This Man Pulls Strings to Please Audiences : * Entertainment: Puppeteer Jim Gamble’s day can range from ‘The Nutcracker’ for schoolchildren to cabaret shows for adults.

Clad in trademark black tuxedo, the Tom Jones impersonator danced suggestively toward the audience in a posh banquet room and tickled the knees of the women seated up front. Later, a top-heavy belly dancer and a sensuous strip-tease artist flirted with the men in the crowd.

But the adult entertainment came with strings attached--the puppet kind. And puppeteer Jim Gamble was pulling no punches. In fact, his lecherous wino was looking up the skirts of elegantly dressed women.

Gamble’s evening cabaret show, dubbed “Puppets After Dark,” was the finale to a dizzying schedule of puppet performances, albeit more innocent, that began in Redondo Beach at 9 a.m. with two productions of “The Nutcracker.”

“The fun of this is (that) every hour it is a different audience,” Gamble said. “I love performing, and I love performing in front of the kids, especially.”

Gamble, a resident of Rancho Palos Verdes, abandoned a career as a commercial airline pilot in 1983 to devote himself full time to puppeteering. His production company has taken off, growing to 10 puppeteers who provide 2,000 performances annually throughout Southern California and across the country--300 performances in December alone.

The job is a far cry from his days as an Air Force pilot in the early 1960s, when he did puppet shows on the side. After leaving the military, he settled in Los Angeles in 1966, taking a job with Continental Airlines. “I thought, ‘Who could make a career out of doing puppet shows?’ Little did I know,” Gamble recalled.

His audiences range from school assemblies to bachelor and bachelorette parties. Besides the adult-oriented “Puppets After Dark” and children’s “Nutcracker” shows, Gamble is known for his “Peter and the Wolf” production--some school districts use a taped performance as an educational video.

His company is also the resident puppet theater for the Los Angeles Music Center on Tour program, matching classical music with puppets to foster music education and drama.

In the San Gabriel Valley, Gamble’s production company will perform for the Pasadena Rotary Club on Sunday. Two other local shows are scheduled in elementary schools next month--at Buchanan Street School in Highland Park on Jan. 9 and at Camino Grove Elementary School in Arcadia on Jan. 10. For information on booking the company, call Jim Gamble Puppet Productions at (310) 541-1921.

At one recent elementary school production, “The Nutcracker” was as much a lesson in appreciation of classical music as a marionette show.

Gamble designs and builds his own puppets. He has 2,000--each seemingly with a life of its own. “They all feel different, like playing 10 different Steinway pianos,” he said.

He says his newest ones are his favorites, and his studio in Harbor City is a veritable child’s delight of brightly colored clowns, elves, animals--and, yes, reindeer too.

But his shows are equally pleasing to adults. Gamble often meets parents who recall a Gamble performance from their own birthday parties when they were children.

Many marvel at how little Gamble, who is 54, has changed over the years.

“I think audiences really energize him,” said Gamble’s wife, Marty, who doubles as his office manager. “I’ve seen him really dragging before some performances, but by the end really pick up because of the energy from the audience.”

At his next stop that day, a performance before a preschool group, a “Baby Rudy” reindeer puppet moved in and out among the crowd, rubbing noses with children. The smiles from watching parents were as big as those from the children.

“He’s just a lot of fun to watch,” said Yosie Yoshimura, director of the Gardena Recreation and Human Services Department, which sponsored the show.

From there, Gamble hurried off to his next performance, shaving in his van as he made his way to a park where children greeted him with a chorus of “Feliz Navidad” and other Christmas songs.

The show featured elf and animal marionettes riding skateboards and jumping over boxes. A juggling elf asked Gamble if he could bounce an ornament off the children’s heads. “Anybody out there have a hard head?” Gamble asked.

Dozens of hands shot up.

After the show, Gamble raced toward a rendezvous with his wife at a Torrance gas station, where he changed into evening clothes, switched cars and headed toward downtown Los Angeles for the cabaret show, his fifth performance that day.

A Dirty Old Man puppet started off. Dressed in a trench coat, the puppet “flashed” his audience. A piece of embroidered cloth covered his loins.

“It’s Show Time!” it read.