I graduated from Senn High School in 1980. Located on Chicago’s North Side, Senn is a fairly typical inner-city public high school, except for the fact that a lot of famous and semi-famous people graduated from there. Today let’s meet one that will really shove his hand up inside of you and bend you to his will, puppeteer Burr Tillstrom (Class of 1934).

Franklin Burr Tillstrom was born on October 13, 1917 in Chicago. He was a theater kid at Senn and won a drama scholarship that enabled him to attend the University of Chicago. In his freshman year of college he was offered a job setting up a marionette theater in a public park as part of the WPA program.

Burr soon turned to making and performing with puppets, beginning with Kukla, a clown puppet who had no name until he was dubbed Kukla (Russian for doll), by ballerina Tamara Toumanova. He was soon followed by Ollie, a dragon with only one tooth, and many others.

In 1947 Burr teamed with actress Fran Allison for the Kukla, Fran and Ollie show. The show was a big success and ran for ten years, charming many children and adults, including fans Orson Welles and John Steinbeck. In 1967 Kukla, Fran and Ollie began hosting the CBS Children’s Film Festival, another show that ran for a decade. I remember watching The Red Balloon on that show.

Burr had a reputation as being a weird person to work for, since he treated the puppets like people and would insist on others doing so as well. There are stories that crew members who made a mistake would sometimes find themselves discussing it with a disgruntled puppet. If you have ever seen the Jellybean episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show, Jellybean’s creator was supposedly modeled on Burr.

In 1960 Burr met Jim Henson at a puppeteers convention. Henson didn’t have an agent at the time and Burr introduced him to agent and producer Bernie Brillstein. In addition to Henson, Brillstein later also represented Lorne Michaels and some of the original SNL cast members, which is probably part of the explanation for the odd SNL first season Muppet appearances. Burr also introduced Henson to Don Sahlin, a puppet builder he had worked with. Sahlin went on to become Henson’s chief designer and builder.

Burr continued working with his “Kuklapolitan Players” until his death in 1985 at the age of 68.