Old Puppeteer Brings His Friends to Life Once More

For 47 years, Bob Jones of Fullerton worked as an engineer in aircraft factories, quite a change from his earlier reputation as a master puppet maker and performer. But during those years as an engineer, he kept in touch with his puppet and marionette friends and now has brought them to life again.

Jones, 73, thinks he has lost a little of the touch that made him a master at his marionette craft, but Alan Cook of North Hollywood, a major collector of puppets and marionettes, believes otherwise.

“He really still does have the touch. He’s one of the great old-timers,” said Cook, 50, voicing an admiration that no doubt brought the two men together for the current monthlong puppet and marionette exhibit at the Brea Cultural Center.

A number of the marionettes in the exhibit were some that Jones manipulated in the 1930s at such famous nightclubs as Trocadero and Coconut Grove (“I hated nightclubs”) as well as Grauman’s Chinese Theater and on Catalina Island.

In those years, said Jones, who retired two years ago, “puppet and marionette shows were at their peak,” giving him a source of income during those difficult times. It also helped him land a job with Walt Disney, but as a cameraman. “It was when they were planning for ‘Pinocchio’ that they learned I was familiar with puppets, and they put me in charge of developing the character since no one else knew very much about puppets.”

He said he built the first Pinocchio puppet, the one used for the animation and promotion for the picture of the same name.

Jones said during those times he also was one of the people who helped Disney develop a plot of land in Anaheim that later became Disneyland.

Although Jones feels that most puppetry today is mediocre at best, he has taken some responsibility for keeping the art going, an art that in his early years saw big crowds at his performances, including the performances during 38 weeks at Grauman’s Theater.

Jones is also learning modern technology to help videotape his work and the lectures he gives, noting that without something to record his shows, “it’s like sticking your finger in water. When you take it out, there’s nothing left.”

Jones said his shows in the 1930s featured grand opera, jazz and ballet music, drawing audiences of adults because the shows were too advanced for youngsters to understand or enjoy.

“Nowadays,” he said, “adults-only sounds dirty.”

It only seems right that Robin Hood, 40, Orange Coast College’s chef and culinary arts instructor and former chef for fine restaurants, will be named Chef of the Year by the Orange Empire Chef’s Assn.

“It acknowledges . . . behind-the-scene contributions to the organization and the community,” said chef association spokesman Robert Jones.

The other Robin Hood did the same thing . . . sort of.

Mike Couffer, 24, of Corona del Mar has been traipsing around California collecting natural history artifacts, and last summer he came across an important find, a walrus skull like that of a sea lion, with two teeth still embedded in the jaw.

To the layman, it hardly stirs the imagination, but to the Natural History Foundation of Orange County, says its spokeswoman, Audrey Moe, it was big news considering private collectors and even black marketeers would have paid big bucks for the artifact.

“I don’t normally donate my finds,” said Couffer, a science major at Orange Coast College, “but a find as important as this should make its way into scientific literature. That’s why I gave it to the foundation.”

The imagination of the young knows no bounds, and Mandy Mulligan, 10, a fourth-grader at Brea’s Olinda Elementary School, proved that when she and others in her school were asked to write something for an “Imagination Celebration” contest.

“I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds after our teacher told us to be quiet and listen to the right side of our head,” she said.

“Then I saw some white clouds that were bouncy and soft, like they were a feather and cotton blend. I also saw the sun breaking through and decided the drawing should have a tree in it, too. It was a happy blue sky.”

She put those thoughts on paper and was a first-place winner. Her prize was $100.

Acknowledgments--Scott Warneke, 7, of Dana Point, who was diagnosed as arthritic at age 2, was selected as 1986 Poster Boy by the Arthritis Foundation of Southern California.