At Home and On Screen with the Standwells: The Legacy of a Legendary Puppet Troupe
If you asked the great cultural figures of mid-20th century New York where to find the best entertainment in the city, they might well have answered, “someone’s living room on Central Park West.” For over 20 years, the cream of New York artistic life sat in that living room before a three-foot-wide stage, delighting in the company of five charismatic puppets: the Standwells, a.k.a. the Little Players. Though Standwells productions were always small-scale, created and executed by just two men, they had an unmatched reputation as refined entertainment.
This reputation was so strong that from 1964 to 1971, the public television station WNDT (now known as WNET) produced TV programming starring the Standwells, most of which was adapted from their live performances. A Los Angeles-based TV station produced a final special, A Standwells Anniversary, in 1974. These programs were preserved on film and later donated to the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT) by the Standwells’ creators. After a recent digitization project, these exceedingly rare and exceedingly charming recordings are available to view in the Lucille Lortel Room at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. But how did this tiny puppet troupe become renowned enough to end up on TV and to win praise from the greatest artists of the era? To answer that, let’s first take a look at the history of the Standwells.
Program for the 1973–74 iteration of The Standwells at Home from the Michael Mooney papers. An earlier version of this show was made into a television special (NCOX 1093).
The Standwells were the joint creations of Francis J. Peschka and W. Gordon Murdock, otherwise known as Frank and Bill. In a letter of July 16, 1992, Peschka explained to his friend Michael Mooney that the Standwells began “purely as a hobby—began private performances for friends, friends of friends, after a while friends of friends of friends began sending strangers of friends...” (This letter may be found in the Michael Mooney papers and designs pertaining to the Little Players in the Billy Rose Theatre Division.)
Peschka and Murdock’s hobby grew into a full-time occupation, and seasons of Little Players performances ran continuously from 1959 to 1982. Peschka operated and voiced all five puppets, while Murdock handled the technical aspects of production. The pair never advertised—people learned about the Standwells strictly by word of mouth. The living room seated a maximum of 25 people, so that was the size of an evening’s audience. But what an audience it was! Ethel Merman, Sir John Gielgud, Stella Adler, Mike Nichols, Jerome Robbins, and Bette Davis were all regulars, and other attendees included the country’s foremost visual artists, performers, poets, critics, and musicians.
As their TV work demonstrates, an evening with the Standwells might feature scenes from great plays, recitations of poetry and prose, songs (covering an astonishing range from Schubert and Brahms to parlor ballads and Fats Waller), piano duets, and much playful bickering, gossip, and complaint among the company members. Each of the Standwells had an outsize personality and a distinct artistic sensibility. Isabelle Standwell, the ringleader, was a jovial English gentlewoman. Her twin brother Sicnarf was more boisterous and spoke with a Southern twang. Then there was Mademoiselle Garonce, a Viennese cafe singer who called everyone “sveetheart”; Jonathan Smythe, a somewhat stuffy university professor; and Elsie Lump (pronounced “Loomp”), a grouchy, middle-aged veteran of the English music hall. Together they made up an acting troupe and a family of sorts. Often the fiction onstage was that the company had invited their friends—that is, the audience—into their home for an evening of entertainment.
This friendship went both ways. Audiences tended to think of the Standwells as real people. In fact, the illusion was encouraged with a “Who’s Who in the Company” booklet distributed at performances, which provided a detailed biographical sketch for each of the puppets. A copy of the booklet can be found in the Mooney papers.
A page from the “Who’s Who in the Company” booklet.
This is not to say that Peschka and Murdock rejected the view of the puppets as people. Early in Robin Lehman’s 1981 documentary The Little Players, which can also be viewed at TOFT (NCOX 739), Peschka says: “An actor can only play one part on a stage himself, but I’m fortunate enough, having gone to the puppets—” He pauses, then corrects himself, “—or the people, but we thought of them in the beginning as puppets...” Later in the film, Peschka and Murdock receive fan mail addressed to Mademoiselle Garonce. (It was not uncommon for fan mail to be addressed to the puppets rather than to Peschka and Murdock, as can be seen in the Little Players Correspondence.) As Murdock reads the praise for Garonce aloud, Peschka says, “God, there’ll be no living with her.” Murdock responds “Oh, Jesus. She’ll ask for more money.” Given Garonce’s primadonna attitude, it seems like a credible threat.
Though Peschka and Murdock were culturally omnivorous, their work has a consistently gay sensibility. For one thing, they frequently drew on gay writers for the content of their productions. A short story by the gay British writer Saki, “The Baker’s Dozen,” served as the basis for a one-act play that appears multiple times in their television work. The interview scene from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest crops up in both the 1966 TV special The Standwells at Home and Lehman’s 1981 The Little Players, meaning that the scene must have been in their repertoire for at least those 15 years.
It is no coincidence that Standwells performances were a cornerstone of cultural life for many gay artists. Letters from Peschka in the Mooney collection mention that Charles Ludlam attended several times—though he was never able to catch the Standwells’ rendition of Camille, a play in which Ludlam gave a legendary performance as Marguerite Gautier. The gay poet James Merrill so loved the Standwells that, as Peschka wrote: “After keeping us afloat during all the Little Players’ career he still helps us to keep our heads a little above water to this day.” That letter dates from 1992, over a decade after Peschka and Murdock had stopped giving Standwells performances and moved permanently to Ohio.
Costume design by Frank Peschka for Mademoiselle Garonce. In 1981, James Merrill wrote the poem “Garonce” in tribute to her.
Given that their audience was so particular and their material so niche, the preservation of the Standwells’ work is a minor miracle. The performances would only survive in memory if a handful of TV producers hadn’t seen their unique charm—and fortunately for us, they did. The results are rich as entertainment and history, a dispatch from New York’s cultural and gay life at a key time for both. And as for the ephemeral parts of the experience—the camaraderie of coffee and snacks in the kitchen before the show—they must be conjured with the imaginative participation essential to Standwells shows.
So, if you come to TOFT to view these recordings, whether you’re a student, a scholar, a theater professional, or a researcher, let the experience “on your imaginary forces work.” Picture yourself in that living room before that little stage, sitting elbow-to-elbow with the crème of New York artistic society, waiting for your eccentric, 12-inch-tall friends. If you do, the pleasure the Standwells offered to their original audiences will come through clearly—as we hope it will to many in the future.