Novelty Puppets

These last two dozen designs include highly specialized comic and exotic puppets and some two-handed puppets. The puppeteer who has come this far is ready to exercise his own ingenuity, and so in most cases complete construction details are not given.

73. TROPICAL FLOWER

It looks like a potted plant, as shown above, but should some curious puppet put his head close to sniff its perfume, he will find himself quickly locked in a vise of quivering leaves. The pot is cardboard, open at the bottom. The paper  leaves are attached to the fingers of a garden glove  painted green, which the operator thrusts up through the pot, as shown opposite, C.

74, 75. THE LYNCH BROS .-

This song-and-dance team are sleeve  puppets with articulated legs. The heads are of balsa wood , the hands made of foam rubber , carved with sharp scissors. The wooden  legs are jointed at thigh and knee, and with some practice they can be made to tap-dance quite expertly along the playboard, see A.

76. -AND FINCH

Finch  is a fully articulated free doll , B, the tipsy member of the trio, who is carried about by the other two; propped up, he teeters, staggers and falls, hopelessly confusing their vaudeville routines.

77. THE THING

This is a small cardboard box , painted black inside and open at the bottom for the operator's hand. A loop on the bottom fits the thumb, a loop on the underside of the lid holds the fingers. By opening and closing his hand the operator can make the lid snap like a mouth. Two eyes dangle on a bit of black felt, which masks the fingers when the lid is opened. Legs can be added. A black sleeve  covers the operator's wrist, and so the Thing must perform before a black background.

Puppets and Music

The Thing is designed for use in presentation of a comic novelty song in an LP album called The Monster Rally . However, the numbering and availability of recordings changes so rapidly, no order numbers can be given in this book. It is suggested that the puppeteer train himself to listen continually for musical possibilities and that he never pass up the chance to buy or write down the name of a record he thinks might be useful in the future. This includes background music  for plays.

78. THE GASHOUSE  4 PLUS 1

Here is a five-member tailgate Dixie Land band . Two of them are full hand puppets, the rest are mounted  on springs in the wagon bed and jiggle to the rhythm of the music . The two front wheels are practical and can be rolled along the playboard while the boys blow like fury.

79. WAHINI LOA

Like the Lynch Bros., this Hawaiian maiden has a black sleeve  coming out of the middle of her back, through which the operator's arm passes. Her hips are attached to the torso by a single, angled swivel. The hips are weighted with lead, so that a twist of the operator's wrist causes them to swivel on their wire and set the cellophane skirt  to weaving hula-hula style.

80. THE DANCING PALM  TREE

Even the trees join in when Wahini Loa dances. The leaves can be made of paper  or bought at a display store. The trunk is of painted canvas arranged around an angled center wire which is cranked from below to give the tree its weaving motion.

81. THE PURPLE PEOPLE EATER

Inspired by another song from the LP The Monster Rally , this one-handed, one-eyed, one-horned creature uses both the operator's hands, one inside the head, one inside the garden glove  hand. The hand fingers the openings in the trumpet nose. The single eye is made from a large rubber ball . The nose, face, and eye socket are built of masking  tape; the puppet is finished off with exotic cloth .

82. THE WEIRDS

Their heads are made of rubber balls  cut in half and glued to the top and bottom of a universal hinged cardboard mouth. The heads are attached in a row to a wooden  box  frame, on which are painted the bodies and behind which the operator's hand hides to open and close their gaping mouths in chorus. They are especially good at caterwauling popular music .

83. A HANDFUL OF ANGELS

These little finger  puppets are made of rolled paper  cones topped with wooden  bead heads. The faces are painted on. The dresses are made of crepe paper , the arms of pipe cleaners , the wings of foil  and the halos of aluminum wire. Slip one on each finger  and you have a heavenly little host.

84. BIG CHIEF APPLESASS

Apples, carved and dried, make unusual and effective puppet heads, especially for such wrinkled faces as those of the old Chinese man and woman in the story of Suzume-San and for this leather -faced old Indian chief. Choose an apple  with dry, dense meat; large crab apples are excellent. Break the skin in carving, but remove as little of it as possible; for instance, for the eyes, cut slits and press the edges of the skin inwards, rather than carving out the depression. Dry in good strong sunlight. The quicker the drying process, the less chance of rotting. A cardboard neck tube can be inserted either before or after carving.

85. OG -17

Here is an example of the many possibilities for puppet conversion to be found at the toy counter of your dime store. Og's head was a toy rocket ship that produced bubbles. Wooden eyes were glued on; a body with a teletype machine in the chest was added; the bubble  tube was passed down through the cloth  body, and we had a Martian who expressed himself by blowing  bubbles out of his head.

86. PECOS PETE

Here is an old circus carpet clown trick reproduced in miniature for puppets. The body of the horse  is made from a sheet of foam rubber  bent in the form of a tunnel, with a hole in the top at the saddle position. This hole is small enough to hold tightly to the operator's wrist, which is also the waist of the puppet. The head of the horse  can be overcast in papier-mache  or cut out in silhouette from cardboard; the tail is unraveled twine. False paper  legs are added at the sides. Thus any puppet can be put astride a horse  by simply slipping it on as you slip on a bracelet.

87. LIGHTNIN' BUG

His chest is made of corduroy, his shell is overcast papier-mache . His cut-out  cardboard hands  are suspended at the ends of wiggly coil spring arms. The operator's hand fits into his mouth to open and close it. Small electric bulbs are attached to the ends of his feelers. Their wires run down through his body to a battery and push button, so that they can be made to blink on and off.

