Sid Croft, who with his late brother Marty created and produced the memorable children’s shows “HR Pufnstuf” and “Land of the Lost” and the 2009 feature film based on the latter, died Friday in Los Angeles.
His friend Kelly Killian wrote on Instagram, “I loved Sid with all my heart. The last six years of my life were dedicated to him, and he was dedicated to me. During that time, he taught me more than words can express: about the art of Hollywood, the magic of the stage, and the depth and complexity of humanity. I truly wish I had spent more time with him.”
“I can never repay him for the life lessons he gave me, both beautiful and difficult. To this day, my instinct is to walk into a room to check on him and ask him questions about pieces of history or people who no longer exist. I didn’t know Sid’s shows. I only knew the man who made them, and that man was an extraordinary person.”
“Last Thursday night, he grabbed my arm and said, ‘Kelly, there’s something I want you to know…I love you.’ Those words will stay with me forever. I will miss his big blue eyes, his bright dimpled smile, and the warmth that followed me wherever I went. That man embodied love, life, and happiness until the very end…”
His brother and partner Marty Croft passed away in 2023.
The Croft sisters, along with the rest of the company, are saddened to hear of Sid Croft’s death, which came almost 72 hours after the news of their uncle’s death was reported in the media.
His nieces and Sid & Marty Croft Pictures released a statement saying, “Sid Croft was an iridescent, prolific, and creative genius who rose from humble beginnings to become a true embodiment of the American dream. Born in Canada, Sid was the son of his younger brother, Marty Croft. Together, they built an entertainment empire that continues to inspire generations. The brothers’ history of contrasting styles and personalities ultimately created a dazzling, imaginative vision that complemented each other perfectly.” A world that has entertained and shaped future generations. ”
The Crofts also produced numerous variety shows, including “Donnie and Marie” and “Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters.”
Sid and Marty Kroft began their careers in children’s television production with HR Pufnstuf. The show is a live-action show about a boy (actor Jack Wilde) who lives in a fantasy land with a dragon (HR Pufnstuf, voiced by Lenny Weinrib) for his friend and a witch (Witchpoo played by Billy Hayes) as his enemy. As conceptualized, the show tracked interactions between human actors. Actors in colorful oversized costumes. And a life-sized doll with a huge head.
Croft’s children’s shows were uniquely creative, and the producer brothers made the most of their low budget by reusing characters in other series and creating shows that followed similar formulas. The extremely bright colors that characterized their designs led some to suspect that the Crofts were influenced by their use of LSD, but Marty Croft repeatedly denied such speculation.
In 2007, TV Guide named “HR Pufnstuf” number 27 on its list of top cult shows of all time.
The series produced only 17 episodes. It originally aired from 1969 to 1970, but proved successful enough that it was rebroadcast on NBC’s Saturday morning schedule until August 1972. The show is fondly remembered by many who grew up at the time.
ABC aired reruns of the show on Saturday mornings from September 1972 to September 1973, and on Sunday mornings in some markets from September 1973 to September 1974. It was syndicated independently from 1974 to 1978, and was packaged with six other Croft series from 1978 to 1985 under the name Croft Superstars.
In 1970, the Crofts produced a feature film of the show called “Pufnstuf,” which included content that encouraged parents to join in.
Indeed, the Crofts’ most successful series, judging by the episodes produced (not to mention the feature-length remakes decades later), was Land of the Lost, which focused on an entire family, the Marshalls. The Marshall family accidentally travels to another Earth, ruled by dinosaurs and primate-like people called Pakuni and Sleestacks (an evolved, hissing, aggressive creature of humanoid and lizardoid shapes).
The series aired on NBC from 1974 to 1976, then in syndication in the early 1980s as part of the “Kroft Superstars” package. It was revived late Saturday night on CBS as a replacement for the Crofts’ “Prior’s Place,” which was canceled in 1985. In the 1990s, the show, now a cult classic, was rebroadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel.
Crofts’ remake aired on ABC from 1991 to 1992, starring actor Timothy Bottoms.
The 2009 feature film adaptation, starring Will Ferrell, was unsurprisingly comedic, but it was a failure, grossing $69 million worldwide on a production budget of $100 million. An article in the LA Times that ran ahead of its release talked about how the brothers would have gotten a cut of the profits and the licensing deal, but unfortunately there was no profit, and the licensing money probably wasn’t that great either.
After HR Pufnstuf, the brothers went on to create the Lidsville series, starring Charles Nelson Reilly, and the series The Bugaloos, which tells the story of a group of winged insects in a rock’n’roll band in an enchanted forest who must fight off their nemesis Benita Bizarre, played by character actress Martha Raye.
Another show in the classic Croft style was 1973’s “Sigmund and the Sea Monster,” starring child actors Johnny Whitaker and Scott Colden and featuring oversized puppets. Sigmund, played by the dwarf Billy Barty (who starred in Bugaloo), was a sea monster that no one wanted to frighten, much to the embarrassment of his family. The two children hid him in the clubhouse, but had to worry that his family would kidnap him or that someone would find out.
