Lou Bunin (1904-1994)

Louis 'Lou' Bunin was an American puppeteer, artist, and pioneer of stop-motion animation in the latter half of the twentieth century.

 

While working as a mural artist under Diego Rivera in Mexico City in 1926, Bunin created political puppet shows using marionettes including a production of Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape. Photographer Tina Modotti took many pictures of Bunin and his puppets, including her renowned work, "The Hands of the Puppeteer."

 

On his return to the United States, Bunin created animated three-dimensional puppets to appear in the 1939 New York World's Fair in New York City. His 1943 political stop-motion satire, Bury the Axis, is well known. Later Bunin landed a job with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer where he created the stop-motion Prologue to the famed film, Ziegfeld Follies. He was subsequently fired as a casualty of McCarthyism. He created a feature-length film of "Alice in Wonderland," using a live-action Alice and stop-motion puppets for the Wonderland creatures. He had the misfortune of creating his film (filmed in post-war France) at the same time as Disney's cel-animated version, and Lou's Alice became mired in technical and distribution difficulties. It is still regarded as the most artistically creative, and most loyal to the original Lewis Carroll story, of any of the Alice film adaptations.

 

While Lou remained a filmmaker, he never lost his love of art (painting and sculpture), or his drive to produce it. Here is a small selection of his many achievements.

 

Creator of the popular Talking Utica Club Beer Mugs and a plethora of memorable short films, Bunin died of a stroke on 17 February 1994 at age 89 in Englewood, New Jersey, USA.