November 27, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Tony Sarg never set out to become the quiet genius behind one of America’s most cherished traditions, yet his imagination is the reason Thanksgiving morning feels like magic. Long before millions tuned in to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Sarg was busy turning puppetry, engineering, and whimsy into something completely new. His early window displays for Macy’s were so inventive that the store asked him to help shape their holiday parade, and that’s where his upside-down puppets took flight. What we now think of as giant parade balloons began as sketches from a playful mind that loved solving problems and delighting crowds.
Here to tell the story is Deborah Sorensen, Curator of Exhibitions at the Nantucket Historical Association, where their exhibition Tony Sarg: Genius at Play is the first comprehensive exhibition exploring the life of Tony Sarg.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Everyone's in New
York or on Thanksgiving Day when young and old rise
early to see what giant new balloons will fill the
skies for Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Our next story is
about the man who first invented these upside down puppets.
(00:30):
His name Tony Sarg. Here to tell the story is
Deborah Srensen, curator of Exhibitions at the Nantucket Historical Association,
where their exhibition Tony sarg Genius at Play is the
first comprehensive exhibition exploring his life. Let's take a listen
to the story.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Tony Sarg is a really remarkable early twentieth century commercial
artist and entrepreneur who was born in Guatemala to a
family that was a German father an English mother. In
eighteen eighty and whenever he was around seven years old,
they moved back to Germany and where he could attend
(01:14):
military school. He inherited a number of toys from his grandmother,
who was also an artist, quite well known Mary Ellen Best.
She is a remarkable watercolorist and so as a child
he loved playing with her marionettes and mechanical toys and
always just had a fascination with how things worked and
(01:37):
were put together. Had a very mechanical mind, but was
also very artistic, so he kind of blended these two
halves of kind of the right and left brain, of
being very technical but also very creative. Whenever he was
a teen and actually was commissioned as a lieutenant in
the German Army, he was always sketching. He was self taught.
(01:58):
This is something that people are always prized by when
they come through the exhibition because the quality of his work,
even just as a child, the early sketches he did,
but then definitely as he was growing into adulthood, are
very skillful and very sophisticated. And so he resigned his
commission against his father's wishes by all accounts, and moved
(02:18):
himself to London to pursue a career as a professional artist.
And it was really the golden age of commercial illustration.
You had print media circulating that needed visuals. You had
artists working sketching, visiting theater productions, which is what something
that Tony sarg did documenting those events. So this is
(02:40):
nineteen oh five, he's in London. He watched other artists
that were more well established and saw that they had
ways of promoting themselves that were indirect, that they were
not able, or it was considered, as he put it,
quote unethical to self promote as an artist, to try
to go out and seek work for yourself. But if
(03:02):
you could have a party trick, or invite people to
your salon, or have ways to get your name in
the air, as he described it, you could make good
connections and you would solicit new commissions. And he looked
about for something that might work for him, saying that
he was a shy individual, which I find very hard
(03:22):
to believe. But he turned to puppetry and the kind
of inspiring situation or the thing that actually launched this
was on assignment. He went to a performance by Thomas
Holden's Marionettes and was completely fascinated, and it revived kind
of this childhood fascination with puppets and toys, and he
(03:45):
returned again and again. After being rebuffed by the performers
who would not share their secrets with him, he's like, well,
I guess I will just watch the show as many
times as I can, and he figured it out for himself,
went back to his studio and started to experiment. He
invents a new controller that can hold up to twenty
four strings. Prior to that, you might have one controller
(04:08):
that has just a few strings on either side, that
has a limited range of movement, and that his innovation
was to have more points of contact, more ability for
more subtle movements. But I do know that that controller,
that t shape controller, that he airplane shaped controller, is
something that's still used today. It was not in use
(04:32):
before his creation of it. And as he gains the skills,
he starts to invite people to his studio put on
small performances, realizes that puppetry could be his hook, his
way of gathering new contacts and promoting himself, and does
really well and basically would have continued along those lines
(04:54):
as an illustrator doing a side hustle, if you will,
of marionettes, if not for World One, and being of
German heritage an anti German sentiment that is of course
spreading at this time, he decides to relocate himself as
well as by now he has a wife and a
young daughter to New York and they in nineteen fifteen
(05:17):
immigrate to the United States, and once he's there, he's
now a ten year veteran of kind of commercial art
and illustration. He's fairly well known. He starts doing illustrations
for popular humorists like Irvin Cobb, settles in Greenwich Village
and the city gets to know everybody in that kind
(05:39):
of artistic bohemian community. In the late teens, now establishes
a studio in the Flat Iron Building. He brings people
into his studio. He puts on impromptu marionette performances, delighting
all sorts of publishers, newspapermen. There are a number of
publications that were headquartered in the Flatirn at the time.
