http://bobbakermarionettes.com/
The Bob Baker Marionette Theater is a place that is both magical and earth-bound. Operating from the corner of 1st Street and Glendale Boulevard just west of downtown Los Angeles for 49 years, it is a vestige of childhoods lived, where vegetables dance to old vaudeville tunes and musical instruments dance and jump across a black box theater festooned with crystal chandeliers.
But it's also been struggling for years, trying to eke out an existence on $15-a-head admission, amid the fickle nature of children's passions.
Last week, reports began circulating that the theater was in trouble. A manager sent out an e-mail saying that Baker had been the victim of "an elaborate mortgage fraud operation bent on stealing his theater and home" and asked fans of the theater help pay nearly $30,000 in past due mortgage payments on the two buildings. If the funds weren't raised, the manager said, the buildings would be sold "and Bob and his thousands of puppets will be homeless."
"We are not going out of business," Baker said. "We are not selling the building."
But on Thursday, Anthony Esguerra of Keller Williams Realty said the building was still for sale.
As for the news release and the outpouring of attention that has been lavished on the theater, "Some of it has helped," Baker said. "Some of it got out of hand."
Spend any time with Baker, and he will tell you that he has plans. Even though he's 84, even though some of them seem vastly out of reach, they are his plans. He has bought a pipe organ and wants to install it in the theater to accompany screenings of old-time movies. He talks of renovating the building and opening a school within the theater space. He wants to expand more into the toy industry. And oh, he dreams of doing films again.
For now, though, Baker is concentrating on what he called the big show: a rendition of "The Nutcracker" that, as Baker explains it, involves acid rock, disco dancers, Czech orchestral music and a cavalcade of 100 puppets including dancing jelly beans and Chinese dragons. "We have changed it around so children enjoy it," he said.
