Introduction: Tony Sarg and the Invention of American Popular Culture 9
John b ell
1 An Officer and an Artist: Tony Sarg’s Beginnings 23
Stephanie h abou S h p lunkett and l enore d . Miller
2 The Old Curiosity Shop: Tony Sarg’s London 33
Stephanie h abou S h p lunkett and l enore d . Miller
3 Man about Town: Tony Sarg’s New York 47
Steph ani e h abou S h p lunkett and l enore d . Miller
4 Moving Images: Tony Sarg’s Animations 65
Step ha nie h abou S h p lunkett and l enore d . Miller
5 Father of Modern American Puppetry: Tony Sarg’s Marionettes 69 d arin e. John S on
6 Balloons over Broadway: Tony Sarg’s Creations for Macy’s 87
Stephanie h abou S h p lunkett and l enore d . Miller
TONY SARG’S NANTUCKET
7
Island Adventures and the Famous Sea Monster Hoax 101 G e or G e k orn
8 Treasures from the Nantucket Historical Association 119
Michael r . h arri S on
9 The Big Stage: Tony Sarg’s Illustrated Maps, Interior Designs, and World’s Fair Commissions 145
Stephanie h abou S h p lunkett and l enore d . Miller
10 Commercial Whimsy: Tony Sarg’s Product Designs and Endorsements 167
Stephanie h abou S h p lunkett and l enore d . Miller
11
Humor, Fantasy, and the Turning Page: Tony Sarg’s Books 189
Stephanie h abou S h p lunkett and l enore d . Miller Notes 213 Index 216
the Authors 221
Introduction
Tony Sarg and the Invention of American Popular Culture
JOHN BELL
Tony Sarg’s contributions to art and culture display the combination of showmanship, canny innovation, and ability to catch the public’s fancy that has characterized American entrepreneurship from P. T. Barnum to Elon Musk. They are also remarkably diverse, reflecting the multifaceted nature of the field in which he made the greatest impact, that of puppetry.
Puppetry, to the joy of its practitioners (and often to the consternation of those outside the field attempting to understand it!) has always brought together multiple art forms, including sculpture, painting, engineering, movement, music, and text. Moreover, despite efforts to define puppetry as a limited range of methods (hand puppets, string marionettes, rod puppets, or mouth puppets, for example), puppeteers routinely expand their range into multiple other forms dependent on the use of crafted objects to celebrate, ritualize, entertain, communicate, and otherwise perform practical functions in the communities and societies in which they emerge.
Tony Sarg was a particularly prolific explorer of multiple facets of applied art, expanding his knowledge of puppetry and graphic design into myriad fields, as Tony Sarg: Genius at Play so clearly points out. By the time he, his wife Bertha, and their baby daughter Mary arrived in New York in 1915, Sarg had become a successful
Detail of Tony Sarg conducting a rehearsal behind the scenes of his marionette stage. See plate 4.
Above all, Sarg seems to have been a brilliant organizer of his work, someone who recognized where he could use assistance and then recruited others to provide it. His first public marionette production, a 1917 triple bill at the Neighborhood Playhouse (a prominent New York center of the Little Theatre Movement) was well received, but for his following production, a “puppetized” version of William Makepeace Thackeray’s satirical fantasy The Rose and the Ring, he decided he needed assistance with dramaturgy and directing. He brought in two Chicago Little Theatre stalwarts to work with him: Hettie Louise Mick, who turned the Thackeray story into a puppet script, and Ellen Van Volkenburg, who, as artistic director, helped Sarg’s puppeteers develop movement, objectives, and character in a realistic style. Volkenburg also suggested that Sarg create a puppet company to perform his shows,
2. Tony Sarg with marionettes and radio, c. 1930. Nantucket Historical Association Collection; PH8-36-1.
which he did: Tony Sarg’s Marionettes (plates 3 and 4). Charles E. “Mat” Searle, an architect, illustrator, and cabinetmaker, whom Sarg had recruited in 1916 to turn his sketches into actual productions, became the company manager, a role he fulfilled for the next eighteen years.
Puppetry in New York City in these years displayed great variety and energy. In Italian immigrant communities, family companies performed traditional opera dei pupi rod marionette epics about King Charlemagne’s knights in storefront theaters in Little Italy and Red Hook, Brooklyn. Old-time Punch and Judy hand-puppet shows could still be seen on streets and beaches, and at private parties. Sarg’s counterpart at the Neighborhood Playhouse, Remo Bufano, sometimes performed traditional Sicilian-style marionettes, but he also designed life-size and miniature
Tony Sarg and T he Inven TI on of a
3. Broadside for Tony Sarg’s Marionettes in The Rose and the Ring by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1919. Nantucket Historical Association Collection; gift of Connecticut Historical Society.
4. Tony Sarg conducts a rehearsal behind the scenes of his marionette stage, c. 1920s. Photograph by Photoprint Gravure Company, Inc. Nantucket Historical Association Collection; PH8-34-3.
marionettes for a production of Manuel de Falla’s avant-garde opera El retablo de maese Pedro. Different from these traditional and progressive puppet practices, Sarg, with his “keen business acumen,” as Tamara Hunt puts it, was able to envision and enact a practical business plan for commercial marionette shows in New York City and on tour across the country.3 Learning from his early experiences, he reduced the size of his marionettes and their stage, as well as the size of the company (to six puppeteers), so tours could travel more easily and compactly.
