Enter the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Downtown L.A. and you’ll find boys and girls, fruits and vegetables, dogs and cats, all dancing, skating and singing from a set of strings in a world of vibrant primary colors. Bob Baker, a UCLA theater alumnus, has been sharing this miniature world of 3,000 puppets ““ and counting ““ to all types of theatergoers since the theater’s opening in 1961.
And from Aug. 30 through Sept. 2, his puppets will take center stage to present the story of Baker’s own life in the show, “Bob Baker: This is Your Life!,” hosted by comedian Charles Phoenix. Despite its biographical subject matter, the show contains the characteristic whimsy that Baker’s puppet shows are famous for.
“When the lights go down and the puppet show begins … this is not reality,” said Phoenix. “This is a fantasy that you’re in now. When you walk in the door of the theater, it’s like no place you’ve ever been.”
The show covers the evolution of Baker’s interest in puppetry throughout his life ““ not surprising since puppetry affected him long before he began his career. His childhood fascination with puppets was the impetus for building his puppet fantasyland.
“I saw a puppet show when I was 5, down at the old Parker Brothers Department Store,” Baker said. “I went to see the first show of the day, but I stayed to see all six shows. I became so intrigued with (puppetry) that I wouldn’t let my dad take me home.”
From that point, puppetry defined Baker’s life. While attending Hollywood High, Baker constructed puppets and even began to sell his pieces to toy shops. Interested in the entertainment industry, Baker interned at the George Pal Studios, an L.A. entertainment studio, while attending UCLA as a theater major. UCLA did not offer any specific curriculum in puppetry.
“This was way back when there wasn’t much out there but Royce Hall,” he said.
This did not dissuade Baker, however. Instead, he enrolled in an extensive range of theater courses, garnering important insight that he could then use for his puppet work.
“I took courses in plastics. I took a wonderful course in wood-carving. … I took these various courses in designing and applied them to the puppets,” said Baker. “You just have to make them apply.”
Through courses and private artisan instruction, Baker learned that puppetry was about experimenting with different kinds of crafts and, in turn, different ways of entertaining audiences.
“As you evolve, your work changes constantly,” said Baker. “You see other materials and you think you’ve got to use it, and sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t.”
As Baker’s skills progressed, he found new methods of constructing his puppets, adopting more lightweight materials like plastic for his puppets.
This evolution of his craft yielded Hollywood success for Baker. With his puppets first appearing in the Shirley Temple film, “Poor Little Rich Girl,” Baker’s name circulated among producers and his puppets began to appear in television shows and films, including “Bewitched,” “A Star is Born” and “Bedknobs and Broomsticks.”
In “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” his puppet work helped bring the aliens to life. Baker even hosted puppet show performances at the homes of Clark Gable, Lucille Ball and Ronald Reagan.
Despite his larger film and TV success, Baker has not strayed away from his childhood love of puppeteering.
“I see people making a lot more money and being able to do a lot more, but then I turn around and see that I’m still doing what I want to do,” Baker said. “These are the things I love doing. I love making children have a good time.”
The magic of marionettes has spread to the adult theatergoing crowd, eager for the old-fashioned entertainment. With the theater’s horseshoe shape, audience members can watch both the puppets’ and the puppeteer’s movements, as the puppets engage in exuberant song and dance numbers.
“I started bringing (tour) groups in here and basically everybody has the same (positive) reaction,” Phoenix said. “I was getting a kind of nighttime theatergoing crowd in here. … It’s just so creative and real and homespun. It’s so unlike corporate entertainment.”
While the development of computer-generated images and digital characters in the entertainment world may seem to threaten low-tech puppet effects in films, Baker and Phoenix maintain that the magic of puppetry will remain strong. Phoenix furthermore asserts that Baker’s classic theater, defined by its lack of association with big Hollywood studios, only lends to its popularity.
“With every decade that goes by, (Baker) is not trying to update it with pyrotechnics or laser lights or any of that. He’s developed a style that has endured all of these years,” Phoenix said. “It’s as fresh and new as two weeks from tomorrow, yet … it’s old school. It’s timeless.”