Sid Krofft Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images Sid Krofft, the wildly imaginative puppeteer who teamed with his younger brother Marty to build an entertainment empire behind such trippy TV shows as The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost, has died. He was 96.
Krofft, eight years older than Marty and the creative force of their business, died Friday in his sleep at the Los Angeles home of friend and business partner Kelly Killian. Marty died in November 2023 at age 86.
“I get a dream, and Marty gets it done,” Sid said of their partnership in a 2000 interview for the TV Academy Foundation.
The pair were well-known theatrical puppeteers in 1968 when they were recruited to design the costumes for the live-action portion of NBC’s The Banana Splits Adventure Hour. Their furry animal characters (Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky), members of a rock band, were an instant hit on the Saturday morning show, which ran from 1968-70 (and in reruns since then).
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The next year, NBC asked them to create a Saturday morning kids show, and they came up with H.R. Pufnstuf, about a shipwrecked boy (Jimmy, played by Jack Wild) who lands on a magical island. The title character, Pufnstuf, was a revamp of Luther, a friendly dragon that they had created for a show at the 1968 HemisFair in San Antonio.
NBC wanted a second season to follow the 17-episode first but offered only a small increase on the rights fee, already far below what it was costing the brothers to make the show, so they declined. Pufnstuf was canceled in 1970 but lived on in reruns as well.
Pufnstuf‘s psychedelic sets and costumes were a big hit with college kids, and The Beatles asked for a full set of episode tapes to be sent to them in England. The look of the show prompted many whispers that the brothers took drugs (pot for sure, maybe LSD as well?), something Marty denied.
“You can’t do a show stoned,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in January 2016 during a visit to explore the Krofft archives.
The duo followed Pufnstuf with The Bugaloos (1970-72), the Claymation series Lidsville (1971-73), Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1973-75) and Land of the Lost (1974-76), which spawned an ill-fated Will Ferrell movie adaptation in 2009. Those shows were wildly popular in syndication as well.
“We screwed with every kid’s mind,” Marty told THR. “There’s a Krofft look — the colors. There’s an edge. Disney doesn’t have an edge.”
Indeed, the Kroffts‘ style was so popular that McDonald’s copied it to create Mayor McCheese and McDonaldland for an early 1970s advertising campaign. The Kroffts sued, winning a reported seven-figure settlement in 1977.
A year earlier, the brothers opened The World of Sid & Marty Krofft theme park in downtown Atlanta’s new Omni Complex (now CNN’s headquarters). Spread over six levels, it was billed as the world’s first vertical amusement park. About 600,000 visitors came during the recession-plagued ’70s, but it wasn’t enough to cover the costs and interest payments, and the park closed after just six months.
Sid (left) and Marty Krofft with Mutt & Stuff. COURTESY OF SID & MARTY KROFFT PICTURES ARCHIVE Long after other smaller kids producers like Hanna-Barbera had sold out to conglomerates, the Kroffts were still developing shows as the last of the great 1960s independents. As late as 2015, they had a hit on Nickelodeon with Mutt & Stuff (one episode even featured a guest appearance from Pufnstuf).
The Kroffts also developed numerous live-action variety shows including The Brady Bunch Hour, The Donny & Marie Show, The Bay City Rollers Show and Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters.
They produced another kids show hosted by Richard Pryor, based on his childhood, and their puppets toured with such acts as Judy Garland, Liberace, The Mills Brothers, Tony Martin & Cyd Charisse and Frank Sinatra.
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Krofft was born in Montreal on July 30, 1929, and when he was young, he and his family lived in Maine, Rhode Island and the Bronx. For PR, the brothers liked to say that they came from a long line of puppeteers going back many generations. In truth, the story was fabricated. Their father was a clock salesman who emigrated from Greece in the early 1900s.
“The Kroffts have been playing with dolls their whole lives,” Marty joked about the brothers’ boyhood interest in puppeteering. By the time he was 15, Sid was already working clubs in New York.
(They had two other brothers; Hy died during fighting in World War II, and Harry briefly worked for their company before going into real estate.)
At 20, Sid got hired by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and Marty joined his brother full-time in 1958 after an assistant left. They opened Les Poupees de Paris, an adults-only burlesque puppet show that was a huge hit, playing to sold-out crowds at a dinner theater in the San Fernando Valley.
“Les Poupees took us from an act, Sid’s act, to a business,” Marty said. Shirley MacLaine was there on opening night, and Richard Nixon came during his run for president.
Les Poupees took to the road and played the world’s fairs in Seattle in 1962, New York in 1964 and San Antonio in 1968. It featured 240 puppets, mostly topless women, and Time magazine called it a “dirty puppet show.”
After that, it was so popular, “we couldn’t even get our own best friends in the theater,” Sid said. It drew an estimated 9.5 million viewers in its first decade of performances.
All this led to shows at Six Flags amusements parks around the U.S. — they employed more than 100 puppeteers at one point — and appearances on TV, including a regular gig on The Dean Martin Show (they created a chorus line of attractive girl puppets for the variety program before they were replaced by The Golddiggers).
Most recently, Krofft and Killian interviewed celebrities for their Instagram Live show, Sundays With Sid.
“I loved Sid with my whole heart. He taught me more than I could ever put into words — about the art of Hollywood, the magic of the stage and the depth and complexity of human nature,” she said. “I didn’t know Sid for his shows — I only knew the man who created them. And that man was extraordinary. I wish so very much that I had more time with him. I will miss his big blue eyes, his cheerful smile with his dimples and the warmth that seemed to follow him everywhere he went.”
Editor’s note: Since Sid and Marty Krofft’s lives and careers were so intertwined, much of this obituary contains what was written for Marty’s obituary.
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