Collection goes on sale – with strings attached
Brothers with combined age of 181 hang up their marionettes after a career spanning some six decades
AT THE combined age of 181 they could be forgiven for calling it a day.
And now two of the last practitioners of an almostforgotten form of theatre have put up their unusual collection of marionettes for auction.
The Lazarus Brothers of Cleethorpes were ‘Living Lilliputian’ marionettists, where the audience would see a real live head – on top of a miniature body worked by rods.
Thought to have originated in France in the late 18th century, the act became very popular in Victorian England.
But it was already a dying art when fresh out of National Service in the 1950s, Milton Lazarus and his older brother Harry were taught the art by a retired practitioner.
Their first summer seasons were on Sandown on the Isle of Wight, where they performed three times daily.
Then it was mainly string marionettes, including a Chinese figure with a marvellous juggling act, who for the finale threw a ball in the air and caught it on the end of a pole “to terrific applause”, recalls Milton, now 90, with a chuckle.
“A lot of these things we dreamt up and then worked out a way to manipulate the figures,” added Mr Lazarus, who also made the papier-mache heads, a timeconsuming task.
“We even did sawing a woman in half in a box and having the magician walking through the gap and then pushed the boxes aside to show there were no strings.
“At the end the girl got out of the box and did a bow. People used to wonder how we did it – but we never told them.”
After a 60-year career that has taken in village halls, theatres, carnivals and even country-house performances, the brothers have decided they are getting “just a bit too old and creaky for showbiz.”
“We literally fizzled out in the end, because we didn’t have the strength to do it,” said Mr Lazarus.
“We’ve had a wonderful time. As well as puppetry it’s a great platform for comedy. It is rather a shame that few, if any, other people are still doing it. As far as we know we were the last.”
The collection, which is in an online auction, ending next Tuesday, includes the bodies for two clowns, a Pearly King and Queen and two in Austrian national dress.
The Pearly King and Queen were used for a repertoire of oldtime music hall songs, including
I’m Henry VIII and Boiled Beef and Carrots.
Mr Lazarus said: “When we started TV was just coming into its own and we’d do village halls usually on a Saturday night and hope people turned up to pay and see you. It was a different era altogether.”
The work in the villages dried up in the 1960s. He said: “The last time we did it for a season was on the Fun Ship in Mostyn in the early 80s, after that we did gigs and went into business.
“We worked at Elsham Hall near Brigg in the 90s. We were on the original committee that reinvented the Cleethorpes Carnival and used the figures there.”
Paul Cooper, of auctioneer Eddisons CJM, said: “Perhaps unsurprisingly given how few performers there have been in the last century, marionettes of this type are now very rare.
“Outside of museums like the V&A in London, which has a set of four, you’ll be hard pressed to find an example.”
People used to wonder how we did it – we never told them. Milton Lazarus describes a marionette magic trick.