| H.R. Pufnstuf | |
|---|---|
| Format | Children's television series |
| Starring | Jack Wild Billie Hayes Sharon Baird Joy Campbell Van Snowden Buddy Douglas |
| Voices of | Lennie Weinrib Joan Gerber Walker Edmiston |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of episodes | 17 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Sid and Marty Krofft |
| Running time | 0:25 (per episode) |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Original run | September 6, 1969 – September 4, 1971 |
H.R. Pufnstuf is a children's television series produced by Sid and Marty Krofft in the United States. It was the first Krofft live-action, life-size puppet program.[1] The seventeen episodes were originally broadcast September 6, 1969 to September 4, 1971. The broadcasts were successful enough that NBC kept it on the Saturday morning schedule for a full three seasons, until August 1972, when it was cancelled. The show was shot in Paramount Studios and its opening was shot in Big Bear Lake, California.
In 2004 and 2007, H.R. Pufnstuf was ranked #22 and #27 on TV Guide's Top Cult Shows Ever.[2][3]
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The H.R. Pufnstuf character was originally created for the HemisFair '68 world's fair in 1968, where the Kroffts produced a show called Kaleidescope for the Coca-Cola pavilion. The character's name was Luther and he became the symbol of the fair.[4]
H.R. Pufnstuf introduced the Kroffts' most-used plot scenario: their fairy tale of good versus evil.[1] The show centered on a shipwrecked boy named Jimmy (played by Jack Wild). He is 11 years old when he arrives on the island and turns 12 in the episode called "The Birthday Party". Jimmy and his friend, a talking flute named Freddy, take a ride on a mysterious boat, which promised adventures across the sea, to kooky Living Island, home of dancing, talking trees and singing frogs. The Mayor of Living Island was a friendly and helpful dragon named H.R. Pufnstuf (voiced by the show's writer Lennie Weinrib). The boat was actually owned and controlled by a wicked witch named Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo (played by Billie Hayes) who rode on a broomstick-like vehicle called the Vroom Broom. She used the boat to lure Jimmy and Freddy to her castle on Living Island, where she was going to take Jimmy prisoner and steal Freddy. But Pufnstuf found out about her plot and was able to rescue Jimmy when he leaped out of the enchanted boat with Freddy and swam ashore.
Jimmy was taken in by Pufnstuf, who was able to protect him from Witchiepoo, as the cave where he lived was the only place her magic had no effect. Apart from Jimmy and Witchiepoo, all of the characters on Living Island were realized via large, cumbersome costumes or puppetry. Since everything on Living Island was alive (namely houses, castles, boats, clocks, candles, books, trees, mushrooms), virtually any part of the Living Island sets could become a character, usually voiced in a parody of a famous film star, such as Mae West, Edward G. Robinson or most notably John Wayne as "The West Wind". A frequent plot device involves Witchiepoo and her henchmen Orson Vulture, Seymour Spider, and Stupid Bat trying to steal Freddy, only to be thwarted by Pufnstuf. Another concerns Jimmy and Freddy's efforts to return home from Living Island, with the same lack of success.
After creating costumes for characters in the live-action portion of The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, Sid and Marty Krofft were asked to develop their own Saturday morning children's series for NBC. The plot was recycled from Kaleidescope, a live puppet show the Kroffts had staged in the Coca-Cola pavilion of the HemisFair '68 world's fair in 1968, including several key characters from this show, such as Luther the dragon and a silly witch.[5] Other ideas were cultivated from Sid's life. As a child, he'd charged friends buttons, not pennies, to view puppet shows in his back yard;[5] buttons were standard currency on Living Island. Sid and Marty had toured with their puppets as the opening act for Judy Garland, and they based Judy the Frog on her.[5] Ludicrous Lion bears more than a passing resemblance to Irving, the eponymous lion in a pilot they had made in 1957 called Here's Irving.
Sid's friend, Lionel Bart, asked him to view a rough cut of the movie adaptation of Oliver. Sid took notice of young actor Jack Wild and immediately decided that was the kid he wanted to play the lead in his television series.[6] Only two actresses auditioned to play Witchiepoo. The first was then unknown Penny Marshall,[6] but it was felt that she wasn't right for the part. Stage veteran Billie Hayes came in next, set into a maniacal cackle and hopped up on a desk. She was given the part on the spot.[5]
For Marty Krofft, the production was a particular headache. Marty accepted guardianship of Jack Wild while the teenage boy was in the United States filming the show.[5] He later described bringing Wild into his home as a mistake.[5]
Like most children's television shows of the era, H.R. Pufnstuf contained a laugh track.
The show’s theme song, titled "H.R. Pufnstuf", was written by Les Szarvas but is also credited to Paul Simon. Simon's credit was added when he successfully sued The Kroffts, claiming that the theme too closely mimicked his song "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)".[7] He is credited as the song's co-writer in TeeVee Tunes's Television's Greatest Hits Volume 5: In Living Color.[8]
A cover of the show’s theme song, performed by The Murmurs, is included on the 1995 tribute album Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits, produced by Ralph Sall for MCA Records.