(06:00):
So a theatrical producer wants to invest in him. Launches
the Tony sarg Marionettes Company, starts performing in theaters in
the city, but then eventually makes his way to Broadway.
Is all the while receiving really incredible press for his
tricks that he puts on stage. You have marionettes that
are smoking, you have marionettes that are juggling, playing piano,
(06:23):
spinning on stools, really remarkable feats that people can't figure out,
are very humorous and very original. So, unlike in London,
as soon as he starts to establish something in New York,
his name is the brand, he becomes the brand, so
it's Tony Sarg's Marionettes is the company that leads to
(06:46):
a touring company in nineteen twenty one. He takes that
success and that name recognition and starts a series of
short films animated cartoons that between nineteen twenty one and
twenty three take his name to all of the city
locations where his company is now traveling and puts them
in lights with a new cartoon series, which is the
(07:08):
Tony Sarks Almanac series. So he went from New York
theaters to national theaters to national movie theaters and it's
Tony Sarks Marionettes Tony Sarks Almanac. By then he publishes
his Tony Sarks Marionette Book, revealing all of his secrets
of how he produces all of the marionettes that people
(07:29):
are seeing when they're able to go visit in their
own towns. Now they have that kind of behind the
scenes inside scoop and instead of it being a limiting
factor or keeping people from coming out, they're more interested
and intrigued in actually seeing the work he's doing. So
a very savvy businessman and also just a believer in
(07:52):
spreading his knowledge, so by nineteen twenty three. It's not
terribly surprising that the RHAC company you would approach him
to then design mechanical or puppets for their display windows.
So in nineteen twenty three, they've built this new the
world's largest department store in New York. They have all
of this window real estate, and they go to kind
(08:16):
of the master showman himself and they said, Okay, we
want Tony Sarg window displays, like that's going to open
our brand new store. It's going to kick off the
holiday season. And so in nineteen twenty three he does
this spectacular fairy tale inspired I don't remember how many
windows it is. It's like sixty six feet long or
something like that, full of moving mechanical puppets. It was
(08:40):
like a revolving platform and all sorts of mechanical components
with this fairy tale setting.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
And you've been listening to Debor Sarns and tell the
story of Tony Sarg and like so many stories about
people who were pioneers in their field on this show,
from the Right Brothers to Irving Berlin. Sarg was self taught.
And when we come back, we're going to learn about
how that initial visit with Macy's to help with their
(09:10):
store windows turned into those upside down puppets we've all
come to know and love on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
The story continues Tony Sarg's story that is here on
our American stories, and we continue with our American stories
(09:41):
and Tony Sarg's story. In nineteen twenty three, Macy's in
New York City, their flagship store still today, commissioned puppeteer
Tony Sarg to create an animated holiday window display for
their brand new department store. Let's continue with the story
from Deborah and she's a curator of exhibitions at the
(10:03):
Nantucket Historical Association.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
The following year with Macy's company inaugurates their first Christmas parade,
and the goal of the parade at that time was
to lead you to the display windows. It was basically,
we're going to march to the store, reveal the windows,
and then you can come inside. Right So the function
of the parade was literally just to guide you to
(10:29):
the display. It was a circus theme. That first year
they had animals from the Central Perk Zoo. Actual animals
included didn't go very well there weren't balloons yet, but
Tony Sarg did designed floats and all sorts of very
strange figures, like giant heads and costumes. They were called
(10:51):
almost from the very beginning hit the gro tesques. It
was Tony Sarg's gro tesques for some reason. So nineteen
twenty four you have this parade. You have Sar designing
materials for the parade and also the windows, so his
role is now expanding. There's a bit of a hiatus
with other individuals kind of coming in to do work
for the parade. But by the time you get to
(11:13):
nineteen twenty seven, Sarg is back and he takes kind
of control of it again and introduces his first balloon characters.
