As the fall of Puppet Week encircles us, our only choice left is to die well. To take as many of them with us. But first… the year was 1939, and the world was at war. One of America’s biggest celebrities was a ventriloquist doll and it was the lead in a feature film about a puppeteer swindler betraying a circus to destroy a marriage. I’m not kidding. If I was kidding I’d have said, “If your only friend was a puppet, would his wooden temptation be enough for you to put him, tuxedo and all, into my wife? Could his tiny body hold enough courage for a darkness so wet? Hi, I’m Todd McFarlane, creator of Spawn.” And then I would have included a picture of Todd McFarlane like this:
But no, I’m being serious. The following is Charlie McCarthy’s You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, more or less exactly as it appeared in theaters 84 years ago. Please enjoy this barely retouched classic.
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: KNM, who through the magic of cyberspace is now pregnant with puppet crabs.
5 replies on “Puppet Week: You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man 🌭”
By my math the events of this documentary suggest that at this point, at least 46% of the American population is puppet!
Oh, this was delightful. Seanbaby pulls back the puppet’s mask to reveal the puppet’s mask beneath it.
The minotaur is in the maze.
‘Sfunny, I read this right after watching Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy on The Muppet Show.
Please, if you read this, it’s important you know Charlie MacArthy’s puppeteer had a room for the puppet in his home. A special room just for just for charlie with his own furniture. Also they got their start as a radio program, and if you’ve seen him perform, you can hear this dialog in Charlies voice. That’s probably fine, right?
It absolutely baffles me how Charlie McCarthy was ever a thing, much less a BIG fricking deal. And now you tell me he did blackface too? I…I just….fuck man.