Scores of puppeteers cut their teeth as members of Sarg’s company, the most famous being Bil Baird, Rufus and Margo Rose (plates 5 and 6), and Sue Hastings. Moreover, Sarg’s techniques and modern approach to puppetry as a viable art form had an extraordinary influence on puppet theater across the country. Marionettes in the Sarg style became the dominant form of professional puppet performance in the United States.
Tony Sarg: Genius at Play highlights the rich variety of designs, images, products, and performances that Sarg developed, in what must have been a workaholic fashion (plate 7). He was also good at delegating work. By 1920, he no longer performed, leaving the company in the hands of Mat Searle. He designed new puppet shows, but rehearsals went on without his input until the last week before the premiere,
5. Letter from Tony Sarg to Margo Skewis, July 14, 1927, on Tony Sarg’s Marionettes letterhead. Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, Storrs, Connecticut.
6. Margo Skewis Rose with Sarg’s Adventures of Christopher Columbus characters, c. 1928. Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, Storrs, Connecticut.
when he would observe and give notes. It is clear he was otherwise busy with a myriad of projects!
Sarg was first hired by R. H. Macy & Company in the early 1920s to design print advertisements, create seasonal displays, and produce marionette performances of Mother Goose tales in the store’s windows. In 1924, when Macy’s decided to boost Christmas-season sales by staging a parade on Thanksgiving, Sarg was a natural choice to design traditional parade floats, oversize papier-mâché masks, hobby horses, puppets, and other processional elements. Four years later, Macy’s called on Sarg to design the first of many helium-inflated puppets, a spectacular innovation that has now become the Thanksgiving Day Parade’s trademark. Modifying Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company’s airship technology, Sarg began to put together simple geometric shapes—spheres, cones, and columns—to create “upside-down marionettes” (as Bil Baird described them), which represented, in increasing detail, fantastic animals; cartoon characters, such as Mickey Mouse, Krazy Kat, and Superman; and icons of contemporary culture, like Uncle Sam, an Indian chief, and a “Terrible Turk” (plates 8 and 9). In a further stunning aspect of the event, many of the inflatables were released into the sky upon the parade’s arrival in Herald Square, a practice that lasted until 1932. Sarg’s inflatable puppets were also featured in parades in Philadelphia, Newark, and Boston; he later offered them for sale at $1,000 apiece, for civic celebrations across the country.4 Giant puppets were being used concurrently in New York City political demonstrations, but Sarg’s creations were able to bridge the gap between European traditions of carnival street giants and religious processions, which many immigrants would have recognized, and modern quasi-secular community rituals like Thanksgiving and Christmas, which seek to unite communities in a vision of what it means to be American.
7a and 7b. Tony Sarg’s A. P. W. Marionette Theater, 1926. Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry, Storrs, Connecticut.
Sarg designed this version of Little Red Riding Hood for the Albany Perforated Wrapping (A. P. W.) Paper Company, one of the leading distributors of toilet paper. The cardboard box, which originally held four rolls of toilet paper, could be turned into a toy theater with sets and characters for the story.
An Officer and an Artist 1
Tony Sarg’s Beginnings
STEPHANIE HABOUSH PLUNKETT AND LENORE D. MILLER
Anthony Frederick Sarg was destined to be creative. His paternal grandmother, Mary Ellen Best (1809–1891), was a successful English watercolor painter of the Victorian era. Her still-life paintings and intimate portrayals of well-appointed family rooms populated by children and adults playing cards and music and enjoying meals together offered an appealing glimpse of affluent society, lifestyle, and design at the time (plate 1.1).1 In Victorian England, formal artistic training for women was generally unavailable, so female artists were mentored by male practitioners. George Hough (1756–1827), a painter of hunting dogs and portraits, became Best’s tutor, and in 1834, she traveled to Frankfurt, Germany, where she continued to develop her skills. Most active from 1830 to 1836, Best exhibited her work in London, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, and her home city of York. She married Johann Anton Phillip Sarg, a German schoolteacher, in 1840, and the couple had three children, Francis Charles Anton Sarg, Caroline Elisabeth Sarg, and James Frederick Sarg. After her marriage, Best’s artistic career waned, and in the 1850s, as a member of the Norcliffe family on her mother’s side, she inherited a considerable fortune (plate 1.2). Her artistry was inspirational for the young Tony Sarg, as was her collection of exquisite dolls, mechanical toys, animals, and
Detail of Edam, from a sketchbook of 1902/1903. See plate 1.7.
2.4. Norman Rockwell (1894–1978). Christmas Trio, 1923. Cover illustration for the Saturday Evening Post, December 8, 1923. Oil on canvas. Norman Rockwell Museum Collection; Norman Rockwell Art Collection Trust, NRACT.1973.002. Courtesy of the Norman Rockwell Family Agency.