But at this time they're held up on poles, so
they're inflated rubber figures, but they are not helium filled,
they're not floating on ropes and strings. They're just sort
(11:33):
of they're heavy, they're being carried. The story that you
hear is that the balloons, because they were lower to
the ground, were hard to see. I find that not
so accurate because they're still very big and it's no
different than a float, right, So, but that's the excuse
or a justification for the following year working to produce
(11:56):
a larger inflated helium filled that uses rubberized silk, and
beginning in then nineteen twenty seven. The partnership the Sarg
forms is actually with the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
in Akron, Ohio, and they're the ones who are producing
the balloons. So Sarg would do the designs, the rubber
would be designed these kind of spherical forms that then
(12:18):
are turned into patterns cut out on these huge scale
pasted together. It's like rubber cement that's putting them together. Painted.
They were assembled at the Goodyear Airship of air dock
where they're building zeppelins, is also where they're building these
balloon figures. So nineteen twenty seven they bring the figures.
(12:41):
They're popular, but weird because at the time they were
not copyrighted figures like today that are coming from branded things.
They were imaginary. So they are all sorts of storybook
characters more than anything that Sarg is creating, which is
in keeping with the types of plays that his mary
that company is doing. They're doing lots of traditional folk
(13:02):
tales and stories, and so he's building upon characters that
are in those very popular, but there's only a few
of these large balloons in the parade at first. It's
not as though the entire parade is filled with balloons
like we see more today. The thing to know about
early parades, this is about nineteen twenty eight to nineteen
thirty two, is they actually released the balloons after the parade,
(13:27):
so they would let them go untether them fly up
in the air. There's great photographs showing these balloons up
by the Empire State Building, and they would have tags
attached to them offering a reward front by the Macy
store for people who would let them know where they
were found. And there's some photographs of Tony Saragh in
(13:47):
the newspaper handing one hundred dollars check to a young
man who found a particular balloon in a field in
New Jersey. So it's hard to imagine that happening today.
Even at the time it was not safe. There were
balloons that caught fire in power lines. There was a
balloon that was visible by airplanes, and in nineteen thirty
(14:10):
one actually collided with an airplane, which is what prompted
them to stop doing this practice. The plane nosedive, but
they were able to recover was a student pilot, so
they even had to release statements ahead of that saying
pilots don't try to catch the balloons for the reward,
because they thought that might happen, and it did. So
(14:33):
it's kind of crazy to think about these early years
of the Macy's Parade and Tony Sart's involvement. He was
very much the celebrity at the helm of creating these
spectacles and led them for the rest of his life.
He was involved in designing balloons, in particular with one
of his colleagues, a puppeteer named Bill Baird, who was
(14:55):
kind of a primary point of contact and colleague working
with the Goodyear Company. Is known for the sound of
music Lonely Goatherd marionette scene Hi on the Hill was.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
A Lone lingoat head lay. Now it was the vost
of the Lone lingo head lay.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Those are from Bill Baird. So, but he got his
beginning with Tony sarg and specifically with the Macy's Parade,
developing and designing these huge balloons, and he's also credited
with the notion of them as quote unquote upside down marionettes.
When you see them in motion. There is something really
(15:40):
magical about it, just like he had done with marionettes.
So I could add more tethers and strings. There are
that many more points of movement and the illusion of
life that could be manifest. So let's have more points
of attachment, Let's have longer lines. Let's create a system
(16:01):
in which the pieces themselves are bigger and there's more
surface area to move around to create that sense of life.
And I think it's amazing to think of how much
he accomplished in his own life. And I always liken
him to a Walt Disney before Walt Disney, and there
were a lot of points of contact between Sarg and Disney,
starting very early in the nineteen twenties, going all the
(16:23):
way through the thirties. Sarg's development of a name brand
and putting the Tony Sarg this and Tony Sarg that above.
Everything he did is very much what you see happening
with Walt Disney. Later you get the Walt Disney's X
or Walt Disney's Pinocchio, Walt Disney's what have You, and
it's very much along the same lines. And in the
(16:45):
nineteen thirties you even have Tony Sarg producing marionettes for
the Madame Alexander Dohal Company, and they're successful, and immediately
it goes to Walt Disney after that, and they become
Walt Disney characters, and that shift towards DID characters, which
Disney represents versus the brand of the creator of Tony Sarg.
