#marionettist

[puppet-orphanage]

General the Cuptain reporting for duty! o7

[secretly-a-catamount]

The puppet cries when they cut his strings.

“Why do you cry?” asks the knight who held the sword, the knight who still holds the sword, his skin and teeth and hair slick with the marionettist’s blood, “we freed you.”

“Because,” says the puppet, face stained with tears of resin, “I did not ask to be freed.”

[thewidowstanton]

Archive feature 2012: Pulling Strings, Frank Mumford, marionettist

To mark the unveiling of our friend Frank Mumford’s most famous puppet – Mademoiselle Zizi, with her accompanist Fyodor – as part of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s permanent collection in London, we are posting this archive feature about him and his wife Maisie, and their amazing showbusiness lives.

By Liz Arratoon

Flicking through my aunt’s Contact the Elderly newsletter, I noticed an old photo of an extremely stylish couple holding two extraordinary puppets. They turned out to be Frank and Maisie Mumford, who, from the 1940s to 1970s, performed with their internationally acclaimed marionette troupe. Though Maisie died in 1985, Frank – now in his nineties – is living in the same tiny London mews flat they shared since 1946. He has lost none of his charm or humour and, with perfect recall, he explains: “My nearest sister, the youngest of three, was ten when I was born, so I was a loner. I grew up with Somerset Maugham and HG Wells’ books and started to create a world of my own.”

Recovering from mumps when he was six, he converted a Maynard’s sweet box into a miniature theatre and, fascinated by cinema, saved up for a Pathe Kid projector and started making films. “I cut a proscenium in the front and had curtains and cut figures out of magazines with hairpins to hold them.” But it was when his English/drama teacher gave him the American puppeteer Tony Sarg’s book, Marionettes and How to Make Them, that his life’s work took off. Originally billed as Master Mumford and His Marionettes – he played London’s Wood Green Empire at 14.

“I had a stand of puppets at the School Boys’ Exhibition at Alexandra Palace from 1933-36. I got a job at Edmonds of Wood Green in display and had a permanent puppet theatre, performing afternoon shows and special ones at Christmas to bring people in. I learnt and learnt and learnt with a captive audience. At about 15 I began to have friends who were professional sculptors, painters and musicians. When I was 16 or 17 we formed the first Puppet Productions and played all London’s small theatres.” From opera to ballet, nothing was beyond their scope.

In 1938 Maisie Tierney joined the troupe, but it disbanded at the outbreak of war in 1939. They married in July 1944, and that September Frank was taken prisoner at Arnhem. “She thought I’d gone for good,” he says. But on his release he joined the Central Pool of Artists and created the two-hour touring show Stars on Strings. After his demob in 1946, they developed a more practical two-handed act. With Frank making all the puppets, hand-carving their wooden heads, their glamorous, fast-paced act was born. “The puppets we’d been using were fine for small theatres. They were about 18” high with seven-foot strings, but to play a place like Hackney Empire, they needed to be bigger, about two feet tall. I designed a bigger head and scaled the body down and it worked.”

They played the Moss Empires’ circuit, top London nightclubs – including Edmundo Ros’ Coconut Grove – and variety shows and cabarets around the world. From the Moulin Rouge to the Casino de Paris, and from the London Palladium to the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo, the Mumfords’ speciality act was there. Before a show the puppets had to be groomed and mechanically set. Roughly nine were used in a music hall or nightclub spot but between 12 and 30 might be needed for plays. Each of their four cabaret spots lasted about 15 minutes, “depending on the applause”, but the shows ran to an hour and 45 minutes.

Ideally the puppets had to be seen from about ten or 15 feet away. The lighting had to exclude the puppeteers’ hands and had to be very powerful, but Frank says proudly: “We had theatre craft, so people didn’t look at us. They applauded the puppets.” He worked constantly on improvements and even changed his shoes to black suede, to eliminate reflections.

