Bob Baker Biography

Fast Facts

• Served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II
• Began taking puppetry lessons at the age of 8 and staged his first professional performance in 1932
• Formed a touring puppet show company with Alton Wood in 1949 and the pair designed and built puppets for movies and commercials
• Founded the Bob Baker Marionette Theater with Alton Wood in 1962, making it the oldest puppet theater in the United States
• His puppets appeared in a number of films, including "Star Trek," "G․I․ Blues," "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind․"
• Served as the president of the Los Angeles Puppet Guild and as a governor of the animation branch of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
• Best known as a puppeteer who worked for more than 70 years and founded the Bob Baker Marionette Theater in Los Angeles
• Performed his puppet shows for the children of celebrities like Jack Benny, Danny Kaye and Eleanor Powell
• Produced the toy Pinocchio puppets that were sold at Disneyland in the late 1950s and walked through the park with Walt Disney the day before it opened in 1955
• Ran the Academy of Puppetry and Allied Arts, where he taught high school students the art of puppetry and helped to subsidize tickets for field trips to marionette shows