American Puppetry
Collections, History and Performance
Edited by Phyllis Dircks, Ph.D., Professor of English,
C.W. Post Campus
McFarland & Company, 2004, 334 pages, nonfiction

Throughout the ages, performers and storytellers have created material images to bring their characters to life. It is an artistic tradition, which continues to flourish today. From the work of Muppet mastermind Jim Henson to that of Lion King director Julie Taymor, puppets have remained a constant presence in contemporary American performance art, not only beguiling, but also reflecting the audiences they were made to entertain. Phyllis Dircks has compiled a book of essays written by curators of the most significant puppet collections in the United States and by other experts in the field. Their insights offer a window into America’s cultural consciousness via the careful examination of the puppet theatre that our society has produced. In addition to serving as editor, Dircks contributed two essays to the volume. One of her pieces, “Howdy Doody in the Courtroom,” considers the legacy of “The Howdy Doody Show,” putting the program’s impact in perspective through a close examination of the legal battle that arose over custody of the puppet that captivated generations of children and forever changed the face of television.

How then does a carefully preserved cultural icon of the magnitude of Howdy Doody become a prominent figure in a U.S. District Court case? The fate of Howdy Doody, always intertwined with Buffalo Bob Smith, became complicated when Smith wrote to [puppeteer] Rufus Rose in 1970, asking if he could borrow the Howdy Doody puppet … Rose accommodated Smith, telling him, ‘I am sending you via parcel post the one and only original HOWDY,’ but he pointedly reminded him of the stipulation … ‘that Howdy himself eventually be placed in care of The Detroit Institute of the Arts which maintains and displays the foremost national collection of puppets. Therefore I hand Howdy on to you with this mutual understanding and responsibility.’ …

The unprecedented popularity of the puppet meant that numerous Howdy Doody puppets had been created: “millions,” according to Velma Dawson, the creator of the original Howdy. Joe Lang, who has studied the issue carefully, concludes that ‘today, among the living, there’s no consensus about how many Howdy Doody puppets were made or what became of them.” In the early days of the show, producer Roger Muir had a backup puppet crafted by Scotty Brinker; this puppet became known as Double Doody, and Double Doody himself was replicated many times. There were also many Photo Doodys. ‘The genesis of Howdy puppets is almost biblically tangled,’ according to Lang.

At issue in the court case was the identity of the puppet Rufus Rose had called the ‘one and only original HOWDY.’ … Puppets are innately fragile and there is a continuing need to re- fashion puppets and replace body parts. This consideration further blurred the search for the original Howdy Doody.