Bil Baird, 82, Creator of Puppets on Early ‘50s TV Shows, Dies

Bil Baird, who with his wife, Cora, and their collection of offbeat puppets filled the tiny black and white TV screens of the early 1950s with stylish mirth, died Wednesday.

His daughter, Laura, said the creator of such disparate hand puppets and marionettes as Charlemane the Lion and Slugger Ryan had been suffering from bone marrow cancer and was 82 when he died of pneumonia in his Manhattan home.

Baird, a former performer in the Ziegfeld Follies who met his late wife while both were working in Depression-era, federally subsidized entertainment projects, came to television in January, 1950.

And although the Bairds and their puppets were to soon be seen by millions on the Ed Sullivan, Jack Paar and Sid Caesar shows, that first encounter proved to be their only starring role.

They and their diminutive creations were featured on “Life With Snarky Parker,” a children’s show produced by Yul Brynner in which the marionettes were the featured inhabitants of the Western town of Hot Rock. Snarky Parker astride his faithful horse Heathcliffe fought the town villain, Ronald Rodent, on CBS for 15 minutes each evening for several months.

‘Jack Parr Show’

But it was on the old “Jack Paar Show” in 1957-58 that the Bairds first attracted an adult crowd.

They and Cliff Arquette as Charlie Weaver, Elsa Maxwell, Hans Conried, Hermione Gingold, Florence Henderson, Betty White and Buddy Hackett as themselves, with Paar as their emotional host, developed the interview-entertainment format that became a hallmark of late night television.

Charlemane, a hand puppet and arguably the Bairds’ most popular, had first appeared on “The Morning Show,” forerunner of the Paar night show in the early 1950s.

“He (Charlemane) was sort of a commentator, a wit, a puppet pundit,” said Arthur Cantor, who was a producer and publicity agent for Baird. “He sort of was Bil personified, a good-natured lion. That’s a good way to characterize Bil.”

Slugger Ryan, another early Baird creation, was a cigarette-smoking piano player.

Baird had met Cora, his second wife and a dancer with Martha Graham, after he had broken into the entertainment business as an apprentice to Tony Sarg in the late 1920s. Sarg, considered the dean of American puppetry, was the mastermind behind the giant balloons of Macy’s now-traditional Thanksgiving Day parade. From there Baird moved to puppetry, teaching Cora that art while she used her dancing skills to add fancifulness to his creations. Many over the years have noted that Baird’s female puppets came to resemble Cora.

‘Sound of Music’ Segment

They performed at Radio City Music Hall, on such TV specials as “Winnie the Pooh” featuring Shirley Temple and created the memorable goat herder segment in the classic film “The Sound of Music,” said Los Angeles puppet historian Alan Cook.

The Bairds also made hundreds of TV commercials, including some for Wheaties cereal and industrial films for such clients as AT&T.;

In the 1960s, Baird served as a State Department cultural ambassador and toured the Soviet Union and India where he--at the behest of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi--developed a puppet show extoling the merits of birth control.

Born William Britton Baird in Grand Island, Neb., he used to say he spelled his first name with one “l” because “no one ever pronounced the other one anyway,” said his brother George.

In 1943 their Bil and Cora Baird Marionettes (she died in 1967) performed in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Baird received an Emmy nomination in 1958 for his work on “Art Carney Meets Peter and the Wolf.” His 1965 book ‘The Art of the Puppet” is considered a definitive work in that field.