Costume Company Builds Lots of Characters

Dorothy Bulac never planned to make a career of constructing Chilly Willy, Sparky the Fire Dog and Petunia Pig mascot costumes.

But one night at Disneyland 8 years ago, Bulac and her girlfriend thought they “would be cute by putting our purse straps over Goofy’s nose.” Goofy was infuriated and slammed his foot indignantly.

“Now I’m paying the penance because I’m making exactly those types of costumes,” said Bulac, a former sportswear designer, who looked trapped in her own “Toontown” while laboring on the seams of a pig suit.

Bulac, 26, is costume supervisor for Shafton, a North Hollywood mini-factory that churns out everything from Smokey the Bear to Taco Time Cactus Man suits. During a recent tour, the shop resembled the aftermath of a collision between the San Diego Zoo and Pee-wee Herman’s Playhouse.

Hollow, headless Smokey the Bear foam body-pods hung overhead in butcher-style formation, swaying in the breeze of an oscillating fan. Strewn throughout the shop were stacks of cow legs, furry heaps of sheep, bear and tuna hides and rows of eyeballs, noses and tongues awaiting insertion.

Linda Putnam, 38, who is in charge of bear operations, demonstrated how the bear is born, using a vacuform machine that creates a plastic negative mold of the head. She led the way through various stages of the bear’s construction, pulling out long, thin drawers stacked with Smokey eye, eyebrow, mouth and tongue patterns.

To keep the bear’s image intact, Putnam attends annual Smokey the Bear workshops, usually in California, where forest rangers query her about the suit’s maintenance. “I have a good rapport with all the forest rangers,” Putnam said, showing before and after shots of a refurbished bear. “They all know me.”

“Look, the muzzle is deteriorating,” Putnam said of the ‘before’ photograph, as she rooted through a box of Smokey heads to show a three-dimensional example. “The hat brim is totally wasted. Spiders are nesting in his fur.”

One other company builds the bear, but “not all forestry departments have the funds to buy our better-quality Smokey,” Shafton Manager David Janzow said, adding that the other company, Facemakers in Illinois, builds Smokey for $1,000 less.

Every 5 years, the government renews Shafton’s contract, and the company builds about 60 bear suits each year. Janzow said his staff of 15 can build about 20 bears in one month, and one bear can be refurbished in a few days.

Jim Van Meter, a California Department of Forestry fire captain specialist, said there have been few problems with the suit, “but at one time we had a lot of complaints that the pants kept falling down.” Shafton re-looped the bear’s belt, which solved the problem, Van Meter said, adding that studies done at Smokey the Bear headquarters in Washington (the bear has his very own ZIP code, 20252) show Smokey is second only to Santa Claus in popularity among youngsters.

The man behind the company, Jack Shafton, began his career in the 1930s with a nightclub puppet show on the Venice Pier. After the war, Shafton created, from established designs, some of television’s first commercial characters, giving viewers the tap-dancing Milani’s French Dressing bottle, the Chicken of the Sea Mermaid and Speedy, the Alka Seltzer man.

Commercials also are replete with Shafton characters, such as the dancing pigs, horses, cows and sheep that left the family farm for life at the California State Fair. Cali Quail, California’s state mascot, made his debut with Gov. George Deukmejian in a spot that pushes a “Pop Into the Parks” program. Shafton also constructs the fake paws seen in Meaty Bone dog biscuit and Tidy Cat commercials, Charlie the Tuna, an array of Saturday morning cartoon characters, and mascots for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day and Hollywood Christmas Parades. And, of course, there are the Smokey the Bear commercials.

Shafton opened his North Hollywood shop in 1978 and Janzow, his nephew, began managing operations in 1981 when his uncle died. According to Shafton’s wife, Elly, now owner and president, her late husband was revered by puppeteers as a type of godfather.

Shafton also built Les Poupees de Paris celebrity puppet show for puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft. The show was a popular draw at the 1963 New York World’s Fair and featured 3-foot-high puppets of Mae West, Liberace, Pearl Bailey and others, backed by a complete, all-puppet orchestra. The Kroffts currently produce “D.C. Follies,” a satirical revue of politicians using caricatured puppets (not made by Shafton).

Seated near a chart listing some of the company’s clients (Shari Lewis, Woody Allen, Bank of America, Edgar Bergen, Universal Studios, Ice Capades, Diana Ross, Sunkist, Friskies pet food and Alice Cooper), Janzow explained the process of costume construction.

Clients usually provide a front and back sketch, he said, and Bulac translates the drawing into a three-dimensional character using prototypes, patterns and full-scale drawings showing how a person would wear the suit. Bulac also determines the vision aperture (usually through the mouth using one-way screen) and builds in ventilation wherever she can, including fans and sometimes ice packs stuffed in an inside vest.

The company’s main concern after comfort and durability is providing new lives for worn mascots--although Janzow admits that the process is probably painful for them. (“They probably make replicas of us after we leave for the day and tear our hair out just like we do to them.”)

Besides keeping Smokey in fine form, Putnam is refurbishing 36 Toys ‘R’ Us giraffes used for promoting the store. Surrounded by workers pulling off fur and sewing on plush, new pelts, Putnam explained that the refurbishing of the various 4-member giraffe families, which Shafton originally made 10 years ago, will take about a year.

In a hushed voice, Putnam explained that she rarely ventures off behind her giraffes and certainly not beyond the giant, white and purple lottery ball suits that people actually wore to promote the lottery when it began. There lurk the Department of Transportation crash dummies. With vacant stares, pencil-straight mouths and reflectorized cheeks, they seem scary second cousins to Jason of “Friday the 13th” fame.

But Rick Smith, special assistant to the administrator at the U.S. Department of Transportation, said crash dummies Vince and Larry (Putnam said she can’t tell them apart, and all pairs share the same names) are cordial characters and responsible for the 14% to 44% jump in automobile safety-belt use during the last five years.

The inhabitants of the dummy suits, with their heavy cloth blue and gray jumpsuits, star in television public service announcements and make appearances to promote safety belts. Other, highly technical dummies built by specialists are used to measure passenger impact in test collisions. Shafton turns out 130 transportation dummies a year.

What happens when Shafton employees shelve the last day’s dummy and turn out the lights for the night? Putnam seemed reluctant to answer as she eyed what lay beyond the lottery ball suits.

“Well, anything could happen,” she finally said. “Sometimes I open the door in the morning and the giraffes are in different places. . . .”

QUOTE FOR MASCOTS

‘Sometimes I open the door in the morning and the giraffes are in different places.’

Linda Putnam