Word: tillstrom
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...Burr Tillstrom's first solid job was with a WPA-supported puppet show. "It was terrific," he recalls. "We played everywhere-hospitals, old people's homes, orphanages." But the stirring days faded in 1937. Two years later, Tillstrom was working as a salesclerk when RCA put on a television demonstration in his store. "That did it. The moment I saw TV, I knew it was the one medium made expressly for puppets...
Every weekday evening (7 p.m., NBC-TV), Tillstrom's Kukla, Fran & Ollie brilliantly proves the rightness of his conviction. But in finding success, 32-year-old Tillstrom has lost his own identity. Like Singer Fran Allison, the only other human regularly on his show, he has been swallowed up by the puppet world he made. The world revolves around Kukla, a pinch-faced, sadly wise, sentimental puppet, and Ollie, a one-toothed dragon whose preenings and posturings might have been conceived by Moliére. It is also peopled by such types as Fletcher Rabbit, whose "mother...
Narcotic Pull. The puppets, all powered by Tillstrom's nimble hands and agile, nine-voiced throat, make their way through rambling shows that somehow seem to crackle with spontaneity. Sketchily rehearsed, scriptless, punctuated with casual pauses, Kukla is likely to strike viewers at first as mildly irritating. But the show has an odd, narcotic pull: by the time Chicago joined the coaxial cable last January, Kukla had built up a Berle sized audience rating...
Ephemeral Sadness. This mood has been caught by viewers. Once when Kukla blew his nose on the curtain, 250 handkerchiefs arrived from fans within two days. Unable to answer more than a small fraction of the 8,000-odd letters that pour in each week, Tillstrom mails out a chatty newspaper, the Kuklapolitan Courier, some five times a year (current circulation...
Rabbit & Witch. U.S. television screens also swarm with puppets, and U.S. moppets also react enthusiastically. Probably the most popular U.S. marionette is NBC's Howdy Doody,* a drawling, cow-country character who cavorts through a half-hour show with M.C. Bob Smith. In Chicago, Burr Tillstrom's Kukla, Fran and Ollie is not only the best children's show but has been called the best show of any kind on Midwestern TV. Puppets Kukla and Ollie are, respectively, a small boy and a kindly, one-toothed dragon. Fran is blonde Actress Fran Allison, the only human...