(17:07):
That's the transition you start to see, even within their lifetime,
because Tony Sarg is involved in creating the first Walt
Disney balloons for the Macy's Day Parade. There were books
published of Mickey and Minny go to Macy's in the
early thirties, and they go and they meet Tony Sarg,
who's creating their own balloons for the parade. So you
(17:28):
have the Disney characters meeting their maker, but it's not
Walt Disney. It's Tony Sarg making the balloons. And beyond
the Macy's book, in some instances, they're immediately following the
success of what Sarg produced turns to Walt Disney. The
marionette book that Sarg published in nineteen twenty one and
(17:50):
had sample plays at the back. Snow White is one
of the plays that's in the back of that particular book,
the degree to which Walt Disney looked to store worries
that were familiar, folk tales that were familiar. Most of
them had also, for the past fifteen years, been touring
the country with Tony Sark's Marionette company, so they weren't
(18:11):
unknown stories. They had been appearing in his books, in
his marionette companies, in his wallpaper designs Alice in Wonderland.
You have all sorts of stories that then become Walt
Disney classics. Not to say they were pre existing properties.
It's not like Tony sarg invented them, but he popularized them.
(18:31):
And it was only natural then that you would have
an individual who's themselves trying to popularize something. Take, well,
this is familiar. It's been touring the country with Tony
sarks marionettes for the last ten years. So there's all
these sorts of amazing points of connection between the two
of them. And then as the years go on and
you get into the post war years of television in particular,
(18:56):
that's when Disney is able to transform this approach to
popular culture and really become the person we know. And
I think had Tony Sarg lived beyond nineteen forty two
whenever he passed away following a surgery for a ruptured appendix.
Had he lived beyond the World War two kind of era,
(19:16):
everybody would know who he is. There is no doubt
he was a popular for year on radio shows of
the day. He would have been so on television, no question.
Extremely charismatic individual who really left a remarkable legacy that
I hope more people can learn about.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to
Deborah Sawrenson. She's the curator of exhibitions at the Nantucket
Historical Association. Whether exhibition Tony Sarg Genius at Play is
the first comprehensive exhibition exploring his life and what a
(19:53):
life story to go from well just amateur puppeteer to
creating the most iconic puppa of all time. And let's
face it, that's what these are. The story of Tony Sarg,
the story of the Upside Down Puppets and how they
came to be, and in the end, the story of
the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Day parade. Here on our American
(20:16):
Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Everyone's in New
York or on Thanksgiving Day when young and old rise
early to see what giant new balloons will fill the
skies for Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Our next story is
about the man who first invented these upside down puppets.
(00:30):
His name Tony Sarg. Here to tell the story is
Deborah Srensen, curator of Exhibitions at the Nantucket Historical Association,
where their exhibition Tony sarg Genius at Play is the
first comprehensive exhibition exploring his life. Let's take a listen
to the story.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Tony Sarg is a really remarkable early twentieth century commercial
artist and entrepreneur who was born in Guatemala to a
family that was a German father an English mother. In
eighteen eighty and whenever he was around seven years old,
they moved back to Germany and where he could attend
(01:14):
military school. He inherited a number of toys from his grandmother,
who was also an artist, quite well known Mary Ellen Best.
She is a remarkable watercolorist and so as a child
he loved playing with her marionettes and mechanical toys and
always just had a fascination with how things worked and
(01:37):
were put together. Had a very mechanical mind, but was
also very artistic, so he kind of blended these two
halves of kind of the right and left brain, of
being very technical but also very creative. Whenever he was
a teen and actually was commissioned as a lieutenant in
the German Army, he was always sketching. He was self taught.
(01:58):
This is something that people are always prized by when
they come through the exhibition because the quality of his work,
even just as a child, the early sketches he did,
but then definitely as he was growing into adulthood, are
very skillful and very sophisticated. And so he resigned his
commission against his father's wishes by all accounts, and moved
(02:18):
himself to London to pursue a career as a professional artist.
And it was really the golden age of commercial illustration.
