The Bob Baker Marionette Theater needs your help! Click here to send an email of support.

THE STORY: A developer wants to build a big apartment building on the site of this historic landmark. We believe that there can be apartments, but also a working puppet theater on this site.

Please! Share this blog post and show your support for this gem of mid-century Los Angeles by visiting the Bob Baker website and sending an email to the Planning Department, asking that the theater be included in the approved redevelopment plan.

Here’s our Kim Cooper’s email to the Planning Department, with some points you may wish to echo:

Dear Planning Department,

I write to express my strong opinion that any redevelopment of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater site should include a functioning puppet theater.

It was only six years ago that City Council declared the theater an Historic-Cultural Monument (#958), an honor that is richly deserved for the decades of entertainment that Bob Baker and his crew have given to the families of Los Angeles.

It is my understanding that Bob Baker lost control of this property through a series of deceptive, if not outright fraudulent, transactions, and that the theater was sold at below market value. A reasonable profit can be made with a redevelopment project that allocates space for the puppet theater as a paying tenant, in addition to many residential units.

The retention of the puppet theater tenant will also serve the community by ensuring that this site retains its lively street life, instead of becoming a walled, residential garden, and through the continued training of puppeteers, many of them local youths.

You can do the citizens of Los Angeles a great service by insisting that the developer make room for a functioning Bob Baker Marionette Theater in the development that seeks to demolish this world renowned landmark.

Thank you for your consideration.

best regards,
Kim Cooper, Historian
Los Angeles