Sid Krofft accepts the Pop Culture Award for H.R. Pufnstuf onstage at the 7th Annual TV Land Awards in 2009.Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Hollywood children’s television legend Sid Krofft, famous for such classic shows as H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost, learned one his earliest showbiz skills as a kid on an outdoor rink near Montreal’s Mount Royal, where his older brother, Harry, taught him how to skate.
A dozen years later, having become an accomplished puppeteer, Sid re-enlisted Harry to help finesse an innovative ice show in which Sid would appear on skates with marionettes in hand. In 1950, at age 21, Sid was hired by Olympic skating sensation Sonja Henie, to join her sold-out season of Howdy, Mr. Ice at New York City’s 3,500-seat Center Theatre at Rockefeller Center. His success there launched a long entertainment career that took him to the stage, television, movies and theme parks.
His wide circle of friends, once featuring old-timers Jack Benny and Dean Martin, grew to include younger performers such as Will Ferrell and Paul Reubens (of Pee-wee Herman fame).
Mr. Krofft died on April 10 in Los Angeles at age 96 after a long period of ill health.
Cydus (Sid) Yolas Snitkofsky was born in Montreal July 30, 1929, to Jewish immigrants who had landed at Halifax in 1924 aboard the SS Nieuw Amsterdam as part of the wave of refugees escaping Ukraine’s famine and political upheaval. His parents, Pincas (Peter), a 34-year-old salesman from Shpykiv, and his wife, 23-year-old Maria (née Yolas), from Odesa, arrived in Canada with a baby, Hyman, born in Bucharest, Romania during their long exodus. Years later, the Snitkofskys adopted Sid’s stage name, Krofft.
Sid Krofft performs a skit with puppets.Bettmann/Getty Images
Young Sid lived his first decade in Canada and left Montreal with his parents and three brothers about 1939 for Rhode Island.
It was there that he bought his first puppet, a Hazelle marionette, through a comic book advertisement, he told the entertainment trade magazine Variety in 2018. By age 10, Sid was busking the streets of Provincetown with his puppets, bringing home coins to supplement the family budget.
In 1946, the diminutive teenager auditioned for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus sideshow. Billed as the world’s youngest “European” puppeteer at 17, he earned $50 a week and performed alongside such acts as Korianna the snake trainer and strongman Rasmus Nielsen. Mr. Krofft travelled for two seasons with the circus, returning each fall to his family, who had resettled in the Bronx, N.Y., to work the vaudeville and burlesque circuit.
Mr. Krofft’s early success as a puppeteer was amplified by his affinity for the razzmatazz of show business and a relentless wish to support his mother and younger brother, Mortimer (Marty). His eldest brother, Hyman, a soldier, had died at the bloody battle of Okinawa in 1945, and his father died in 1950.
“His dad became a crazy gambler,” said Kelly Killian, Mr. Krofft’s friend and personal assistant, adding that by the mid-1940s, when Sid was a teenager, he felt such a huge responsibility to take care of the family that he basically became the breadwinner.
“He was actively working all of the time … to send money home,” Ms. Killian said.
Canadian puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft after their star is unveiled on The Hollywood Walk of Fame in California on Feb. 13, 2020.ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
After his Rockefeller Center run, Mr. Krofft toured his own ice show across North America for several years. Then in 1954, he took his skates and trunk of marionettes to the Lido Club in Paris, where Variety erroneously reported, “The three Balinese dancers that will open his act in Paris are the last ones his father built before he died.”
Decades later, Mr. Krofft confessed to the L.A. Times that his family really had no link to puppetry. A publicist had created the fiction that he was born in Athens to a famous Greek puppetry family and had first seen America as a nine-year-old puppeteer from the stage at Carnegie Hall. The misinformation lingered in press reports for decades.
Throughout the 1950s, Mr. Krofft charmed his way into the hearts of a generation of stars who were starting to explore the new medium of television.
“He hit vaudeville right at the tail end. He hit burlesque at the tail end. He hit the circus at the tail end … ,” Ms. Killian said. “He met these people when they were in their heyday … so he had connections with people, and he could speak their language.
Acccording to Ms. Killian, his vaudeville connections led to an audacious audition in 1957 Los Angeles with stage-and-screen powerhouse Judy Garland, who was searching for an opening act for a Las Vegas run. Her friend Jack Benny, the comedian and violinist, recommended she meet Mr. Krofft.
A teenaged Sid Krofft.Supplied
Ashamed of his tiny room (where he could sit on the toilet “and cook an egg at the same time”), the 27-year-old Mr. Krofft borrowed a penthouse suite at the luxurious Chateau Marmont for an hour, negotiated a lucrative $1,500-a-week deal with the superstar, and then hustled her out under the pretext he had other meetings lined up. Between tours with Ms. Garland, he performed with many other stars including Mr. Martin, comedian Alan King, Liberace, and the Andrews Sisters.
After performing with Ms. Garland for four years, Mr. Krofft created his puppet masterpiece, Les Poupées de Paris, complete with 200 marionettes and props that included a swimming pool and ice rink. Working with his younger brother, Marty, whom he initially hired as a teenage assistant, Mr. Krofft designed two Les Poupées shows – a family entertainment suitable for the 1964 New York World’s Fair and another more risqué touring troupe that featured ribald humour and sexy costumes.
