Bob Baker: The Making of His Magical Marionettes

Back in March, I approached and photographed Bob Baker at his Theater in Echo Park for my blog entry "Bob Baker and His Magical Marionettes" which focused on the history and evolution of this Los Angeles legend. My fascination was piqued when his assistant and fellow puppeteer Alex Evans had mentioned their workshop where the Marionettes where made and stored.

I jumped at the chance to dig a bit deeper into the making of these amazing objects of Art. Every inch of these Marionettes are made by hand and the labor of love that goes into making them shines through. Bob once again graciously gave his time to conduct the following interview which allows us a peek inside his workshop and look into his amazing life.

For the love of all things made by hand,

Julie Pavlowski Green
September 13, 2014

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Julie Pavlowski Green: Were all your Marionette’s made here in your Los Angeles workshop?

Bob Baker: Yes but some were also made in New Hampshire.

JPG: Could you talk a little bit about who made them, how long things took to make and what people’s specialties were?

BB: Basically, I was making them but I did have other help. There was King who was an amazing artist with sponge and designing hands and so forth.

There was Sky Highchief who was from Brooklyn.

And Roy Raymond was a great puppeteer. He would take a puppet head and do something with it and all of a sudden it would look like Beverly Sills! I would finish animating it, do the eyes and make sure the mouth worked properly.

JPG: Did you work with plaster?

BB: No, the heads were made out of all sorts of stuff - wood dough, later on it was flexique which is poured and cast. It has some chemical in it that makes it set up and get very hard.

JPG: On average, how long does it take to make each puppet?

BB: It takes 350 hours to make a puppet consecutively over a three month period. We’d make a design and then not follow it. When you’re working, certain things fall into place and others don’t so you have to make adjustments.

Alex Evans: Here’s a box of heads that Bob created. These were going to be made into roses, right Bob?

BB: Those are singing roses we did years ago.

JPG: The craftsmanship is amazing. How you made everything by hand is really fascinating.

BB:  It’s the only way you can make ‘em! You have to be very carful about making a mouth, to make the mouth move. You have the block that goes in the area and the main thing is, you don’t ever touch the sides of that block of wood. 

That is your perfect joint. The sides of the head that comes down that it fits into it you can change that a little bit - add and subtract a little but never change that block of wood. Once you touch your file to that block of wood, you’re in trouble! You can carve teeth there and a tongue but you can’t touch the sides cause they have to go into that channel.The original workshop is where the party room is now, table saws, laths, ban saws, drill presses - you name it.

JPG:   Is this a new body you’re working on?

BB: No, this is an old body that was a Prince we made up for Bullocks Wilshire. We start with the torso and then they costume it. The body is made out of beautiful white sugar pine which used to cost $5 and now today the same piece would be $125.

I would take this body over to my mold maker and we would make a mold of it. I placed indications on them so they can glue the screw eye at the top and attach strings to it. Then we made the little cloth piece which is glued in the midsection of the body which allows them to twist and turn. You can even make them breath:

The 45 degree angle at the end of the leg is done so the puppet can raise the leg up and do a high kick. If they didn’t give it enough space here, the puppets leg movement would be limited. See everything works for one another in the parts and pieces.

JPG: I can’t help but notice the pair of leopards behind you. What story are they from?

BB: The leopards opened the circus that brought in Cleopatra.  Poor old Laguna Beach didn’t know what to do when we did it down there. We had Carol Channing do the song “Cleopatra” written by Rogers and Hart and she stopped in the middle of the whole thing and said: “Oh there are pharaohs in the bottom of my garden!”

Poor Laguna Beach, they nearly had a hissy fit. In the newspapers it said we were bringing dirty shows to the children of Laguna. Well, they wanted an adult show and we gave them an adult show called “Sketchbook Review”. They didn’t invite me back after that and told me it was due to the fact that I didn’t live in Laguna Beach.

JPG: What year was this?

BB: The year we opened the Theatre (1960). We had a puppet theater at the Pageant of the Masters for 6 years. I went to the very first Pageant (back in 1933), the very first one there ever was, my Aunt took me. My Grandfather opened the road to Laguna Beach and built the inland road. He owned a lot of property there and built houses and so forth.

