Saturday, January 15, 2011

Papotin's Revue

A long time ago, I posted this flyer used to advertise a French puppet show that played for a short time at Disneyland:


The same show is advertised in the verso of a popular Tiki Room flyer:


At the time of my first post on this topic, I wondered if the first flyer was created by Disneyland or by Andre Tahon.  Well, Monsieur Tahon maintained a website before his death in 2009, and on it, he posted another flyer for one of his shows.  This pretty much proves that the flyer was created by Tahon rather than Disney.  Here's the other flyer for a French production:


He also published a photo that he claims is from the Disneyland show, and since I have no reason not to believe him, here it is:


Not much, I realize, but something is better than nothing.

I, along with many Disneyland fans would love to know more about Tahon and his involvement with the early days of Disneyland.  Was he hired by Walt Disney personally?

If you have any light to shed on this most elusive of Disneyland shows, please chime in.

5 comments:

Jimmy said...

I saw this show many times. The puppeteer was below a black curtain that was about 4 feet high, and the puppets were operated from sticks. It was very clever. There were fuzzy worms and creatures that could climb over themselves. There was a lot of blacklight used to highlight the characters. It was very "French" and arty in the best way. The puppets could move along quickly and zip along the top of the curtain.

So Cal Peeper said...

I distinctly remember this show also - my dad took home movies of it, it's somewhere in his film archive, which I'm slowly transferring to DVD.

jedblau said...

I would LOVE to see a film of this show! What a treasure...

Yukari said...

In Europe, there was a Papotin TV show in the late 70s. I remember it fondly. It was just the way Jimmy described.

I found two clips on youtube that may give you an idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im_LhKxeb5I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1w2ONNvngfM

Anonymous said...

Yes he did perform at Disney in the summer of 63 and the reason I know this is that I am working on all of disneylands historical footage and I came upon a real which is lable Papotin 63 and reviewing the film it indicates he had shows at disneyland. That is all the info I have. Hope this sheds some light.