hall.

You were the puppet specialist for Elvis’s movie GI Blues, in which he sings a duet called “Heart of Wood” with a girl puppet that you made. What was he like?

The first time he tried to sing the puppet number, he kept looking at it real funny. He couldn’t see us controlling it so he got a little upset, like, “I can’t sing to this puppet, this damn thing is alive!” He actually had to go to his dressing room for a full hour to unwind.

What do you envision for the future of this theater?

We would love to host old-time movies, pipe-organ concerts, and sing-alongs. Maybe some musical films for children. A lot of our lighting equipment is still pre-WWII, so we’d like to update that soon. It’s fun using old boards but difficult to replace parts.

How would you sum up the experience to someone who has never been to a theater and never heard of a marionette?

“A little bit of magic.” We have a very unique show that brings together vaudeville and kabuki. We wear black and dance with the puppets as we’re controlling them. The scenery and patterns on the floor move, the lights fade and change, and we use a wide variety of characters and costumes. We just have as much fun as we can! Some of the children will probably never see a real stage show as long as they live, so it’s a great experience for them. They want to believe, so we let them!