You had print media circulating that needed visuals. You had
artists working sketching, visiting theater productions, which is what something
that Tony sarg did documenting those events. So this is
(02:40):
nineteen oh five, he's in London. He watched other artists
that were more well established and saw that they had
ways of promoting themselves that were indirect, that they were
not able, or it was considered, as he put it,
quote unethical to self promote as an artist, to try
to go out and seek work for yourself. But if
(03:02):
you could have a party trick, or invite people to
your salon, or have ways to get your name in
the air, as he described it, you could make good
connections and you would solicit new commissions. And he looked
about for something that might work for him, saying that
he was a shy individual, which I find very hard
(03:22):
to believe. But he turned to puppetry and the kind
of inspiring situation or the thing that actually launched this
was on assignment. He went to a performance by Thomas
Holden's Marionettes and was completely fascinated, and it revived kind
of this childhood fascination with puppets and toys, and he
(03:45):
returned again and again. After being rebuffed by the performers
who would not share their secrets with him, he's like, well,
I guess I will just watch the show as many
times as I can, and he figured it out for himself,
went back to his studio and started to experiment. He
invents a new controller that can hold up to twenty
four strings. Prior to that, you might have one controller
(04:08):
that has just a few strings on either side, that
has a limited range of movement, and that his innovation
was to have more points of contact, more ability for
more subtle movements. But I do know that that controller,
that t shape controller, that he airplane shaped controller, is
something that's still used today. It was not in use
(04:32):
before his creation of it. And as he gains the skills,
he starts to invite people to his studio put on
small performances, realizes that puppetry could be his hook, his
way of gathering new contacts and promoting himself, and does
really well and basically would have continued along those lines
(04:54):
as an illustrator doing a side hustle, if you will,
of marionettes, if not for World One, and being of
German heritage an anti German sentiment that is of course
spreading at this time, he decides to relocate himself as
well as by now he has a wife and a
young daughter to New York and they in nineteen fifteen
(05:17):
immigrate to the United States, and once he's there, he's
now a ten year veteran of kind of commercial art
and illustration. He's fairly well known. He starts doing illustrations
for popular humorists like Irvin Cobb, settles in Greenwich Village
and the city gets to know everybody in that kind
(05:39):
of artistic bohemian community. In the late teens, now establishes
a studio in the Flat Iron Building. He brings people
into his studio. He puts on impromptu marionette performances, delighting
all sorts of publishers, newspapermen. There are a number of
publications that were headquartered in the Flatirn at the time.
(06:00):
So a theatrical producer wants to invest in him. Launches
the Tony sarg Marionettes Company, starts performing in theaters in
the city, but then eventually makes his way to Broadway.
Is all the while receiving really incredible press for his
tricks that he puts on stage. You have marionettes that
are smoking, you have marionettes that are juggling, playing piano,
(06:23):
spinning on stools, really remarkable feats that people can't figure out,
are very humorous and very original. So, unlike in London,
as soon as he starts to establish something in New York,
his name is the brand, he becomes the brand, so
it's Tony Sarg's Marionettes is the company that leads to
(06:46):
a touring company in nineteen twenty one. He takes that
success and that name recognition and starts a series of
short films animated cartoons that between nineteen twenty one and
twenty three take his name to all of the city
locations where his company is now traveling and puts them
in lights with a new cartoon series, which is the
(07:08):
Tony Sarks Almanac series. So he went from New York
theaters to national theaters to national movie theaters and it's
Tony Sarks Marionettes Tony Sarks Almanac. By then he publishes
his Tony Sarks Marionette Book, revealing all of his secrets
of how he produces all of the marionettes that people
(07:29):
are seeing when they're able to go visit in their
own towns. Now they have that kind of behind the
scenes inside scoop and instead of it being a limiting
factor or keeping people from coming out, they're more interested
and intrigued in actually seeing the work he's doing. So
a very savvy businessman and also just a believer in
(07:52):
spreading his knowledge, so by nineteen twenty three. It's not
terribly surprising that the RHAC company you would approach him
to then design mechanical or puppets for their display windows.
So in nineteen twenty three, they've built this new the
world's largest department store in New York. They have all
of this window real estate, and they go to kind
(08:16):
of the master showman himself and they said, Okay, we
want Tony Sarg window displays, like that's going to open
our brand new store. It's going to kick off the
holiday season. And so in nineteen twenty three he does
this spectacular fairy tale inspired I don't remember how many
windows it is. It's like sixty six feet long or
something like that, full of moving mechanical puppets. It was
(08:40):
like a revolving platform and all sorts of mechanical components
with this fairy tale setting.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
And you've been listening to Debor Sarns and tell the
story of Tony Sarg and like so many stories about
people who were pioneers in their field on this show,
from the Right Brothers to Irving Berlin. Sarg was self taught.
