Home

Contact Information / Location

Who We Are & What We Do

Become a Member / Volunteer

New Acquisitions

Current Exhibit

Library of Past Exhibits

Featured Colleagues

Featured Website Links

Press Releases

Newsletters

How can he choose? He loves the Phyllis Diller puppet that is in the glass case by the front door of this church recreation hall in Pasadena. But then again, he also likes the Bob Hope puppet that is stashed away somewhere in this crowded building. Oh, and he can’t forget Eleanor Roosevelt. She is in the case next to Diller. Cook’s collection surpasses the 800 puppets at the Detroit Institute for the Arts, the 1,300 puppets at the Atlanta Center for Puppetry Arts and the 3,000 puppets at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut.

Perhaps more amazing than the sheer size of the collection is the fact that Cook built it on donations and the meager earnings of a traveling puppet master.

Puppets have been a part of human history for centuries, although the exact origin of the art is the subject of dispute. What is clear is that nearly every major culture has a puppetry tradition. In Japan, the sophisticated Bunraku puppets overshadowed even the Kabuki as the most popular form of entertainment in the middle of the 18th century.One of Great Britain’s most popular and longest running acts has been “The Punch and Judy Show,” starring Mr. Punch, the rascal puppet known to flaunt conventions and defy laws. In America, the first puppet superstar was that top hat-wearing Charlie McCarthy, who ruled vaudeville, movie reels and radio with his handler, Edgar Bergen, during the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.

The history and tradition of puppetry is not lost on Cook. In his own lifetime, he has known and worked closely with some of the most renowned puppeteers of the modern era, including Frank Paris, creator of the Howdy Doody puppet; Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets; and Sid and Marty Krofft, whose life-size puppets dominated children’s television in the 1970s and ’80s.

Cook’s collection is a tangible record of modern puppetry history. “Puppets change like everything else, and it’s valuable to show that change,” says Diane Houk, director of the Puppetry Arts Institute in Independence, Missouri, who met Cook at a puppetry festival in Seattle six years ago and believes he has one of the biggest and most well-rounded collections in the country.

 

Puppets appealed to Cook on a personal level. He was an introverted child, who struggled to live up to his mother’s high standards. She was a music teacher, and his father was a court reporter who later worked in the frozen food business.

Cook found that despite his shyness, through puppets he could tell stories, entertain crowds and take on a comic persona. As a teenager, he put on puppet shows for the neighborhood kids, sending out fliers and charging 50 cents a ticket.

Although both of Cook’s parents graduated from USC, it was Pomona College that played a recurring role in his life. In high school, his 10th-grade English teacher, a Pomona College alumna named Minnie Ruth Dexter ’46, assigned Cook to write about his goals and ambitions. He wrote for the first time about his dream of becoming a puppeteer.
“It was in her class that that momentous shift occurred,” he says.

Later, Dexter convinced Cook to apply to Pomona College, where he studied art history. During his college years, he continued to pursue puppetry, putting on shows for nearby children stricken with cerebral palsy.