A typical cabaret programme would include scenes of different pairs of puppets: two hippos doing a routine, two skeletons doing another, a bullfight, with a bull and a matador, a belly dancer with a man at her feet, Javanese dancers… and then there would be the delectable Zizi, their undoubted star. Introduced in 1947, Mademoiselle Zizi – modelled on Lana Turner and Gypsy Rose Lee – was an instant success. The diminutive chanteuse was always immaculate, with dresses – one designed by Schiaparelli and lined with her trademark shocking pink – made by Frank, who also made her jewellery. Her delicately carved fingers had painted red nails. “After a show in Juans les Pins, her measurements were given in a write-up as 36, 28, 36 and she was named ‘Miss Venus of the Cote d’Azur’,” Frank remembers fondly. But she was also labelled ‘Sex Appeal on Strings’ by the Manchester Herald, and later banned for kissing men in the audience at the Birmingham Hippodrome. Such was the allure of the Mumford puppets!

Indeed, those who fell under Zizi’s spell included another glamorous couple; the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Frank cites a private party for the Duke’s birthday given by socialite Margaret Thompson Biddle in Paris as their most prestigious date. “Our agent said, ‘We’ve got a booking and we can’t send just anybody. We want someone with style’. She had a beautiful old house on the Left Bank and we did the show in the garden. Afterwards, out of the darkness, the Duke’s equerry emerged and said, ‘The Duke wants to see Zizi again’, so we had to unpack her. The Duke always looked haggard in photos but face-to-face he looked fantastic. He was about 50. Mrs Simpson appeared, too, in a Balmain dress. She wasn’t going to be left out.” The Duke rebooked them six months later for a party he gave in the same house for the Norwegian ambassador.

And at Christmas 1961 they did shows for the royal family, their friends and municipal workers in Monaco. “We arrived on le Train Bleu at 8am and were met by a chauffeur in a Mercedes saloon, which was ours for the week. They had a bijou throne room at the palace. Princess Grace hardly spoke, but Prince Rainier was absolutely easy to chat to. He was the one I had to go to for Zizi to kiss but after about ten shows he got fed up with it.” Later someone asked what Zizi thought of Princess Grace? The answer came: “Well, she’s kissed a prince but I’ve kissed kings.”

I, however, was not the first to unearth the Mumfords’ glittering past. The award-winning film maker Richard Butchins was introduced to Frank by a mutual friend, and finding that he still had all the puppets in his attic – where they’d lain lifelessly for years – and roll upon roll of archive film of their shows and TV appearances, decided to make a documentary. He hopes to finish it by September, depending on finance – the money has come via crowdfunding campaigns on indiegogo – but it hasn’t been easy. Butchins says: “All of their performances on British TV have gone because nothing was archived until the 70s. Basically, the late 40s, 50s and 60s is the part I’m particularly in love with but I’m looking for stuff from Spanish TV in the 50s, and German and Japanese TV in the 70s. I discovered about 20 minutes of film in the French national archives from the late 40s or early 50s, this beautiful black and white film, but they want an absolute fortune to use it.”

Frank describes this as a “smidgen” of their story, which he is documenting in a book, and is determined Maisie should not be forgotten. “It’s come about that it’s all about me, but Maisie contributed an enormous amount. During the bad times you get in showbusiness she was always terribly supportive. She was very beautiful and had charisma in bucketfuls. She had a wonderful personality, like sunshine. We spent 24 hours of every day together and fortunately we were very good friends.”

The renewed interest in their work has, for example, given Frank the chance to see old films he shot for the BBC for the first time. He says: “It’s fantastic, but tiring having to deal with my Beethoven effect.” His hearing may be lost but, thanks to Butchins, Frank and Maisie’s important contribution to the UK’s variety heritage never will be.

Mademoiselle Zizi and Fyodor are on display in the Theatre and Performance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

Sadly, Frank died in 2014, and here’s his obituary in The Sunday Telegraph, also by Liz Arratoon

Pictures: Courtesy of the Frank Mumford Archive

This feature first appeared in The Stage in 2012

[jetsliketaxis]

Our pal, Carine, with Wolfie and Pablina at the Alameda de Hércules in Seville. She’s a professional marionettist originally from Paris, and she’s now traveling Europe sharing her buddies with the world. 👋 🤗 . . . #marionette #puppeteer #marionettist #puppetry #seville #spain #sevilla #puppetshow #andalucia #wanderlust #travelphotography #worldonastring #sevillespain #puppetsmith #travelblogger #traveladdict #sevillahoy #beautifuldestinations #streetperformer #busker #streetphotography #streetperformance (at La Alameda, Seville) https://www.instagram.com/p/Br7yQysnMuQ/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=ehctznfze9nt

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