2.5. Norman Rockwell (1894–1978). Boy and Girl Singing, 1919. Cover illustration for the American Magazine, July 1919. Magazine cover. Norman Rockwell Museum Collection.
2.6. Illustration for “The Man Who Made His Bluff Come True” by Hugh S. Fullerton. American Magazine, July 1919. Tear sheet. Norman Rockwell Museum Collection.
2.7. Harry Rountree (1878–1950). He Ran Young Alec Simpson, of the “Courier,” a Mile Down the High Road, 1913. Illustration for The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle (Toronto: Hodder and Stoughton), p. 3. Norman Rockwell Museum Digital Collection.
a cheesecloth screen and converted into a pattern of varied dots that were chemically etched onto a printing plate. The resulting halftone reproductions directly and accurately represented the original art, preserving the brilliance and deficiencies of the artist’s hand and inspiring a public preference for more realistic pictures. By the turn of the twentieth century, continued advances made the printing of color halftones possible, further spurring the creativity of illustrators.
While working as an illustrator in London, Sarg renewed his boyhood interest in puppets, play, and toys, and sought to distinguish himself in the field as other successful artists had. Looking for a way to entertain his colleagues and friends, he researched puppetry in books and at the British Museum, finding little that was instructive. On assignment for the Sketch, however, Sarg attended a performance by British puppeteer and theater proprietor Thomas Holden that proved inspirational. Holden’s troupe had toured the United States, Europe, and Asia, even performing for the nobility of Russia,6 and Sarg attended their London performances more than fifty times to glean information about the mechanics of the company’s marionettes and performance techniques. Though Sarg met Holden, he was “never given the chance to see how his dolls were manipulated,”7 and no one but the puppeteers was allowed to view the behind-the-scenes operations. Sarg went on to design a marionette stage of his own, and held popular evening parties to entertain his fellow artists and friends with movable figures of his own design, foretelling his future as an innovator in the field (plate 2.9).8
2.8. Tom Browne (1870–1910). On Their Honeymoon, 1904. Pictorial postcard illustration, Davidson Bros. Norman Rockwell Museum Digital Collection.
2.13. At the Royal Academy. May illustration for the 1914 London Underground calendar, printed by Johnson, Riddle & Co. Lithographic print. Nantucket Historical Association Collection; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Phillip C. Murray, 1983.57.53j.
2.14. Up River. June illustration for the 1914 London Underground calendar, printed by Johnson, Riddle & Co. Lithographic print. Nantucket Historical Association Collection; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Phillip C. Murray, 1983.57.53g.
Man about Town 3
Tony Sarg’s New
York
STEPHANIE HABOUSH PLUNKETT AND LENORE D. MILLER
When he arrived in New York in 1915 (plate 3.1), at the age of thirty-five, Sarg was a mature, exuberant, and hard-working artist with a warm personality and keen business sense. Naturally theatrical, he dressed smartly in a beige suit and hat, and carried a walking stick made of a whale’s jawbone and topped with a shark’s tooth.1 Choosing to establish himself in the heart of the city, he rented a studio space in the famed Flatiron Building (plate 3.2), a triangular, twenty-two-story structure then known as the Fuller Building, located at 175 Fifth Avenue and East 22nd Street. Painted and photographed extensively since its completion in 1902, the elegant steel-frame skyscraper became a symbol of twentieth-century progress that was notably captured in Edward Steichen’s luminous Flatiron, his 1904 photograph of the building at twilight. When Sarg arrived, the building’s tenants included a life insurance company, magazine and music publishers, a celluloid novelty company, and several artists, all of whom he made it his business to meet. Having learned the importance of social networking in London, Sarg made connections in his unique way, garnering interest and recognition. On one occasion, Sarg hosted a party in his studio, determined to make it an unforgettable event. As people mingled, he surprised them with a marionette performance,
The Stock Exchange, from Tony Sarg’s New York, 1926. See plate 3.16.
Balloons over Broadway 6
Tony Sarg’s Creations for Macy’s
STEPHANIE HABOUSH PLUNKETT AND LENORE D. MILLER
Tony Sarg’s gift for invention and skill as a designer and puppeteer played a significant role in the success of Macy’s extravagant holiday marketing enterprise. The world’s largest department store transformed itself into a winter wonderland, with parades, animated store windows, inflatable balloons, “Toylands,” dazzling decorative displays—and Santa himself on hand to introduce the Christmas season at Thanksgiving. Sarg’s productive relationship with Macy’s exemplified the interconnectivity of art and commerce, inspiring patrons to experience the warmth and wonder of the season while also encouraging them to spend on holiday gifts.
In 1922, when R. H. Macy & Co. went public and acquired both competitors and regional branches, it was a time of prosperity in the United States. The nation’s total wealth more than doubled during the Roaring Twenties, and gross national product—the total value of goods produced and services provided by the country in one year—expanded by 40 percent from 1922 to 1929.1 A new “consumer culture” emerged for Americans with discretionary income, who saw the many advertisements for a wide range of products in mass circulation magazines and newspapers, and heard about them on the popular radio programs of the day. Doing a brisk
Detail of Tony Sarg and others painting one of his Macy’s inflatables, c. 1930. See plate 6.5.
