Puppetry Film Archive

We are proud to host a fabulous range of archival puppetry films from the twentieth century. These really rare films are a collection dug out from the British archives and recently put up on You Tube and we are so privileged to have the rights to host them on our site, with generous thanks to British Pathé.
Punch's 300th Birthday Party, celebrated in 1962 at St Paul's in Covent Garden, London:  "Near this spot Punch's Puppet Show was first performed in England and witnessed by Samuel Pepys 1662". (British Pathé)
John and Lyndie Wright at the Little Angel Theatre in Islington, London in 1964. (British Pathé)
Children make puppets and then put on a play. Puppetry in Education, filmed in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, UK in 1946. (British Pathé)
Marionette Magic (Filmed at the Arts Theatre Club in London) in 1935.  The curtain comes up and three puppets are seen dancing about and singing in an Arabian Nights type scene by Paul Brun's Munich Marionettes. (British Pathé)

More archival films

British Puppetry (1940)
Mr Robert Whiting is seen making a puppet of Charles Laughton. Greta Garbo, Wallace Beery, Aubrey Smith and other personality puppets perform. (British Pathé)
To view, click here.
Mechanical Miniatures (1930)
Two puppets on strings are made to fence - one wears a skirt or kilt, the other a suit of armour. They are framed within a little puppet theatre setting. (British Pathé)
To view, click here.
Puppet Fashion Show (1960)
Models walking along a catwalk in The Cypress Club, London. Puppeteers, Maisie Mumford operating the strings of Germaine before a mirror, while in the background Frank Mumford dresses a voluptuous blonde puppet called Madame Linda who is hanging rather elegantly by her strings from a rail. (British Pathé)
To view, click here.
Britain's first puppet theatre (1963)
Harlequin Puppet Theatre, Rhos-on-Sea, Denbighshire (Clywd in Wales). The puppeteers are named as Pat Ronald, Eric Bramell and Millicent Ford. (British Pathé)
To view, click here.