No Strings Attached : How a Pair of Angels Rescued Bob Baker’s Marionette Theater

Even on the graffiti-scarred, concrete and barbed-wire fringe of a troubled city, a dream can survive.

It’s a weedy corner, the one near downtown Los Angeles, where 1st and 2nd streets converge on Glendale Avenue and Beverly Boulevard. At rush hour, streams of traffic race by in hot pursuit of freeway on-ramps. Harried drivers may not notice the white, cinder-block building there--the one with the faded clown and the plaster rose bushes out in front.

That architectural anomaly is the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, for 28 years an unlikely fairy-tale haven for innocence, wide-eyed awe and laughter.

Even when puppeteer Bob Baker and his partner Alton Wood sold the theater in 1988--it seemed the right thing to do after a lifetime of performing--the magic seemed sure to go on.

But 12 days ago, financial problems threatened to end the shows forever.

The new owner wanted out. Baker and Wood were asked to take the theater back, but it needed a quick influx of more than $25,000. The doors were shut, and, for a few days at least, it looked as if Los Angeles would lose yet another cultural landmark.

But, this is a Hollywood story, a Capraesque fantasy with angels--two business savvy neighbors with what you might call deep pockets full of miracles.

“I have a brand-new grandson,” said businessman Ernie Castillo, who arranged for the theater to get the insurance it needed to reopen. “I want something left for him in this world when he gets a little older to enjoy it.”

Castillo was joined in his efforts by his friend, retired businessman Edward Maldonado, who also had a strong affinity with the Baker operation. “I used to bring kids from the East L.A. area down here many years ago,” he said. “I always felt it was very important for them.”

Now, a slow fade to when the theater’s troubles began: Its owner, the New Bob Baker Puppets Inc., headed by Donald Battjes, decided to quit the theater business, citing its “marginal profitability.”

Battjes, a one-time professional puppeteer and former director of corporate real estate for 20th Century Fox, said he wanted to concentrate solely on the more lucrative end of the operation he had purchased from Bob Baker--the commercial manufacture of marionettes. Clients include Disney and Warner Bros.

“It was not my intention to close the theater,” Battjes said. “I’m proud of the refurbishing we’ve done and the quality of the staff and the productions.”

He had proposed to return ownership to Baker as of July 1. “The Bob Baker name will be given back to Mr. Baker,” Battjes said. “They’ll get the building back . . . and we’ll return certain assets.”

Those assets include 3,000 marionettes and “a considerable amount of props and scenery.”

Baker and his partner Wood agreed. They had keenly missed the theater. Talking to these veterans of old Hollywood brings a flood of reminiscences--of performing for the offspring of Hollywood’s elite, of working at the theater seven days a week, of impressing puppeteers from Salzburg with their artistry.

Baker, 67, and Wood, 79, began their puppet careers some 42 years ago by “doing birthday shows in various movie star homes,” Baker said. Demand eventually led them to the formation of the theater in 1963 on 1st Street.

That downtown site was also where Baker manufactured his sought-after puppets for other performing companies, television and movies. “They were sold all over the world,” Wood said.

After selling his operation, “I kind of went through therapy to a degree,” Baker said, “to relinquish the theater, to go on with my life.”

“People said, ‘Why did you sell the theater, it’s an institution, you shouldn’t have done it,’ ” Wood said. “Well, we thought it was a good idea at the time; sometimes you make mistakes.”

Battjes’ proposal made them realize, Baker said, that “so much energy had been put in there, it just couldn’t go down the drain.”

There would be a new young troupe of puppeteers to get to know; the party room would have to be redecorated, the interior returned to its original red and gold glory. (Battjes is aware that Baker and Wood aren’t pleased with his innovations; “everyone has an opinion,” he acknowledged.)

But on the eve of the changeover, a somber Baker and Wood greeted the theater staff. The theater would not reopen.

The reason? First, came a bombshell from the insurance company. “They called me on Friday,” Wood said, “and said we need $25,000 from you.” It wasn’t a sum Wood and Baker could “personally” come up with. Second, the pair hadn’t yet learned the extent of the debt they would be taking on. “Our attorney hasn’t been furnished with the proper papers,” Wood said on Tuesday.

Untangling the financial red tape seemed hopeless. In addition, Baker was due to leave the next day for several Northern California puppet performances.

Theater manager Linda Breen began making calls, breaking the news to reservation holders and the press.

The very next day, the first angel showed up: retired fire inspector Ernie Castillo, who owns the property next to the theater.

He offered his business expertise to help the theater “restructure to begin with, then we’ll address the funding. Get little things like the air conditioning on line and get it fire legal, things like that.”

According to Wood, the first thing Castillo did was to find insurance coverage for the theater, enabling it to reopen Tuesday and resume performances of “Song of Scheherazade,” the show that had been running.

“Mr. Castillo has arranged through his insurance company to have us covered,” Wood said, adding that “the bill will be coming and we’ll start paying on that.”

Maldonado, with “access to many organizations in East Los Angeles,” said, “I know we can get them to help finance part of this.”

“Down the line,” Wood said, they hope to seek funding as a nonprofit organization.

The unexpected support has rekindled hope; at an age when most successful men have long retired, Wood and Baker are thrilled to be starting over.

“It’s been difficult for the last four years to be out of it,” Baker said, calling from one of his tour stops. “I really look forward to working with everybody down there. I miss it,” Baker said. “I want to do some real spectacular type shows in there, the type of thing I saw as a kid.

“I’m trying to hold my energy down till I get home,” he exclaimed, “or I find I can’t get to sleep at night--ideas are going around in my head like crazy!”

Wood said his performing days are over, but he plans to see to the everyday running of the theater and work with the puppeteers.

“I don’t know these youngsters yet,” he said (the “youngsters” are mostly in their late ‘20s and early ‘30s), “but they love the theater. If we can get that kind of enthusiastic talent and start training them to become truly fine manipulators, then we’ll be back in business again.”

“I’m overjoyed,” said Peter Goldman, a member of the current troupe, who wrote and co-directed “Scheherazade.”

“Having Bob and Alton here is the best thing that could have happened. To be able to work with them is something I never thought I’d get a chance to do.”

Co-performer Pat Rouleau, who directs an L.A.-based theater company called The Rep when she’s not pulling strings, agrees.

“It can only get better. We’re going to get (Baker and Wood’s) years of expertise, the subtlety of training that will bring the puppets to life in a grand way. We’ve already had a rehearsal with Alton who told us things about manipulation that I had not learned in a year and a half.”

So, the Bob Baker Marionette Theater is back in business, soon to be better than ever, if Baker, Wood, their angels and others who want to contribute, have their way.

Drive by the theater one morning and you’ll see just another shabby building in a neighborhood of shabby buildings. But inside this building, a hundred or so small children are sitting on plush carpet, waiting for red velvet curtains to part and reveal stringed delights that dance and sing, sit on knees and kiss a cheek.

It’s a wonderful life.