William Britton "Bil" Baird was an American puppeteer of the mid- and late 20th century.
16 Facts About Bil Baird
2.
Bil Baird's son Peter Baird was a puppeteer, and he continued his family's legacy until his own death in July 2004.
3.
Bil Baird wrote The Art of the Puppet and provided the puppets for Dark Shadows.
4.
Bil Baird traced his love of puppets to the moment when his father made him a simple string puppet when he was eight.
5.
Several years later Bil Baird formed his own company, the Bil Baird Marionettes, which performed initially at the Chicago World's Fair of 1933.
6.
In 1950, Bil Baird and Producer Yul Brynner created a show based on his character Snarky Parker called Life With Snarky Parker, which was a satire of American Westerns.
7.
In 1951, Bil Baird's Marionettes performed some of the roles in the Broadway musical Flahooley, a fantasy about a mass-produced laughing doll who unintentionally threatens the American industrial system.
8.
In 1972, Bil Baird created an educational short film called Cartonella which told about the importance of milk, the short was a typical 'Damsel in Distress' story which featured the eponymously named "Cartonella", who was a fortune telling cow.
9.
In 1974, Bil Baird married actress Josie Lloyd, and they remained together until his death in 1987.
10.
In 1977, Bil Baird temporarily closed down the theater so he could create another show at Busch Gardens: The Old Country titled Once Upon a Dragon, which replaced the Sid and Marty Krofft show The Camelot Revue and was regularly performed at the Reynold's Aluminum Puppet Theater in the Hastings, England section of the park from 1977 to 1978.
11.
In 1983, Bil Baird performed a puppet version of Igor Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat, which was his last performance before retiring due to severe arthritis.
12.
In 1985, Bil Baird made a brief return in which he performed one of his own plays called "The Dragon and The Dentist".
13.
On March 18,1987, Bil Baird died at his home in Manhattan at the age of 82 from pneumonia and cancer.
14.
Bil Baird received many awards and honors during his career, including the Medal of Achievement awarded by the Lotos Club of New York and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Iowa.
15.
Bil Baird was honored in 1980 by the Union International de la Marionette and Puppeteers of America at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
16.
In December 1988 Bil Baird's Marionettes played at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York.