TV’S TOP PUPPETS NOT ALL MUPPETS
KUKLA AND OLLIE
> There is no puppeteer in television history more gifted or inventive than Burr Tillstrom, whose unscripted “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” starring a puppet doll (Kukla) and a puppet dragon (Ollie) alongside human Fran Allison, was a landmark of early television, airing nationally from 1948 to 1957. With Ollie on one arm and Kukla on the other (or any combination of several supporting puppets), Tillstrom could play contrasting or complementary energies and body language, as if one hand really did not know what the other was doing. Though the show had an easygoing charm, it was not aimed at (or away from) children: The cast might perform “The Mikado” or discuss the meaning of highbrow, lowbrow and middlebrow.
BEANY AND CECIL
> Created by animator Bob Clampett, “Time for Beany” was a satirical adventure show, broadcast locally in L.A. in 1949 and nationally from 1950 to 1955. Played against cartoony painted backdrops, it trucked in goofy puns and a friendly hipster vibe. Stan Freberg performed Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent, a kind of rambunctious aquatic cousin to Tillstrom’s Ollie, “300 years old” and “35 feet, 3 inches in my underwear.” Daws Butler, soon to voice Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and Quick Draw McGraw, performed Beany and Captain Huff n’puff. Albert Einstein is famously said to have excused himself from a meeting to go watch the show. A Clampett-produced cartoon version, “Beany and Cecil,” followed in the 1960s.
HOWDY DOODY
> Though not a particularly compelling character in his own right, the magnitude of his celebrity makes it impossible to scant the star of “Howdy Doody Time.” Dressed in western wear, with a freckle for each of the 48 states, Howdy is nominally a young boy — though that he sounds indistinguishable from host “Buffalo” Bob Smith, who voiced him either off-camera or through prerecorded dialogue cued by an engineer, and stood as tall as the more interesting “adult” marionettes of Doodyville, argues otherwise. The series ran from 1947 to 1960; Rufus and Margo Rose, seminal figures in American puppetry, nimbly worked his strings for most of it.
BUNNY RABBIT AND MR. MOOSE
> Conspiratorial disturbers of the peace in the “Captain Kangaroo”
Treasure House, these plush puppets were the work of former set painter Cosmo Allegretti, who also appeared as Dancing Bear and gave voice to Grandfather Clock. Bunny Rabbit, whose spectacles gave him a brainy, contemporary look, never spoke except in Mr. Moose’s ear; his main goal was to trick the Captain out of carrots. Floppy-antlered jokester Mr. Moose lived to drop ping-pong balls on the Captain’s head. The sneaky puppets and not the proper adults were the real role models in this series, which ran weekday mornings from 1955 to 1984 on CBS.
LAMB CHOP, CHARLIE HORSE AND HUSH PUPPY
> Like Tillstrom, magician’s daughter Shari Lewis was a genius at switching among characters, but as a ventriloquist, she was often a part of the conversation herself, conducted sometimes at breakneck pace. Her technique is astonishing but her writing and characterizations are also first-rate, subtle and unpredictable and full of
PUPPET
warmth. Lamb Chop is her star creation, a child and not a child, tender or tough as the moment demands; Lewis’ Bronx roots come through in her. Lewis made her way through local TV shows in the 1950s until NBC’s “The Shari Lewis Show” took her national in 1960. In the 1990s, the public television series “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along” proved an Emmy magnet.
TOPO GIGIO
> A 10-inch-tall soft foam, sweet-tempered mouse created by artist Maria Perego, Topo Gigio made the leap from Italian children’s television to international stardom by way of “The Ed Sullivan Show,” where he first appeared in 1963, and whose final guest he was in 1971. (“Eddie, kiss me goodnight!” was his signoff.) Sullivan participated in these appearances — more than 50 — as the mouse’s straight man, in which Topo was worked by black-clad puppeteers against a black background to create an illusion of independent movement. The show was host to many imaginative puppeteers and ventriloquists, including Señor Wences, the Bill Baird Puppets and pre-“Sesame Street” Muppets.
THUNDERBIRDS
> The apogee of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s sci-fi “Supermarionation” series, including “Supercar” and “Fireball XL-5,” “Thunderbirds” (1964-66) mixes marionettes, miniatures and mechanics in the story of a family that travels the globe putting out metaphorical and actual fires. What makes this show so beautiful is not that the strings don’t show but that they do. You’re always aware that it’s a handmade, handcontrolled object: a toybox world you can imagine making yourself.
THE “PEE-WEE’S PLAYHOUSE” PUPPETS
> Paul Reubens’ delirious, art-underground refraction of the kids’ shows of his own youth, which ran Saturday mornings on CBS from 1986 to 1990, brought puppetry back to network TV in a big way. (It was not an example followed, particularly.) Along with the living things — Randy the mean kid, Pterri the Pterodactyl, the puppet band, Mrs. Cow, the flowers in the window — the gift of anthropomorphism was spread liberally through the Playhouse: Chairry, the Dog Chair, Clockey, Globey, Floory, Mr. Window and Mr. Kite.