Among the show-business pioneers whose acts entertained millions all over the world, Marty Krofft and his brother Sid have stood behind the scenes, holding the strings. Literally. The Kroffts’ puppets and animated characters have performed, among other venues, in Paris and Las Vegas nightclubs, amusement parks, world fairs, on television and, with this weekend’s opening of “Land of the Lost,” now film. Marty Krofft talked with Eric Estrin about how he went from teen-age car salesman to "Pufnstuf."
My brother Sid is older than me. We had separate puppet acts until we came together and I worked for him in his act. Then we became partners, and he says I took over.
I was living in New York, I was 18, and I was selling cars, and I always wanted to come to California. So he needed somebody to help him. The guy he had working with him for years quit, so I took the opportunity, and I went out. That’s how it started.
The first job we did together was for Liberace. We were in Wildwood, New Jersey, at the time at a hotel. We were with Judy Garland at the Fontainebleau, also. That was the beginning. We were with Liberace a couple years, Judy for a year, with Tony Martin and Cyd Charisse for a couple of years.
It was frightening to be with Judy Garland. It was Judy Garland … but she was phenomenal.
My brother was at the Lido in Paris with the act, and then one morning he wakes me up and he says, “Look, let’s do a big show, an adults-only puppet show, and we’ll do it just like the Lido. We’ll have swimming pools, an ice skating rink; we’ll have the puppets over the audience being tracked, just like the Lido.”
So the next thing you know, we created that show and we put it in a Vegas-type joint in the Valley, the Gilded Rafters. The guy who bought it, his name was Nat Hart, and he was the maitre d’ at the Flamingo Hotel when we were there with Judy. He had left Vegas and bought this little club. He always wanted the puppets to have a show.
So we opened our adults-only puppet show, which we called Les Poupees de Paris, and that turned the puppet act into a business.
This was a big show that was creatively an instant hit, but it was hard to turn a profit because of our overhead. So we went from there to the World’s Fair in Seattle. They built us a theater for a bigger edition of the show. Then we got a club in Hollywood called PJ’s, which was the first disco in the country, and we had our own room in the back.
I borrowed $25,000 from a friend of mine that was a butcher in Hollywood and $25,000 from our dry cleaner. I think the show cost $100,000, so that was half of it, and we came up with the other half.
