Production
After creating costumes for characters in the live-action portion of The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, Sid and Marty Krofft were asked to develop their own Saturday morning children's series for NBC. The plot was recycled from Kaleidescope, a live puppet show the Kroffts had staged in the Coca-Cola pavilion of the HemisFair '68 world's fair in 1968, including several key characters from this show, such as Luther the dragon and a silly witch. Other ideas were cultivated from Sid's life. As a child, he'd charged friends buttons, not pennies, to view puppet shows in his back yard; buttons were standard currency on Living Island. Sid and Marty had toured with their puppets as the opening act for Judy Garland, and they based Judy the Frog on her. Ludicrous Lion bears more than a passing resemblance to Irving, the eponymous lion in a pilot they had made in 1957 called Here's Irving.
Sid's friend, Lionel Bart, asked him to view a rough cut of the movie adaptation of Oliver. Sid took notice of young actor Jack Wild and immediately decided that was the kid he wanted to play the lead in his television series. Only two actresses auditioned to play Witchiepoo. The first was then unknown Penny Marshall, but it was felt that she was not right for the part. Stage veteran Billie Hayes came in next, set into a maniacal cackle and hopped up on a desk. She was given the part on the spot.
For Marty Krofft, the production was a particular headache. Marty accepted guardianship of Jack Wild while the teenage boy was in the United States filming the show. He later described bringing Wild into his home as a mistake.
Like most children's television shows of the era, H.R. Pufnstuf contained a laugh track, the inclusion of which the Kroffts were initially against. Sid Krofft commented "We were sort of against that, but Si Rose—being in sitcoms—he felt that when the show was put together that the children would not know when to laugh." Marty Krofft added "the bottom line—it's sad—you gotta tell them when it's funny. And the laugh track, was right. It was necessary, as much as we were always looking to have a real laugh track, a real audience. In comedies, if you don't have them, you're in big trouble, because if you don't hear a laugh track, it's not funny. And that's the way the audience was programmed to view these shows."
Witchiepoo and Pufnstuf later appeared in the episode "Have I Got a Girl For Hoo Doo" from Lidsville, while Pufnstuf appeared in a segment of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. The Krofft Superstar Hour also involved characters in two segments, The Lost Island and Horror Hotel.
Read more about this topic: H.R. Pufnstuf
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
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