Canadian marionette impresario Ronnie Burkett, now 68, read about Les Poupées de Paris as a child in Medicine Hat, Alta. “It was spectacular and lavish and huge, and I’ve got the souvenir programs and the record album. … Eventually I [met] some of the old puppeteers who had worked with him,” Mr. Burkett recalls.
Inevitably, Mr. Krofft’s marionettes landed on 1950s television with performances on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Jack Benny Show. In an appearance during the 1965 premiere of The Dean Martin Show, Mr. Krofft pulled the strings while a miniature chorus line danced, sang and chatted with their host.
Sid Krofft, right, and his brother Marty, with the puppet Collette, developed for The Dean Martin Show, in Los Angeles on Aug. 27, 1968.Harold Filan/The Associated Press
The Krofft brothers’ talent for costumes and sets also attracted the attention of major corporate clients, such as Six Flags theme parks. McDonald’s restaurants also realized how appealing the Krofft puppets were to children, but when the chain started using Pufnstuf-like characters for their McDonaldland advertisements in the 1970s, the Kroffts launched a multi-year legal battle over copyright infringement that they ultimately won.
However, they made their biggest mark on popular culture in 1969 when the Krofft Enterprises production company turned Saturday morning television upside down with the launch of H.R. Pufnstuf. The discombobulated live-action show featured teenage Oscar nominee Jack Wild, fresh off his portrayal of the Artful Dodger in the movie Oliver!, a talking flute puppet and the cackling Witchiepoo, played by stage actress Billie Hayes. (An undiscovered Penny Marshall, later of Laverne and Shirley, had also been considered for the part.) H.R. Pufnstuf’s 17 episodes were directed by television veteran Hollingsworth Morse, known for his direction of such comedy classics as F Troop and McHale’s Navy, as well as kid favourites Zorro and Lassie.
Psychedelic sets, strange characters (a mix of actors in foam body suits and traditional puppets), simple special effects, and ridiculous plots captured the hearts of child viewers, and eventually in endless reruns, late-night viewers in college dorms.
“It was just overall weirdness,” pop culture journalist Will Harris recalled recently on the CBC radio program Day 6. “It would be fair to say that H.R. Pufnstuf plays like a marijuana-induced dream … even though it was just their insane imagination.”
Inspired by that initial success, the Kroffts went on to launch other live-action/puppet kid shows such as Lidsville (a town of oversized hats), The Bugaloos (four young British pop-singing insects), The Lost Saucer (aliens played by Jim Nabors and Ruth Buzzi), Far Out Space Nuts (starring Bob Denver, from Gilligan’s Island) and their most enduring series, Land of the Lost, about a time-travelling family stuck in a valley of dinosaurs.
Even in their old age, the Kroffts were actively promoting reboots of their early shows, thanks to advice from Walt Disney to preserve all rights to their creations. In 2008, Marty Krofft told the LA Times, “[Mr. Disney] told me, ‘The one thing to remember is, don’t ever sell anything you create and always put your name above the title, whatever you do.’”
Sid Krofft speaks at Comic-Con 2011 in San Diego, Calif.Michael Buckner/Getty Images
Thereafter the brothers stuck their name wherever it would fit, usually in vibrant lettering at the start of each show.
During the 1970s, Sid and Marty Krofft also launched a series of variety shows including The Donnie and Marie Osmond Show (three seasons), The Brady Bunch Hour (one season), The Krofft Superstar Hour (which soon morphed into The Bay City Rollers Show), and the short-lived Pink Lady, featuring a Japanese singing duo who spoke no English.
According to Ms. Killian, Sid Krofft was an irresistible force. “He had a very carny way of talking people into things. … If he wanted you, he would not let go. … He would sink his teeth in like a pit bull.”
While the brothers jumped into dozens of projects together – Sid as the perfectionist artist and Marty as the parsimonious business guy – there were failures along the way. At a cost of $14-million, The World of Sid and Marty Krofft, an eight-storey vertical theme park in downtown Atlanta, lasted only six months in 1976. Made-for-TV movies such as 1982’s Harry Tracy: Last of Wild Bunch, co-starring Gordon Lightfoot as a U.S. Marshal, were not well received. A $100-million reboot of Land of the Lost starring Mr. Ferrell in 2009 was listed by the L.A. Times as one of “the costliest flops of all time.”
Infamous for their continual bickering over every aspect of their partnership, the Krofft brothers were in litigation over money in their final years.
When Ms. Killian met Sid Krofft during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, he was in poor health and living as a recluse, but she helped him reconnect with his fans through Instagram and appearances at Comicon events across the United States.
Even at the end of his life, Mr. Krofft remained an idea man whose first love was puppets, and he always had a concept for one more show.
“Last year, we had a few phone calls,” Mr. Burkett said. “He was going to do this lavish project in Las Vegas … and [he asked], would I design 30 showgirl marionettes for him. I never did but you know I always enjoyed just having the conversation.”
Mr. Krofft never married. He was predeceased by his brothers, including Marty who died in 2023.
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