The nearly 50-year-old stage just west of downtown, where the owner crafts most of the puppets, is behind on mortgage payments. But he is determined that the show will go on.
Inside, as an elderly man wielded a marionette, the place's distinction became apparent. Bob Baker slowly tilted his hands this way and that, pulling on a series of delicate strings. And as he did, the 55-year-old puppet -- itself almost a senior citizen -- a black crow decked out in a straw hat, white jacket with red piping and matching tie, began to dance the Charleston.
Behind wire-rimmed glasses, Baker's eyes lit up as he worked, a peppermint pink polo shirt and gray hair framing his smile. “Ha, ha, ha," he whispered, in a syncopated rhythm. The crow's eyes darted open and closed, and its claws seemed to jive to the unheard music. And then, Baker moved his hands again. The crow jumped to his grand finish, and Baker exhaled: “Yeah, man!"
The Bob Baker Marionette Theater is a place that is both magical and earth-bound. Operating from the corner of 1st Street and Glendale Boulevard just west of downtown Los Angeles for 49 years, it is a vestige of childhoods lived, where vegetables dance to old vaudeville tunes and musical instruments dance and jump across a black box theater festooned with crystal chandeliers. Baker constantly tweaks shows to keep up with the changing tastes of children, something he has been doing ever since he started staging puppet shows at the age of 8. For instance, he said, there's the way that children sit in the theater -- on red carpets arranged on three sides. The puppeteers walk up to them, manipulating the marionettes as they go; the puppets dance around the children, rather than on a curtained stage. It's “a way of staging puppets I helped pioneer," he said.
Baker himself loves recounting stories. He tells of walking through Disneyland with “Walt" on the day before the park opened. He remembers birthday parties for the children of Old Hollywood: Danny Kaye, Jack Benny, Eleanor Powell. His puppetry was featured on Star Trek, A Star Is Born and G.I. Blues with Elvis Presley. He sold his hand-crafted marionettes at stores including Bullocks Wilshire and FAO Schwarz. He says he can look at any of the 3,000 puppets in his catalog and tell which one it is just from looking at the controls.
