ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

“View with compassion any Black Doll you may chance to see in your walks, as it might
once […], have been in its better days a Marionette.” 240 The fantasy tale has all the
characteristics of hyperbolic nostalgia. It imagines the object as a living being and
creates a fictionally interconnected, historical adventure from disconnected moments in
the changing landscape of nineteenth-century puppet theatre. It also demonstrates how
the Puppeteers of America encouraged productions that would reconstruct the puppet
theatre’s past.
The amateur subdivisions of the puppet theatre field hosted the last hurrahs of the
traditional puppet minstrel show. Like the professional subdivisions, however, they
synthesized the aesthetics of the puppet minstrel into a considerable body of productions.
The most common example was Little Black Sambo. Nearly ten percent of companies in
the 1930s presented adaptations of the tale made famous by Helen Bannerman. 241
Bannerman’s Story of Little Black Sambo (1900) was an unprecedented success,
mainly due to its revolutionary format, which alternated between simple illustrations and
compact text, making it ideal for young readers. 242 It told of a young child named
Sambo, who convinces a band of tigers not to eat him, by giving each an article of his
fine outer garments (shoes, an umbrella, a coat, etc.). Eventually, the tigers fight over the
different pieces of finery, their bout culminating in each latching its teeth onto the tail of
another and chasing each other around a tree. While they spin faster and faster, Sambo
240 Ibid., 52.
241 Estimated from records in multiple issues of: Paul McPharlin, Puppetry: A Yearbook of
Puppets and Marionettes (Detroit: Puppeteers of America, 1934-39).
242
Phyllis J. Yuill, Little Black Sambo: A Closer Look (New York: The Racism and Sexism
Resource Center for Educators, 1976), 7.
189