FOR THE LOVE OF CHOCOLATE MILK

First came Mutual Media's own CAPTAIN KEVIN plugging the original "chocolate milk amplifier" ROY'S BROWN STUFF ("If it doesn't say ROY, it must be real chocolate.")

Then came JIMMY NELSON, DANNY O'DAY & FARFEL singing: "N-E-S-T-L-E-S. . ."

Not to be outdone, BOSCO came up with BOSCO BEAR. . .

FLEXITOON CHARACTER CUT-OUTS

ALL PUPPETS & MARIONETTES by FLEXITOON

FOR THE LOVE OF LAUREL AND HARDY

It all began with

LAUREL & HARDY & CHUCK on WPIX 11

The show would open on these nifty caricatures by AL KILGORE on the front of the puppet stage as DANCE OF THE COOCOOS played.
The camera would ped-up to reveal. . .

. . . the PAUL ASHLEY PUPPETS with "Voices and Animation by Chuck McCann." These amazing puppets (one on each hand!) would do funny bits and introduce the Laurel & Hardy films with tons of interesting background info.

So thanks to Chuck I discovered these life-long, derby wearing friends.

And thanks to Chuck I also became friends with a buddy I'm friends with to this day: PAUL RUBIN.
I met him on Chuck's WNEW-TV 5 show - - THE LAUREL & HARDY FIX-IT SHOP. They'd screen the larry harmon Laurel & Hardy cartoons.

Paul and I discovered we had much in common, not only our love for puppets but also for Laurel & Hardy. I was chubby and he was a bone, so we went into full-on L&H mode, wrote an act or two and began performing in schools and Community Centers and the like.
We even had our own Billy Gilbert!
Our career as LAUREL & HARDY Jr. reached it's apex with several guest appearances on JOE FRANKLIN'S MEMORY LANE!
As the years past (and I lost weight!) I kept up my love for the boys by building my own Laurel & Hardy Puppets (circa 1974) and introducing new audiences to their antics:
Another of the wonderful things I owe to the inspiration I received from Chuck & Paul!
In 1965, Chuck - - along with Dr. John McCabe, Orson Bean, cartoonist Al Kilgore, and John Municino formed a small group in New York City to honor the legacy of Laurel & Hardy. They called it the SONS OF THE DESERT (after the Boys 1933 film). The Sons have grown to an International organization, and it is still going strong! They're everywheres I tells ya, so you can join, too!

http://home.earthlink.net/~sons_secretary/

BUNCHES OF PICTURES OF PUPPETS

ME (r) backstage @ THURBER'S CARNIVAL 1975

Howard K. Lobster & Gil Fish 1970
Jimmy D. Schnozz '74

FLEXITOON Home Office 1999

OLGA & OZ THE FIRST

Shadow Scene from HAMLIN 2007

Underground TV Studio from THE HAMPTOONS '04

JIMMY THE IDIOT BOY 2008

HERBERT & LULU'S FIRST FOTO 1979

SOUND TRAK

While we were shooting the first season of PINWHEEL on that little up-start start-up network called, uh, oh yeah, Nickelodeon (whatever heppened to them?) our friend ALLYNN GOOEN (who was just beginning his way up) told Olga (whom he met when he ran the box office at Bil Baird's Marionette Theater) he was working with two Caldecott-winning authors on developing a property for television about listening skills. (Boy, how precient was that idea What OMG I wasn't listening WTF) Mister G. said they'd love us to create and perform the puppets. The basic idea sounded sound, so we all figured out the show around it and called the thing SOUND TRAK!

I did all the art work for the sales kit on animation cels with ink, paint, photo-montage and collage. Worked my brains off on it, too. Ultimately the series didn't achieve lift-off - - though GOOWINS BALLOOWINS did! (http://bugsandballoons.com/).

Sometimes getting there is half the fun.

Sometimes.

Just stumbled upon the art, posted below. Each scene represents a different function of listening and hearing.

Double-U Tee Eff? EL-OH-EL!

Here are Allynn's memories of THE ORIGIN OF SOUND TRAK - - or - - We Worked On A TV Series Together And All I Got Was These Drawings.

###

After doing my cable tv show for a few seasons, I figured it would be good to have a message... and since I studied (and believed in) Speech... hey why not a tv series on it. At that point I thought about Annie Siedler... she had been my main Speech teacher in college (Montclair State College - now "University", in NJ). For my final exam rather than write the information about Speech correction... I had an inspiration and wrote a Fairy Tale using the Speech Problems and corrections as good Knights and monsters. She gave me an "A"... it turned out (I didn't know at the time) she had written a successful children's speech correction book - "The Hungry Thing". We've been friends ever since.

I mentioned the idea of this tv series to her and she wanted to work on it with me. After we worked on an outline, she felt it was a good time to bring in her writing partner... Jan Slepian. Ann and Jan wrote a couple books together and jan has written a number of books on her own. We met a few times before i said we should bring you guys aboard ... since they had the book writing experience and you had the puppetry and tv background (where did I fit in?).Then we all worked on it for some good time/s....

We submitted the project to several places... Jan had a friendship with Maurice Sendak... I had met some tv producers in classes I had taken... you had your connections.....My memory was that the best reaction was that they liked the proposal, but they were looking for minority shows.

That's my memory.Allynn

THE CRAIG MARIN PUPPETS

Between THE PUPPETEERS and THE PUPPETEERZ, I worked solo. Below is the brochure from then.

Luckily, it's more yellow that I am.

VEGETABLE SOUP & OUTERSCOPE 2

"Vegetable Soup was an American educational children's television program produced by the New York State Education Department that originally ran on PBS from September 22, 1975 to December 14, 1978. The purpose of the program was to be a television series for children to help counter the negative, destructive effects of racial prejudice and racial isolation and to reinforce and dramatize the positive, life-enhancing value of human diversity in entertaining and affective presentations that children could understand and relate to."

OK, that's the Wikipedia version. However, it left out one of the creepiest puppet segments on television. Ever.

OUTERSCOPE II.

PADY BLACKWOOD's company was in charge of the puppets. DORRIS DOWLING sculpted and painted them, and OLGA FELGEMACHER did the animations, and was in charge of the puppetry. Olga also played EDGAR (shudder) and HENRY. Edgar's voice was redubbed by a kid, but Henry's sports O's Bil Baird coined "toy-voice".

Olga called them the "Village Of The Damned Puppets." Below is a scene - - you can see for yourself. Good night, children. Sleep welllll. . .

(that's Olga as Henry on the left)

SUNDAY

(and from Lucky Jack Rabbit & Quackerbox, too!)

ADVENTURE IN TELEZONIA

The BIL BAIRD MARIONETTES teach all about that new-fangled item called a - - what's that again? Oh yeah, the telio-fone. This was State-Of-The-Puppet-Arts back then!

Adventure in Telezonia (1947) was the second film produced for Bell Telephone.

A Couple Of Three April Fools