And when we come back, we're going to learn about
how that initial visit with Macy's to help with their
(09:10):
store windows turned into those upside down puppets we've all
come to know and love on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.
The story continues Tony Sarg's story that is here on
our American stories, and we continue with our American stories
(09:41):
and Tony Sarg's story. In nineteen twenty three, Macy's in
New York City, their flagship store still today, commissioned puppeteer
Tony Sarg to create an animated holiday window display for
their brand new department store. Let's continue with the story
from Deborah and she's a curator of exhibitions at the
(10:03):
Nantucket Historical Association.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
The following year with Macy's company inaugurates their first Christmas parade,
and the goal of the parade at that time was
to lead you to the display windows. It was basically,
we're going to march to the store, reveal the windows,
and then you can come inside. Right So the function
of the parade was literally just to guide you to
(10:29):
the display. It was a circus theme. That first year
they had animals from the Central Perk Zoo. Actual animals
included didn't go very well there weren't balloons yet, but
Tony Sarg did designed floats and all sorts of very
strange figures, like giant heads and costumes. They were called
(10:51):
almost from the very beginning hit the gro tesques. It
was Tony Sarg's gro tesques for some reason. So nineteen
twenty four you have this parade. You have Sar designing
materials for the parade and also the windows, so his
role is now expanding. There's a bit of a hiatus
with other individuals kind of coming in to do work
for the parade. But by the time you get to
(11:13):
nineteen twenty seven, Sarg is back and he takes kind
of control of it again and introduces his first balloon characters.
But at this time they're held up on poles, so
they're inflated rubber figures, but they are not helium filled,
they're not floating on ropes and strings. They're just sort
(11:33):
of they're heavy, they're being carried. The story that you
hear is that the balloons, because they were lower to
the ground, were hard to see. I find that not
so accurate because they're still very big and it's no
different than a float, right, So, but that's the excuse
or a justification for the following year working to produce
(11:56):
a larger inflated helium filled that uses rubberized silk, and
beginning in then nineteen twenty seven. The partnership the Sarg
forms is actually with the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
in Akron, Ohio, and they're the ones who are producing
the balloons. So Sarg would do the designs, the rubber
would be designed these kind of spherical forms that then
(12:18):
are turned into patterns cut out on these huge scale
pasted together. It's like rubber cement that's putting them together. Painted.
They were assembled at the Goodyear Airship of air dock
where they're building zeppelins, is also where they're building these
balloon figures. So nineteen twenty seven they bring the figures.
(12:41):
They're popular, but weird because at the time they were
not copyrighted figures like today that are coming from branded things.
They were imaginary. So they are all sorts of storybook
characters more than anything that Sarg is creating, which is
in keeping with the types of plays that his mary
that company is doing. They're doing lots of traditional folk
(13:02):
tales and stories, and so he's building upon characters that
are in those very popular, but there's only a few
of these large balloons in the parade at first. It's
not as though the entire parade is filled with balloons
like we see more today. The thing to know about
early parades, this is about nineteen twenty eight to nineteen
thirty two, is they actually released the balloons after the parade,
(13:27):
so they would let them go untether them fly up
in the air. There's great photographs showing these balloons up
by the Empire State Building, and they would have tags
attached to them offering a reward front by the Macy
store for people who would let them know where they
were found. And there's some photographs of Tony Saragh in
(13:47):
the newspaper handing one hundred dollars check to a young
man who found a particular balloon in a field in
New Jersey. So it's hard to imagine that happening today.
Even at the time it was not safe. There were
balloons that caught fire in power lines. There was a
balloon that was visible by airplanes, and in nineteen thirty
(14:10):
one actually collided with an airplane, which is what prompted
them to stop doing this practice. The plane nosedive, but
they were able to recover was a student pilot, so
they even had to release statements ahead of that saying
pilots don't try to catch the balloons for the reward,
because they thought that might happen, and it did. So
(14:33):
it's kind of crazy to think about these early years
of the Macy's Parade and Tony Sart's involvement. He was
very much the celebrity at the helm of creating these
spectacles and led them for the rest of his life.
