Bob passed away on May 9, 2000. After months of illness, he was diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas, and was moved to the Arroyo Grande Care Center, a couple months before he died. He had been living at “The Village”, in San Luis Obispo, California.
He was born in Moorhead Minnesota. As a young boy he saw vaudeville shows, which included marionettes, at the Grand Theater in North Dakota. After his parents separated, Bob, his mother, and younger brother Harold, moved to Minneapolis in 1924.
In 1928, the new Minnesota Theater opened, and Bob saw a show by Less Klicks, called the “Enchanted Forest”, with marionettes that glowed from lights inside of them. That same year, while attending West High School in Minneapolis, Bob saw the Tony Sarg shows, “Treasure Island”, and “The Pied Piper”, and was inspired to try to build a marionette. He wrapped gummed wet paper strips around a clay mold, and later when it dried, he painted the face. His mother sewed the costume for his first marionette; a man of sixteen inches high who was dressed in a tuxedo. The cloth body was stuffed with sawdust, the feet had lead weights, and the stick control bar was strung with carpet thread. The man sat and played a small cardboard pipe organ made by Bob who was fascinated by theater pipe organs all his life. After performing a show, he continued to make variety act characters, and was a big hit at school functions. His first pay as a professional, was fifteen dollars in change.
Bob graduated from high school in 1930, and jobs were scarce. He continued his interest in puppetry, performing shows at a branch library, and giving classes in puppet making.
He met other puppeteers in the city, including Lem Williams, who built marionettes in his wonderful basement workshop. Bob got a job at the Minneapolis Public Library where he paged and worked the switchboard. He also got a part-time job at the new WCCO Radio Station, on top of the Nicollet Hotel, and did radio drama for awhile.
In 1931, Bob arranged a puppet exhibit at the Library, and a group of his friends—Ann and Cedric Lindholm, Virginia Houghtaling, Irene Odegaard, Mary and Lem Williams, and others—brought their puppets in for the display. In September, Bob started making his marionette cow, Floribell. A couple years later, Popular Mechanics ran an article by Rufus Rose called “Secrets of Making Marionettes”. The puppets were made with plastic wood, and Bob started using that method making characters about 24 inches high. In his vaudeville show, his characters included Mae West, an organist, Zulu dancers, a clown and dog, two breakaway skeletons, a candy-stick parade, and Floribell, who always ended the show.
Minneapolis had a new experimental TV Station in the mid-thirties, and Bob and his assistant, Wally, got a call to put on a variety show. The TV Station W9XAT, and Radio Station WDGY aired the show. Bob and Wally worked in darkness with light beamed from the camera, and it worked. Paul McPharlin wrote about this “Puppet Visioning” in his puppetry newsletter.
Later, in 1936, when the P of A had started, the piece was published in the annual “Puppetry Yearbook”.
In May of 1938, Bob built a stage that folded into a coffin style box with brass handles. He strapped the box on top of his car, and drove to the P of A Fest in Chicago with four riders. People in passing cars were looking sadly at them, and when they figured out why, two of the riders bought a funeral wreath which they tied to the stage, and alternately laughed and dabbed their sorrowful eyes all the way to Chicago.
The summer of 1938 was busy with the Northwest Puppet Guild holding a festival in Duluth, and Bob participated. After that festival, Bob changed the name of his cow to Bessie Bovine, and made four new calves called the “Beef Trust Girls”.
By 1939, Bob (with an assistant) was a regular at the Curtis Hotel and Curly’s Nightclub in Minneapolis, and had changed the name of his act to “Puppets by Andre”.
That year, the Twin Cities Puppeteers Guild was started by Bob and his friend Lem Williams .
In 1941, Bob made a marionette “Professor Keyzanpedals”. After performing his marionette striptease act at Curly’s Nightclub, a Chicago agent booked Bob into the Burlesque circuit for awhile. Bob quit his job (against his mother’s wishes), and became a full-time puppeteer which took him around the country, into Canada, overseas for the GIs when he was in the army, and along the way met many movie stars. He performed for Veteran’s Hospitals out East, and even for President Truman and officials at a hotel in Kansas City in 1948.
Bob built a home in Hudson, Wisconsin. In 1950, he got a job in advertising, but still performed part-time at fairs and recalled the show when he almost lost his stage to the wind, and puppets and props went flying.
In 1959, Bob moved to Sacramento, and got a job as a map maker for the county planning department. He continued to do some part-time puppet performing for local TV, and acted in several community theaters.
In 1975, he retired from the county, and later moved to San Luis Obispo, California. Bob wrote many published articles about his performing experiences, kept in contact with old friends like Roger Stephens who was a member of the TCP Guild in the 1940’s, attended shows and visited with local friends Signe and Richard James, and for the last five years of his life, wrote letters and shared ideas with Karen Backes who appreciated everything and considered him to be a dear friend.
More Thoughts on Bob Longfield
by Signe James
Bob Longfield’s career in puppetry (Puppets by Andre) spanned many decades. Although his active years as a puppeteer ended in the mid ‘80’s, his dedication to the art of puppetry and to P of A carried through to the end of his life.
I was fortunate in my first visits with Bob in ’89 and ’90 to be able to see his many marionettes and his extensive scrapbooks before he began distributing them to various P of A collectors. Bob had a strong interest in recording and preserving his years in puppetry and left much in the way of written, oral and photographic documentation of his career in puppetry.
In his late retirement years Bob always regretted that there was not a Guild close enough to Morro Bay or San Luis Obispo for him to be a part of. That really became the basis of our friendship, as I saw how my visits could at least allow him someone to talk to about puppetry past and present. So for the past five years or so, by means of my frequent visits, and Karen Backes correspondence with him about the activities of the Twin Cities Guild, Bob stayed more personally in touch with the world of puppetry that he loved.
What I really want this short tribute to say is that if you have an older puppeteer in your area, active or inactive in your Guild, don’t neglect them. Seek them out, write to them, talk to them, make a connection. Help them to participate in the P of A Oral History project if you can.
You’ll be doing something for them and something for yourself as well. Because here’s a truth for you - one of these days there will no longer be any puppeteers still among us who, when asked why they got started in puppetry, they say... "When I was young, I saw a puppet show by Tony Sarg.”
"When I was young, I saw a puppet show by Tony Sarg.”