William Britton "Bil" Baird (August 15, 1904 – March 18, 1987) was an American puppeteer of the mid- and late 20th century. He and his puppets performed for millions of adults and children. One of his better known creations was Charlemane the lion. He and his wife Cora Eisenberg Baird (1912–1967) produced and performed the famous puppetry sequence for "The Lonely Goatherd" in the film version of The Sound of Music. His son Peter Baird was also a puppeteer, and he continued his family's legacy until his own death in July 2004.
He wrote The Art of the Puppet (1965) and provided the puppets for Dark Shadows. Baird also created the expandable nose Peter Noone wore as Pinocchio in the 1968 musical adaptation of the Carlo Collodi story that aired on NBC as a Hallmark Hall of Fame special.
Early life
Born in Grand Island, Nebraska, Baird grew up in Mason City, Iowa. He traced his love of puppets to the moment when his father made him a simple string puppet when he was eight. In 1921, he attended a local performance of the Tony Sarg production of Rip Van Winkle, which cemented his interest. By the time he was 14, Baird was creating his own puppets and giving performances in the attic of his parents' home.
Performance career
A graduate of the University of Iowa and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, he began work with childhood idol Tony Sarg in New York City in 1928. Several years later Baird formed his own company, the Baird Marionettes, which performed initially at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933.
In 1950, Baird and Producer Yul Brynner created a show based on his character Snarky Parker called Life With Snarky Parker, which was a satire of American Westerns. The show featured numerous characters who were previously created by Baird, including "Snarky Parker", the lion "Charlemane", "Flannel Mouse", "Slugger Ryan", a piano-playing rod puppet, along with new characters "Fluffy" and "Nolan", the Villain "Ronald Rodent", the slightly befuddled "Birdie", the seductive "Cuda Bara", the schoolteacher and Snarky's love interest "Butterbelle", and her father "Paw". In 1951, Baird's Marionettes performed some of the roles in the Broadway musical Flahooley, a fantasy about a mass-produced laughing doll who unintentionally threatens the American industrial system. Then, in 1956, Baird's puppets "Gargle" and "Snarky" appeared in Adventures in Numbers and Space, a nine-part series by Westinghouse Broadcasting designed to interest children in mathematics.
Late 1950s—1960s
From 1958 to 1963, Baird's puppets often appeared on an educational show known as Parlons Français (Let's Talk French), which taught young children how to speak French. For this show, Baird created three new hand puppets named "Patapouf", "Lady Graybangs" and "Cliquot", who provided lessons to children while accompanied by Anne Slack, the hostess of the program.
The text of his The Magic Onion play for puppets was first published in Woman's Day in 1961. It is performed still, and features "a beautiful princess and her faithful dog, a wicked magician and his magic onion, a handsome prince, a hungry dragon, and a castle in an enchanted blue forest."
In 1959, Baird helped create Schultz & Dooley, who appeared in advertisements for Utica Club Beer from 1959–1964.
They toured Russia, India, Nepal, Afghanistan, and Turkey, appeared in "The Lonely Goatherd" sequence in the film The Sound of Music (1965), as well as in the ABC-TV 1958 television special Art Carney Meets Peter and the Wolf and Art Carney Meets the Sorcerer's Apprentice, graced many World's Fairs, created commercials for Remington Razors, Wildroot Cream-Oil, Wheaties cereal, Borden Dairy, United Cerebral Palsy, and Young & Rubicam and were part of five Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parades. During the 1964/65 World's Fair in New York City, Baird's Marionettes hosted "The Show-Go-Round", an elaborate musical exhibit in the Chrysler Pavilion.
Opening in 1967, the Bil Baird Marionette Theater at 59 Barrow Street in Greenwich Village presented plays for more than a decade. Among them, Ali Baba, The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland, Winnie-the-Pooh, Peter and the Wolf, Davy Jones' Locker, A Pageant of Puppet Variety, Holiday on Strings, People is the Thing That the World is Fullest Of, Bil Baird's Band-Wagon, The Dragon and The Dentist, L'Histoire du Soldat, and The Whistling Wizard and the Sultan of Tuffet.