The show ran for 13 episodes on NBC from 1973 to 1975 and made a huge impression.
In February 2015, the Crofts signed a deal with Amazon Studios to develop a reimagined pilot for Sigmund. The brothers have long been developing feature films “HR Pufnstuf” and “Lidsville”. The series, which premiered in 2017, produced seven episodes for Amazon.
“Sid and Marty are geniuses and we are honored to work with them to once again bring to the world what we believe to be the most amazing and entertaining sea creatures in the history of television,” Amazon Studios vice president Roy Price said in a 2015 statement.
“The World of Sid and Marty Crofts at the Hollywood Bowl” (1973), a television special that captured the Crofts’ attempts to bring their creations to the live arena (including Brady Branch’s children), was a fairly haphazard production.
In 1974, the Crofts served as executive producers for a variety special starring Raquel Welch.
This was followed by the short series “The Lost Saucer,” starring Jim Nabors and Ruth Badsey, and “Far Out Space Nuts,” starring Bob Denver and Chuck McCann. In the previous series, aliens came to Earth. The latter followed two janitors who were accidentally launched into space.
Elektra Woman and Dyna Girl (1976) gradually introduces a female superhero (played by Deirdre Hall) and her female sidekick (Judy Stranges).
By the mid-’70s, the Crofts seemed to be moving away from their trademark doll-based children’s content and toward variety shows.
The Wonderbug, about a dune buggy that transforms into a superhero car, aired for one season on ABC, the 1978 Bay City Rollers Show combined a variety show with puppet elements, and Donnie and Marie, starring the Osmond brothers, was a pure variety show that was a huge hit for ABC, running for 63 episodes from 1976 to 1978. (However, after a legal dispute, the Osmonds regained control of the show from the Crofts in 1977, and the show was subsequently filmed in Utah.) There was also The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, which aired for nine episodes on ABC from 1976 to 1977 (Ann B. Davis, who played the maid Alice, was also drafted for the musical venture).
After a series of other variety specials designed as series pilots, the Crofts produced a children’s show, Pryor’s Place, starring comedian Richard Pryor (and some puppets included), which ran for ten episodes on CBS until its cancellation in 1985. The show won for art direction and costume design (always a Crofts family strength), was nominated twice for Outstanding Performer, and was recognized by a Daytime Emmy Award. (Pryor and Lily Tomlin), one nominee in the writing category and two others in the technical category.
Back to dolls, this time for adults, the Crofts created DC Follies. This is a syndicated series in which Fred Willard plays a politician in the form of a caricatured puppet, playing a bartender at a tavern, where he converses. Those lampooned included Presidents Reagan, Carter, Ford, and Nixon, as well as newspaper reporters Dan Rather and Ted Koppel. The series ran from 1987 to 1989.
After a remake of Land of the Lost in 1992, he returned in 2002 with a remake of the classic ’60s series Family Affair, starring Gary Cole as Brian Keith and Tim Curry as Mr. French, the butler formerly played by Sebastian Cabot. The show aired for one season on the WB.
Most recently, in 2015, the Crofts created the Nickelodeon series “Matts & Stuff,” starring “Dog Whisperer” Cesar Millan and his son Calvin, a number of real dogs, and several puppets, including a talking fire hydrant and two cats.
Sidas Yoras was born in Montreal to parents of Greek descent, but his father moved the family to Providence, Rhode Island, and then to New York City. Croft began performing as a puppeteer at an early age and, at the encouragement of his father, became a professional vaudeville performer, joining the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus at the age of 15. In the 1940s, Sid created a one-man puppet show called “Sid Croft’s Unusual Artist,” which was performed around the world. Returning to New York, Marty begins performing using his brother’s puppets to earn money.
During the 1950s, Sid toured as an opening act for such luminaries as Judy Garland, Liberace, Cyd Charisse, and Tony Martin. When he opened for Garland at the Flamingo Hotel and realized he needed another puppeteer, he asked Marty to help.
In 1957, the Croft brothers developed Les Poupées de Paris, a puppet show with mature themes.
A 2008 article in the Los Angeles Times describes the dynamic between the brothers: “Marty joined the play by the late 1950s, and from then on the two puppeteers were locked in a competition to prove who was really pulling the strings. Sid was the creative force, but it was Marty who made sure the play actually made it to the stage.”
In 1968, the Crofts created the character Luther for the Coca-Cola Company, which became the basis for Pufnstuf.
The Crofts began their Hollywood careers by designing characters and sets for the Hanna-Barbera series The Banana Spritz Adventure Hour, which aired on NBC from 1968 to 1970.
In 1976, the Crofts were asked to develop an amusement park for the new Omni International complex in downtown Atlanta. The World of Sid and Marty Croft was one of the world’s first indoor amusement parks, but attendance declined and it closed after six months. The building that housed the park was renamed the CNN Center when its location was changed to the current CNN headquarters.
In 2008, the Crofts admitted to the Los Angeles Times that much of their reported family history was fiction created by publicists in the 1940s. Part of this imagined history included the fifth generation of puppeteers.