He was involved in designing balloons, in particular with one
of his colleagues, a puppeteer named Bill Baird, who was
(14:55):
kind of a primary point of contact and colleague working
with the Goodyear Company. Is known for the sound of
music Lonely Goatherd marionette scene Hi on the Hill was.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
A Lone lingoat head lay. Now it was the vost
of the Lone lingo head lay.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Those are from Bill Baird. So, but he got his
beginning with Tony sarg and specifically with the Macy's Parade,
developing and designing these huge balloons, and he's also credited
with the notion of them as quote unquote upside down marionettes.
When you see them in motion. There is something really
(15:40):
magical about it, just like he had done with marionettes.
So I could add more tethers and strings. There are
that many more points of movement and the illusion of
life that could be manifest. So let's have more points
of attachment, Let's have longer lines. Let's create a system
(16:01):
in which the pieces themselves are bigger and there's more
surface area to move around to create that sense of life.
And I think it's amazing to think of how much
he accomplished in his own life. And I always liken
him to a Walt Disney before Walt Disney, and there
were a lot of points of contact between Sarg and Disney,
starting very early in the nineteen twenties, going all the
(16:23):
way through the thirties. Sarg's development of a name brand
and putting the Tony Sarg this and Tony Sarg that above.
Everything he did is very much what you see happening
with Walt Disney. Later you get the Walt Disney's X
or Walt Disney's Pinocchio, Walt Disney's what have You, and
it's very much along the same lines. And in the
(16:45):
nineteen thirties you even have Tony Sarg producing marionettes for
the Madame Alexander Dohal Company, and they're successful, and immediately
it goes to Walt Disney after that, and they become
Walt Disney characters, and that shift towards DID characters, which
Disney represents versus the brand of the creator of Tony Sarg.
(17:07):
That's the transition you start to see, even within their lifetime,
because Tony Sarg is involved in creating the first Walt
Disney balloons for the Macy's Day Parade. There were books
published of Mickey and Minny go to Macy's in the
early thirties, and they go and they meet Tony Sarg,
who's creating their own balloons for the parade. So you
(17:28):
have the Disney characters meeting their maker, but it's not
Walt Disney. It's Tony Sarg making the balloons. And beyond
the Macy's book, in some instances, they're immediately following the
success of what Sarg produced turns to Walt Disney. The
marionette book that Sarg published in nineteen twenty one and
(17:50):
had sample plays at the back. Snow White is one
of the plays that's in the back of that particular book,
the degree to which Walt Disney looked to store worries
that were familiar, folk tales that were familiar. Most of
them had also, for the past fifteen years, been touring
the country with Tony Sark's Marionette company, so they weren't
(18:11):
unknown stories. They had been appearing in his books, in
his marionette companies, in his wallpaper designs Alice in Wonderland.
You have all sorts of stories that then become Walt
Disney classics. Not to say they were pre existing properties.
It's not like Tony sarg invented them, but he popularized them.
(18:31):
And it was only natural then that you would have
an individual who's themselves trying to popularize something. Take, well,
this is familiar. It's been touring the country with Tony
sarks marionettes for the last ten years. So there's all
these sorts of amazing points of connection between the two
of them. And then as the years go on and
you get into the post war years of television in particular,
(18:56):
that's when Disney is able to transform this approach to
popular culture and really become the person we know. And
I think had Tony Sarg lived beyond nineteen forty two
whenever he passed away following a surgery for a ruptured appendix.
Had he lived beyond the World War two kind of era,
(19:16):
everybody would know who he is. There is no doubt
he was a popular for year on radio shows of
the day. He would have been so on television, no question.
Extremely charismatic individual who really left a remarkable legacy that
I hope more people can learn about.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to
Deborah Sawrenson. She's the curator of exhibitions at the Nantucket
Historical Association. Whether exhibition Tony Sarg Genius at Play is
the first comprehensive exhibition exploring his life and what a
(19:53):
life story to go from well just amateur puppeteer to
creating the most iconic puppa of all time. And let's
face it, that's what these are. The story of Tony Sarg,
the story of the Upside Down Puppets and how they
came to be, and in the end, the story of
the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Day parade. Here on our American
(20:16):
Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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