Hi All--

I am seeking information about an old vaudeville, British music hall gag.

It involves a (for lack of better terms) puppet theatre.

The "entertainer" uses his head and sometimes hands, but the rest of the puppet is small in scale and/or can be described as "miniature".

So basically a smaller sized character that has a human head.

I saw this "bit" in a British magic book many years ago in The Magic Castle library and I want to say "the routine" was being explained by Bruce Posgate.

There were several characters explained in the book as well as workshop drawings on how to construct the theatre.

Any ideas?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.



Thanks

Jim Gerrish has a "Puppet Show Illusion" in his PVC Pipe Illusions Book 3, on my site. He describes the making of a "human elf" for a Christmas show he did in connection with that Puppet Theater illusion. Is that the kind of help you need, or are you searching for the origin or the name of the book you mentioned?

The art is known as 'Living Marionettes'. I first saw it performed at Butlins Holiday Camp at Clacton-on-Sea in 1960; The performer was Tommy Keele and he was the children's entertainer for the season.

Instructions for building the 'fit-up' with routines and scripts, can be found in a book by late I.B.M. (British Ring) Secretary, Bill Stickland, called "Introducing Bill's Magic".

Leslie

I'm not near my books right now, but I seem to recall this routine being in an old book published by Dick and Fitzgerald or Weymann Bros. called Social Entertainer Tricks.

Along the same lines, does anyone recall seeing, on early television, comedy sketches performed by drawing faces on the performers' chins, using their mouths as the puppets' mouths, and reversing the image to turn the puppet faces right-side-up? (I hope this description makes sense)

Yes. Paul Winchell did this as a regular part of his show.

I believe Le Grand David does it in the Larcom Show.

Richard

Yes! I do remember Paul Winchell doing it now that you said that. I know it was copied by others, as well, but it was certainly a regular bit of PW's.

Just in case you missed it, this thread is almost a carbon copby of a similar (recent) topic on THE MAGIC Café.

You may want to check this out, as a lot of this is being duplicated.

I thought THIS was The Magic Café...
Don

Calimagician: Tim Conway on Carol Burnett show used to do this routine on practically every show of Burnetts. This would have been during the 1980s and possibly tthe 90s. If you can find any old clips of Carol burnett shows on internet there possibly might be the routine done by Tim Conway.

That's spooky. This thread is a duplicate of itself. Weird.

BTW, Supreme published a book called Introducing Bill's Magic which featured Bill Strickland and some of his material. This bit was in there.

Mr. Palmer and Mr. Melville are on the mark... Stickland's book has the best material on it. I featured a "humanette" character in my original musical Fantasmagoria Cabaret (2008) and have quite a bit of research on it. You can see a photograph from the show here:

http://www.fantasmagoriacabaret.com/photographs.htm