Alfred “Fred” Martin fled the Nazi regime during World War II, found his way to the U.S. in the 1950s with hopes of buying a farm, and instead made a living in Princeton for over twenty years creating hand puppets for customers worldwide .
Martin lost his prosperous farm in Czechoslovakia when it was overrun by Hitler’s German army in 1939 and moved to Yugoslavia to work in a factory. He was imprisoned and suffered “gross mistreatment,” he said, after he told a fellow worker, “Tito is no better than Hitler.”
(After Germany invaded Yugoslavia in 1941, civil war broke out. Josep Tito led the communist partisans’ fight against the Nazis before forming a socialist republic in 1945.)
Martin told locals he was shot in the leg when he escaped from the prison camp. He moved to Germany and found work as auto mechanic. He also showed American movies at the U.S. Information Service office in Stuttgart.
“I would probably never have made puppets if it hadn’t been for a door that continually banged shut when it should have stayed open,” Martin told the Appleton Post-Crescent in August 1965.
He explained that a friend who worked in a factory gave him some liquid rubber, or latex, and showed him how to mold suction cups to attach to the molding to fix the door. He experimented further, creating a small clay bust of his Yugoslavian wife, Bojana, making a plaster cast and finally adding his own latex compound to create a rubber head for a puppet.
Martin’s latex composition enabled him to manipulate and stretch the faces into many expressions. His puppets were very popular at local fairs.
The Martins moved to the U.S. in 1957 when they were offered a job managing a farm. The job did not work out, however, and they moved to Milwaukee six months later. Alfred worked in a plastics factory and Bojana took a job as a seamstress in a laundry. When Alfred was laid off during a recession, he returned to his puppets.
His first commission was re-creating a Billy the Bookworm puppet for the Milwaukee Public Library in 1958. He then was hired by Milwaukee television station WITI to make puppets for a kids show, “Cartoon Alley,” created by Jack DuBlon and featuring Barbara Becker as host.
Working with sketches from DuBlon, Martin created a menagerie of seven characters, the Alley Gang, for the show, from Albert the Alley Cat to Rocky the Gorilla. The show ran from 1961 to 1974. DuBlon continued to use Martin’s puppets in other programming until 1984.
To make a puppet, Alfred first created a clay sculpture and then fashioned a mold for the arms and head. Next, he used a medicine dropper to fill several molds with the brightly colored liquid rubber. Meanwhile, Bojana, who also worked at the Handcraft Company, designed and made the clothes.
“Most of the clothes are very simple, but for ‘Fifi,’ a 2.5-foot lady of fashion who boasts a shock of orange hair, long eyelashes and eyes that roll beguilingly, the clothes are more elaborate,” the Post Crescent observed. “Fifi wears a jaunty pillbox hat, dangling earrings and a mink stole over a purple satin dress.”
He also began making smaller versions of the popular puppets and added faces of movie and television stars, which he sold for $3 each.
The Martins moved to Princeton in 1960. They purchased a small house at 615 South Clinton Street, tore down a ramshackle barn, and built a combination garage and studio with a small greenhouse. A garden sated Alfred’s farming appetite.
“Visitors were attracted to the Alfred Martin residence on South Clinton Street Monday night when their night-blooming cereus produced thirty blossoms,” the Fond du Lac Reporter reported on September 9, 1971.
In 1972 Martin created Hans, who only spoke German, for a camp at Lake Lucerne for girls in grades six to eight interested in learning the German language and customs.
“Together the Martins have created fifty different characters and turn out approximately 11,000 puppets a year,” Wisconsin Trails Magazine writer Marge Kolbourn reported in July 1975.
Although the Martins never advertised their puppets, they had customers in several countries as well as the U.S.
“Eighteen-hour days are common during the Christmas rush,” Kolbourn noted. “The reasonably priced puppets, which range from the lifelike W.C. Fields to Willie the Bookworm, are available at the American Baptist Assembly’s gift shop in Green Lake and the Martins’ workshop in Princeton, where visitors are always welcome.”
The Wild Rose Craft Shop, sponsored by the woman’s club there, was the first local outlet for the puppets.
Alfred and Bojana Martin officially became U.S. citizens during a naturalization hearing in Fond du Lac in June 1963. Bojana died in 1989. I have not found an obit yet for Alfred, but Howard Kuehnemann, who lived across the street and knew the couple, said Alfred died a couple of years after Bojana.
Please let me know if you spot any errors.
Thank you for reading and caring about local history.