88. HUFF 'N PUFF

This parakeet couple can be operated with one hand. The cast papier-mache  or plastic wood  heads rest loosely in the shoulders and are fixed to rods which run down the perch to two wheels below. The wheels can be turned by the operator's thumb, thus turning the heads from side to side. The beaks are movable and are operated by thin wires running down the perch and looped at the ends to fit the operator's first and fourth fingers. Which is all just to show you how complicated rod  puppets can get.

89. THE MAESTRO

His head is a large ball of styro-foam with ping pong  ball eyes inserted, a cardboard nose glued in place and a crepe hair wig flowing wildly. The body is a large, loosely draped cloth , hiding the operator, who holds the head aloft with one hand and directs the orchestra with the other.

2-Hand  Puppets

They are fun to operate and very effective, especially when the second hand is actually used as a hand, usually clad in a white dress or garden glove . One problem which arises is, "Where is the puppet's other hand?" The question can be avoided by draping heavily to suggest that the second hand is concealed in the folds of a dress or cape, as with the Maestro, or by adding a scarf on one side, as in the case of Hush Columbo .

90, 91. THE WORMS

They are made from two green or rose-colored socks. They argue endlessly over whether or not they are the two ends of the same worm and if so, as to which of them is the nether end!

92. HUSH COLUMBO

His head is of cast papier-mache  with ping-pon g eyeballs , movable  if you wish. His shell is cast papier-mach6. Masking must be draped loosely down between the narrow space between the puppet and the operator, who is directly behind the puppet.

93. HAND AND  MOUF

This luminous hand and mouth float before a black background, pantomiming to Al Jolson recordings. The mouth is a doughnut-shaped roll of white cloth  sewed to the ends of the fingers of a black glove  attached to a black sleeve . The hand is a white garden or dress glove  attached to a black sleeve . Black velvet is best for sleeves and background, as it absorbs light well and sets off the white objects. Hand and Mouf have been used successfully on TV .

Puppets on TV

Television  offers many technical advantages that are not found in live puppet theater. For instance, there is an electronic process called "blanking down " which increases the light contrast in the TV picture so that Hand and Mouf can be made to float in darkness with absolutely no sign of human aid. TV offers all the advantages of movies: the opportunity to change from scene to scene instantaneously, close-up pictures of the puppets, electronic double images, etc. Puppets need not be large for television, as the camera can get close enough to make them loom big as life.

A TV Stage

The television puppet stage can be as long as wished, because the picture can be quickly changed from a camera at one end of the stage to a camera at the other. The only limitation is the puppeteer's ability to gallop from scene to scene. Monitor sets  should be positioned back stage, so that the operator can see exactly what kind of a picture of his puppets is being shown. When doing a show for TV, get as much practice as you can with the use of these monitor sets. It takes time to get used to the fact that you are seeing your puppet backwards; that is, the puppet on your left hand is on the right of the TV screen.

Black Light

The fluorescent paints and cloth  and special lamps of theatrical "black light" are expensive, but can be very effective in live puppet presentations. There are special cloth  materials from which Hand and Mouf can be made. There are colored liquid and spray paints with which puppet costumes and faces can be made to glow in the dark.

94, 95. TOP HAT  AND FEATHER BOA

An opera hat  and a long feather boa can be sprayed with fluorescent paints and made to dance with one another, the boa weaving sinuously up and down and around the trembling, bashful hat . Other props  can be quite fantastic under black light. A luminescent trombone could play so vigorously that it loses its slide and has to chase it here and there about the stage.

96. CECELIA OSTRICH

Her thick-lashed eyes are articulated in a round papier-mache  head. Her neck consists of most of the operator's arm enclosed in a tight jersey sleeve . Her tail of real ostrich plumes is held in the operator's other hand and undulates prettily as she stalks along.

97. SCRIBBLES McDIBBLE

His latex  nose hangs over the top edge of his slate and is waggled by the operator's right hand. His left hand, which is also the operator's left hand reaches around the drawing  board and draws pictures and writes messages. The right hand holding the edge of the board is a false hand of papier-mache .

98. JUMBO

Here is a 2-handed elephant in two pieces, front and back. His head is made of cloth  over a papier-mache  shell, with the trunk weighted to give it an elephantine swing. The body is made of gray cloth  over two sections constructed of cardboard. He does a lumbering dance to slow music , only to discover that his back end has left him and is dancing independently. His efforts to fit himself back together properly can be very comic.

99. HOT DOG

This stretchy 2-handed pup is made of brown plush or velvet, with a papier-mache  head overlaid with cloth , only the nose and eyes left exposed to be painted. The operator's right hand fits into the puppet's head and moves the hinged mouth. The left hand fits into the back end, first finger  extended into the tail to make it wag. The body is made of one of the metal coil toys called "slinky s" and is slung between the two ends and covered with a sheath of matching brown velvet. The body can be made to expand or retract; the dog can even turn around upon himself.

100. ANNA CONDA

Her skeleton is one of the more slender slinkys. (They are often found as a part of other toys.) Her head is made of a sock, her body of a tube of painted yellow velvet. She is operated with two hands, one inside the head and masked with a black sleeve , the other controlling the rod  attached to her tail.

101. MARK TWAIN

At one time or another the author has made all of the puppets in this book, with the exception of this one, which is a suggested modern version of the large articulated puppets of Osaka, Japan. The Osaka puppets  are manipulated by as many as three people standing behind the puppet. The operators are in full view of the audience, but they wear dark clothing and dark hoods over their heads. The voices of the Osaka puppets come from offstage, but in this case one of the operators would probably provide the voice for Mark Twain, who, come to life on the puppet stage, would once again spin out his wondrous and comic yarns.

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