But after the “Sketchbook Review”, they had other puppeteers that did not live in Laguna Beach. They had Rene Zendejas who lived in the Valley. After that they had Tony who lived downtown.

JPG: Where there other people that used to work for you?

BB: There was Morton Hack. He designed costumes for “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”, “Jumbo”, “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” and won an Oscar for his Costume Design in the original “Planet of the Apes” in 1968.

Morton had done a lot of the Broadway stuff, he would design these things at MGM. He used to design for me, the puppets. He said to me “You make such interesting things that I can’t help but to design for you”.  So the thing is he would design the puppets and I would make them.

Some puppets we would make over 4 or 5 times because he didn’t like em. So we would tear them all apart and do them over again. But he always had a little twist to his work. He could cartoon as well as do straight (sketching). He would make my costumes and circus first and then would copy a lot of the designs he made for me and use them one other projects.

JPG: What years did you work with Mr. Hack?

BB: He designed my front window when I first moved to Santa Monica Blvd. when I was just 21, just after the war (WWII). I had just come back from the camouflage.

JPG: What was the camouflage?

BB: I joined the 938^th Camouflage Battalion with all the studio people. We were attached to the Air Corp. Our job was to put Los Feliz all the way out to Lockheed Martin (in Burbank), under canvas. You couldn’t see that Lockheed was there. We painted and we built and we camouflaged, so when the planes flew over it looked like open land. 300 or 400 men worked on it. I started teaching at 18 in the camouflage school.

JPG: How did you meet George Pal?

BB: I wanted to go to work for Disney after the war. I just adored early Disney. 

JPG: Have you been to the The Walt Disney Family Museum up in San Francisco?

BB: Oh that his daughter did? I wanted to go up there and she goes and dies on me!

JPG: They just had an exhibition on the late Mary Blair who designed “It’s a Small World” at Disneyland.

“Magic, Color Flair: The World of Mary Blair” ran March 13- September 7, 2014

BB: Oh! She did the color. She gave Disney color. 

JPG: When did you work with Disney?

BB: I did high end collectable puppets for Disney. We did a big Pinocchio and a little Pinocchio and the last thing we did was Maleficent. We only made 75 of them because we could not get any more of the fabric. He had a special purple that he used on all of his villains and I couldn’t get any more fabric, so I couldn’t do any more of the puppets of Maleficent.

At the beginning (of Disneyland), I made all of the figures that were displayed in the windows down main street. I made all the figures for them and they would do the backdrops and so forth. They were all semi-animated. We ran strings up like Marionettes. Ursula was going to kill me since I sold them the patterns to the costumes. Oh, she was so mad!

JPG: Who is Ursula?

BB: Ursula Heine came to us from Galanos. She helped James Galanos make Nancy Regan’s three inaugural gowns. The beaded one is in the Smithsonian.

JPG: So she did a large majority of your costumes?

BB: For the last 30 years! . The first thing she said when she came to work is “Women don’t tailor” but she says: “I’ll tell you what, I can do it for you”. So she gets this beautiful little costume for a 12” puppet all done in vacuform, she says to me “How do we put it on”? and I told her “Glue it”. She says “Do what? You gotta be kidding! I spent all this time making this gorgeous little costume and I’m gonna glue it?”. Well I told her it wont get on any other way, you have to glue it on!  Well, she’s become one of our best gluers. 

It didn’t dissolve your sequins with lacquer. It was a white glue and it was perfect for gluing fabric. I tested out all kinds of glue when I was doing big backdrops with trees that were made out of felt. I introduced Fox, Universal - all the studio costume departments, I introduced to this glue – sequin cement. Only thing is now, the people that made the glue have gone out of business! 

Bob Baker and Scherzo

JPG: So who is this little guy here?

BB:  His name is Scherzo. He used to run up and down the keyboard while Murray Sam was playing. 

“Moppet and Mr. Scherzo” was a children’s show on Channel 5 in the early days. We were on there for a month.

JPG: Well Bob, thank you once again for sharing the techniques you used in the crafting of these magical marionettes and for bringing a smile to us all!