Marionette maker hits it big

Kevin Frisch has been
making puppets since the 1980s.

CINCINNATI (AP) — The basement of a small house in Cincinnati was the birthplace of some of the marionettes featured in the new movie “Mr. Magorium’s Wonderful Emporium.”

The bare-bones shop is the home of the Frisch Marionette Co. that made Punch and Judy, Buster Keaton and Natalie Portman puppets for the holiday-theme film that opened Friday.

The marionettes appear to come to life in the film featuring Dustin Hoffman as a 243-year-old toy shop owner who bequeaths his business to his loyal employee — played by Portman.

Puppet maker Kevin Frisch said Stupid Zebra Productions liked what they saw on his Web site and contacted him.

“Originally they asked for [puppets of] Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Punch and Judy and Marcel Marceau,” said Frisch, 42, who has been making and operating puppets since the mid-1980s.

Frisch said they later decided to skip Hoffman and asked him to do a Buster Keaton puppet in place of the one of Marceau.

Frisch, who started his own company in 1995, has made other 18- to 24-inch puppets modeled after famous people, including former President Bill Clinton and U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, Edgar Allan Poe, President Bush, Boris Karloff and former Vice President Al Gore. Frisch’s creations also include puppets of witches, fairies and a 4-foot dancing Barnaby Bear.

Frisch’s marionettes have had national exposure before “Magorium.” Several of his puppets were featured in the 2001 DVD set “The American Puppet,” a series that has run on PBS stations, and others were featured in the quarterly video magazine “Sentimental Reflections.”

The Cincinnati marionette maker, who was largely self-taught, said he was influenced by his father, Marvin, who built models and a ninth-grade art teacher who encouraged him. After two years in the fine arts program at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, he did a variety of jobs in New York, where he started researching puppets and met puppeteer Nick Coppola of Puppetworks of Brooklyn.

Frisch started working for Coppola six days a week at only $250 a week.

“But it was all about learning the art, and I did, from ground up, by trial and error,” Frisch said. “I have boxes full of mistakes to prove it. But after a while I was building puppets for the Central Park Zoo and the New York Aquarium.”

He realized in 1995 that he could make his puppets anywhere and moved back to Cincinnati.

Frisch builds, transports and operates the puppets at libraries, civic centers, performing arts centers and birthday parties. His wife, Alix, makes most of the puppets’ costumes, while his twin brother, Steve, composes music for Frisch’s shows.

Frisch had hoped to establish a permanent puppet theater and put on regular shows, but for now he is concentrating on building the puppets that he sells on his Web site at prices ranging from $700 to $2,000 and accepting commissions like the one for “Magorium.”

While he operates the up to 19 moving parts on his puppets at his own shows, other puppeteers were hired to operate them for “Magorium.”

“I’m getting better at it, but it really is difficult,” Frisch said.