Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1949)

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While it's not always possible to contact all the germs in the tract, you can depend on Zonitors to immediately kill every reachable germ without the slightest risk of injury to delicate tissues. Available at any drug counter. Mail this coupon today for free booklet sent in plain wrapper. Reveals frank intimate facts. Zonitors, Dept. ZRM-119, 370 Lexington Avenue, New York 17, N. Y. Name. R M 78 with a chair back as improvised stage, he introduced his gift. Impishly, the puppet peeked up and bowled to the lady. Tamara shrieked, "Kukla!" and began to laugh. "Kukla," she explained, w^as the Russian word for doll. It also was the Greek word and was used in most Slavic languages. With his christening, the puppet seemed to take life. He danced, he bobbed, he pantomimed his eternal devotion to the ballerina. Recalling that evening, Burr says, "It was the strangest thing — almost as though Kukla were doing it all himself. I suddenly found I couldn't bear to part with him." Kukla was disturbing. Burr was trying to be a serious student. His marionettes were packed away, but he couldn't ignore Kukla. Kukla wanted out. It was, for Burr, a period of painful conflict between two possible careers. In the end, Kukla won. After two quarters. Burr quit school and rejoined the marionette troupe. Show business, he realized better than ever, was no bed of roses, but it was the only thing he wanted to do. The marionettes were the stars, and Kukla only a between-acts bit player. His personality did not emerge until the group scheduled an arty production of Romeo and Juliet. Burr wanted to play Romeo. He knew the role letter perfect. He ended up turning pages of the narrator's script, the most frustrated Shakespearian in Chicago. Burr took his disappointment politely, but Kukla just couldn't stand it. Out he popped, during rehearsal, and in a voice which had its origin in Burr's old-man parts, he took up Romeo's romantic lines. He sighed for love and ranted against cruel fate. Then he shifted to do Juliet's role, too, interpolating highly personal comment on the cast. Things well-mannered Burr would never say, rattled rapid-fire from Kukla, and Kukla was a riot. From that time on, Kukla became impromptu entertainer at all parties. People asked him questions, and as Burr says, "Kukla was really smart with people. When I was too young or ignorant to have an answer, Kukla took over. What would have been naive from me sounded funny coming from him." It was 1938 before Burr's own personality developed sufficiently to give Kukla a companion. He was, by that time, getting a few bookings for parties, and usually his girl friend went along to help work the show. She had a funny take-off on an opera singer. The voice was too good to waste, so Burr created Mme. Ooglepuss to match it. Even after Burr and his schoolmate sweetheart parted, Madame remained. Boasting of her great days, and cherishing the illusion she is irresistible to all males, she became a perfect target for Kukla's satire. OUie appeared shortly after Burr began his Saturday shows in the children's theater at Marshall Field's department store. Burr's mother played piano and kept the young audience quiet. Traditionally, every puppet show had a terrifying dragon. Burr sought one which would not frighten the most timid child. The result was Ollie, possessed of one tired tooth, the gentle pop eyes of a heifer, and a foolish, bashful grin. Ollie for some time, was content to stretch his neck and flap his mouth soundlessly. Then a friend of Burr's wrote "St. George and the Dragon," still a production pageant for the Kuklapolitans, and Ollie took voice. Burr was playing the State Lake theater when it became apparent Mme. Ooglepuss needed a boy friend. Obviously Kukla wasn't going to stand still while she sang "My Bill" to him. From pure necessity. Burr created a new character who said the only thing one could say to such a woman, "Boyng!" It wasn't until the show came to WBKB, years later, that Madame's tumble-tongued boy friend had a chance to get even. He asserted his independence by changing his name to Cecil Bill with a bow to the station's stage manager. Bill Ryan. Cecil Bill makes it clear his affections incline toward Mercedes. Mercedes' origin was completely commercial. A Marshall Field's official conceived the idea of using the Kuklapolitans to dramatize sales instructions to employees. Mercedes was invented to show clerks how to cope with a nasty little girl and add a few laughs to the problem. That was the cast in 1939— Kukla, Mme. Ooglepuss, Ollie, Cecil Bill, and Mercedes — when an RCA unit moved into Marshall Field's and Burr Tillstrom discovered television. Burr took one look at what happened with cameras and screen and knew it was for him. He pestered RCA and Field's officials, begging to go on. No one wanted him. At last, to silence the nuisance, someone gave permission and Kukla went to work. Officials were unimpressed. Says Burr, "It was the engineers who saved us. They fell in love with Kukla. The guys who keep things running always like Kukla." Their liking was contagious. Burr and Kuklapolitans were supposed to open the RCA exhibit at the New York World's Fair. Their opener turned into an all-summer engagement. The Kuklapolitans had found their medium. Real to their creator, they became, when projected human-being size on a screen, equally real to their viewers. Burr knew that come what may he had to stay in television. On his return to Chicago, he had just enough time to appear on some of WBKB's opening programs and play a show or two in the Zenith experimental studio before Pearl Harbor hit. From the services, Burr drew a fiatfooted rejection — literally. He couldn't march, the Army and Navy told him. His draft card was marked 4F. Bitterly embarrassed by looking so healthy and wearing civilians, Burr decided that even if the Navy would not have him, it might accept Kukla. Out he went to Great Lakes Naval Training station to volunteer. His mother went along as accompanist, and the commandant equipped them with a tiny portable piano which could tour the hospital wards. The first of the casualties had just been returned. Says Burr, "I never was so scared in my life. Here I was, a carefully preserved civilian, trying to be bright for a batch of guys who had caught hell on the beachheads. I wouldn't have blamed those Marines if they had thrown me out of the joint." There were a few rough cracks while they were setting up for the first time, but the moment Kukla entered, the Marines took interest, and when Ollie showed up as a dopey Shore Patrol,