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Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Mark Kendall
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
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With Strings
For Alan Cook '53, the finest things in
the world come with strings attached.
By Hugo Martin '87
Ask Alan Cook ’53 to name his favorite puppet and he hesitates. It’s
like asking a father which of his children he loves the most.
How can he choose? He loves the Phyllis Diller puppet that is in the
glass case by the front door of this church recreation hall in Pasadena.
But then again, he also likes the Bob Hope puppet that is stashed away
somewhere in this crowded building. Oh, and he can’t forget Eleanor
Roosevelt. She is in the case next to Diller.
 Cook’s difficulty in choosing a favorite is understandable. The
74-year-old puppeteer His obsession with puppets—begun when he was only
four years old—has resulted in what many experts believe is America’s
largest puppet collection. He has hand puppets, marionettes, shadow
puppets and rod puppets, most of which are stored in this cluttered
building of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Pasadena. Others are in
giant storage sheds behind his modest home in nearby Altadena.
There are so many puppets that even Cook is not sure of the total
number. Volunteers from the Conservatory of Puppetry Arts, a nonprofit
group created in 1999, began cataloging the collection more than four
years ago. But they have not yet itemized them all because Cook keeps
adding to the collection.
“This is what happens when you are a Depression-era kid,” says Cook,
sporting a snow-white goatee and ponytail. “You don’t throw anything
away.”
Cook’s collection surpasses the 800 puppets at the Detroit Institute for
the Arts, the 1,300 puppets at the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts and
the 3,000 puppets at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the
University of Connecticut.
Perhaps more amazing than the sheer size of the collection is the fact
that Cook built it on donations and the meager earnings of a traveling
puppet master.
Puppets have been a part of human history for centuries, although the
exact origin of the art is the subject of dispute. What is clear is that
nearly every major culture has a puppetry tradition. In Japan, the
sophisticated Bunraku puppets overshadowed even the Kabuki as the most
popular form of entertainment in the middle of the 18th century.One of
Great Britain’s most popular and longest running acts has been “The
Punch and Judy Show,” starring Mr. Punch, the rascal puppet known to
flaunt conventions and defy laws. In America, the first puppet superstar
was that top hat-wearing Charlie McCarthy, who ruled vaudeville, movie
reels and radio with his handler, Edgar Bergen, during the 1930s, ’40s
and ’50s.
 The history and tradition of puppetry is not lost on Cook. In his own
lifetime, he has known and worked closely with some of the most renowned
puppeteers of the modern era, including Frank Paris, creator of the
Howdy Doody puppet; Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets; and Sid and
Marty Krofft, whose life-size puppets dominated children’s television in
the 1970s and ’80s.
Cook’s collection is a tangible record of modern puppetry history.
“Puppets change like everything else, and it’s valuable to show that
change,” says Diane Houk, director of the Puppetry Arts Institute in
Independence, Missouri, who met Cook at a puppetry festival in Seattle
six years ago and believes he has one of the biggest and most
well-rounded collections in the country.
During the Great Depression, Cook was a shy kid with bright, blue eyes
who loved to ride the red car trolleys with his parents from his home in
South Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles.
In historic Pershing Square they listened to sidewalk preachers,
communists and socialists sermonize to the crowds. It was an exciting
time, a time of social uncertainty and revolutionary fervor.
But what Cook loved most about those trips were the puppet shows put on
by downtown department stores like Bullocks, Robinsons and May Co. to
attract customers.
The puppets were made of cloth, wood and string but Cook was thrilled at
how they told fantastic stories of princesses, witches, dwarfs and
kings. “It was the illusion of life and as a result a sense of magic
that fascinated me,” he says.
Cook’s mother indulged his interest by giving him a Dutch boy marionette
when he was four years old. When he was older, he rode his bicycle to
nearby Alhambra to buy the latest cutout paper puppets.
Puppets appealed to Cook on a personal level. He was an introverted
child, who struggled to live up to his mother’s high standards. She was
a music teacher, and his father was a court reporter who later worked in
the frozen food business.
 Cook found that despite his shyness, through puppets he could tell
stories, entertain crowds and take on a comic persona. As a teenager, he
put on puppet shows for the neighborhood kids, sending out fliers and
charging 50 cents a ticket.
Although both of Cook’s parents graduated from USC, it was Pomona
College that played a recurring role in his life. In high school, his
10th-grade English teacher, a Pomona College alumna named Minnie Ruth
Dexter ’46, assigned Cook to write about his goals and ambitions. He
wrote for the first time about his dream of becoming a puppeteer.
“It was in her class that that momentous shift occurred,” he says.
Later, Dexter convinced Cook to apply to Pomona College, where he
studied art history. During his college years, he continued to pursue
puppetry, putting on shows for nearby children stricken with cerebral
palsy.
After graduation, he was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. He
never left the country, however. The Army put him to work in the medical
corps, handing out supplies.
After the war, Cook lived the life of a struggling artist, working at
puppetry festivals, on television shows and on Las Vegas novelty acts.
Still, he was happy just being around puppets and puppeteers.
His resume includes working during the 1970s on a Las Vegas act
involving a chorus line of dancing puppets that opened up for actress
Raquel Welch. He helped make hamburger puppets sing for a television
commercial for McDonald’s restaurants. He worked with stop-action
animation in the 1960s to help bring the Pillsbury Doughboy to life. And
he put on puppet shows at amusement parks like Magic Mountain and
Knott’s Berry Farm.
 Along the way, he became a member of America’s tight-knit league of
puppeteers. Puppeteers share a bond, partly from being part of what Cook
describes as the orphan child of the performing arts. They look after
each other, knowing few outside of puppetry understand their passion.
When Howdy Doody creator Paris was dying, Cook cared for him for three
months until Paris succumbed to lung cancer in 1984.
Cook has never been married and when asked if he has any children he
replies “only my puppets,” many of them orphans.
He has amassed his family mostly by scrounging puppets that others were
ready to discard.
Once, while in New York, a puppeteer who was working on the Howdy Doody
show mentioned that the show had just thrown away a gold-painted puppet,
made to look like a rich aristocrat. Cook dove into the dumpster and
saved the puppet.
Other puppets came into Cook’s collection thanks to the donations of
fellow puppeteers.
It’s in the cluttered Pasadena church building across from a noisy
public park that the hand-carved faces of dolls from Mali, delicate
porcelain marionettes from China and intricate shadow puppets from
Malaysia keep him company as he tries to put order to his collection.
He still has his first homemade puppet—a clown he constructed from
papier mache and the wood of an orange crate. He hopes this puppet
will be a part of the collection long after he is gone. Cook plans to
make the Conservatory of Puppetry Arts the beneficiary of his
collection. He looks forward to the day that puppets get the same
respect as paintings and sculptures in the world of art. When that day
comes, he says, maybe his collection will find a home in a spacious
museum with lots of public access.
For now, Cook is content to box up the best of his puppets and haul them
around the country for viewing at puppetry festivals and exhibitions.
“When I look back,” says Cook, sitting among his children in the church
building, “I don’t know how I did it. But you learn to be frugal and not
to throw anything away.”
To see Cook’s puppets or support the conservatory, visit
www.copa-puppets.org. |
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