Les Póupées de Paris

Description

Sid Krofft toured with Judy Garland for a year and a half as her opening act, including the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas.

Sid Krofft remembers…

“During the same period I began dreaming of reopening my father’s puppet theater and incorporating much of the glitz and glamour, combined with the adult themes from the Lido Shows in Paris. With the help of one time Flamingo Maitre d’ Nat Hort, my brother and I launched the “Krofft Theater” in Hollywood where opening night Shirley MacLaine, Mae West, Liberace, Hedda Hopper, Loretta Young and Presidential candidate Richard Nixon were in attendance with Walter Winchell who flew in to cover the event. The show was such a big hit and sold out for a year that a second company opened in 1962 in a specially built revolving theater at the Seattle World’s Fair.

“As if to ensure its success, Billy Graham, after attending the opening at the fair, excitedly told the press, ‘Don’t go see a show called Les Póupées De Paris because the women don’t wear bras!’ Billy Graham failed to mention was that all of the “women” were puppets. After Graham’s comment we never had an empty seat.”

The show went on to open in Las Vegas for two years, New York, New Orleans, Reno, San Francisco, San Antonio, and played to nine and a half million people. Each show had a cast of 250 puppets and the production was bigger than three Broadway Musicals put together. There were as least 24 puppeteers.