| Performer | Character(s) | Voice(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Sharon Baird | Stupid Bat | Lennie Weinrib |
| Judy Frog | Joan Gerber | |
| Shirley Pufnstuf | ||
| Lady Boyd | End credits vocals | |
| Joy Campbell | Orson Vulture | Lennie Weinrib |
| Cling | No voice | |
| Roberto Gamonet | H.R. Pufnstuf | Lennie Weinrib |
| Angelo Rossitto | Seymour Spider | Walker Edmiston |
| Clang | No voice | |
| John Silver | Dr. Blinky | Walker Edmiston |
| Ludicrous Lion | ||
| Jerry Landon |
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| Jon Linton | ||
| Scutter McKay | ||
| Harry Monty | ||
| Andy Ratoucheff | Alarm Clock | Lennie Weinrib |
| Robin Roper |
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| Felix Silla | Polka-Dotted Horse | Lennie Weinrib |
While the television series was still in production, the Kroffts were approached to do a film adaptation.[10] A joint venture between Universal Pictures and the show's sponsor, Kellogg's Cereal,[11] the film retained most of the cast and crew from the series and featured guest appearances by Cass Elliott and Martha Raye. The movie was finally released on VHS in 2001 by Universal Home Video as part of their Universal Treasures Collection, and on DVD on May 19, 2009.[12]
The Kroffts have long had plans for a new H.R. Pufnstuf film. Sony first attempted remake in 2000, but dropped the project.[13] In September, 2008, it was revealed that a live-action feature film is again being developed at Sony.[14]
A number of USA stage show tours were run starring the same characters from the show.
In 2004, Rhino Entertainment released H.R. Pufnstuf: The Complete Series, featuring all 17 episodes on three discs, accompanied by interviews with Sid & Marty Krofft, Billie Hayes, and Jack Wild. The Complete Series has gone out of print, but individual (best-of) releases continue to be sold. Pufnstuf, a major motion picture released in 1970, was also released on May 19, 2009, by Universal Studios. It was announced on Oct 25, 2010 that SMK and Vivendi Entertainment has obtained the home video rights to the series and plan their own DVD release of the series on Jan. 11, 2011
The show was the subject of a successful lawsuit brought by the Kroffts against the fast food restaurant McDonald's, whose McDonaldland characters were found to have infringed the show's copyright. The case, Sid & Marty Krofft Television Productions, Inc. v. McDonald's Corp., 562 F.2d 1157, was decided by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1977.[15]
The Krofft brothers have responded in several interviews to popular beliefs that subtle recreational drug references exist in the show.[16][17][18] For example, the title character's name "Pufnstuf" has been interpreted as a reference to smoking hand-rolled (H.R.) marijuana (puffin' stuff)[16][17][18][19][20][21] — Marty Krofft has said the initials "H.R." actually stand for "Royal Highness" backwards[20][21] The show's theme song lyric "he can't do a little, 'cause he can't do enough" has been read as referring to the addictive nature of drugs. Pufnstuf has quotes like "Whoa dude!" and other "hippie" slang words. Lennie Weinrib, the show's head writer and the voice of Pufnstuf, has said, "I think fans gave it a kind of mysterious code-like meaning, like ‘Ah, was Pufnstuf puffing stuff? Like grass?’ Was it psychedelic? Was it drug oriented? Not to us, it wasn’t."[22][23] In a 2000 interview, Marty Krofft answered the question by saying, "The Krofft look has a lot of color, but there were no drug connotations in the show." He addressed the topic at length in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2004, in response to the question, "OK, let's get this right out in the open. Is 'H.R. Pufnstuf' just one giant drug reference?":
| “ | We've heard that for 35 years. We did not intentionally do anything related to drugs in the story. People thought we were on drugs. You can't do good television while on drugs. People never believe you when you say that, but you can't. The shows were very bright and spacey looking. They may have lent themselves to that culture at the time, but we didn't ascribe that meaning to them, and I can't speak to what adults were doing when they were watching the shows. We just set out to make a quality children's program. | ” |
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—Marty Krofft[20] |
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Authors of books on the show and its contemporaries, however, have not always accepted the Kroffts' alternative explanations for apparent references to drugs. David Martindale, author of Pufnstuf & Other Stuff, maintains that the Kroffts' need to attract an audience that are now parents of impressionable children forces them at least to downplay the double entendres: "But to deny it, the shows lose some of their mystique. The Kroffts prefer to remain playfully vague."[16] Martindale said in another interview that he fully believes Marty Krofft's insistence that he did not use drugs, especially given that Marty's focus was that of a businessman, but Martindale describes Sid Krofft as "a big kid" and "a hippy," saying, "His comment when I told him we were going to do this book was — and I quote — 'Oh, far out.' He says these shows didn't come from smoking just a little pot, and you could say, 'Oh, yeah. It comes from smoking a lot of pot.' But I think he was very deliberately doing double meanings so the show could amuse people on different levels."[24] Kevin Burke, co-author of Saturday Morning Fever: Growing Up with Cartoon Culture, argues that the "consistency of thought" in the rumors of drug references has a basis, although his co-author and brother Timothy Burke, a history professor at Swarthmore College, insists "human beings are capable of achieving hallucinatory heights without chemical assistance."[16] Contradicting his own position, Marty Krofft has neither admitted nor hinted in occasional interviews that the references were made knowingly; in one case, a writer reported that when pressed as to the connotation of "lids" in the title Lidsville, "Well, maybe we just had a good sense of humor," Krofft said, laughing.[21] His comments to another interviewer were more direct; in a Times Union profile whose author observed, "Watching the shows today, it's hard to imagine a show with more wink-and-nod allusions to pot culture, short of something featuring characters named Spliffy and Bong-O," Krofft conceded that the show's title had been an intentional marijuana reference, as had Lidsville, but "that was just a prank to see if they could get them past clueless NBC executives".[25]
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