Photos by Sam Hanna
Jeff Kent, the last apprentice of puppeteer “Oscar” Isentrout (the man who made the original Mr. Bingle), had to restore the marionette after it was nearly destroyed in the flood after Hurricane Katrina. The water-ravaged Bingle is pictured below, while his restored persona sits on Kent’s lap above.
When Emile Alline, the display manager for Maison Blanche, took a trip to Chicago in 1947, he saw a department-store mascot called Uncle Mistletoe in the window of a Marshall Field’s and thought, We need something like that in New Orleans. He was inspired to create a little snowman that would become synonymous with Christmas in New Orleans.
“He dreamed up this snowman Santa found,” his daughter Jerilyn Faulstich said. “He made a prototype of fiberfill and chicken wire, and store workers fell in love with him [the snowman].”
Alline’s snow doll wore an ice-cream-cone hat, had two blue ornaments for eyes and holly leaves for wings, and carried a magic candy cane. There was only one problem: he didn’t have a name. Alline’s boss, Herbie Swartz, decided to hold a contest among store employees to name the little fellow. The prize was a $200 gift certificate. “Herbie didn’t like any of the names. So he picked ‘Mr. Bingle.’ It rhymed with ‘jingle,’ and his initials were ‘M.B.,’ which were also the initials for Maison Blanche. I guess he got to keep the prize money,” she laughed.
After Alline wrote a poem detailing Mr. Bingle’s origin story, he set out to bring his creation to life. His search took him into the burlesque clubs of Bourbon Street where he found Edwin Harmon “Oscar” Isentrout, a German immigrant and former vaudevillian.
Isentrout was a talented puppeteer who was performing risqué shows with his marionettes under the bill “Oscar and the Little Woodenheads.” Jeffrey Kent, who worked with Isentrout in the 1980s and served as his last apprentice, remembers the naughty puppets fondly. “Oscar had these beautiful showgirl puppets made of wood. We would use them in Mr. Bingle’s puppet shows. They had little light bulbs in their nipples. They were made to strip; you pulled a string and their dress came off,” he said.
Pictured left: After Hurricane Katrina, Jeff Kent set about the task of restoring the iconic Mr. Bingle. Photo by Jeff Kent.
In addition to creating the Mr. Bingle marionette, Isentrout became the voice of the snowman. “Mr. Bingle had a high-pitched voice, but not falsetto. It was childlike,” said Kent. “Oscar really brought Mr. Bingle to life. He gave him a personality.”
Isentrout wrote the scripts, built elaborate sets, and sewed all the costumes for the little snowman and his fellow puppets. “There was a formula to the Bingle shows,” said Kent. “They were very vaudeville. Mr. Bingle was Santa’s helper; he was like Mickey Mouse’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice. He would get into trouble, and Santa would come pull him out of his mess,” Kent said. Isentrout also liked to keep the shows current for children. In the mid-1980s, he watched the movie Gremlins and decided Mr. Bingle should have a Mogwai for a pet. Of course, calamity ensued, and it was up to Santa Claus to set things straight.
The shows that took place in the windows of the Canal Street store and the Winter Wonderland that featured Santa and Mr. Bingle on the third floor drew the crowds. “Every year Bingle arrived and the kids went crazy. One time [Mr. Bingle] arrived by helicopter. No one knew about regulations back then,” Faulstich said. “The police came running down Canal. When they saw Bingle, they got off with a reprimand.”
“Mr. Bingle was D.H. Holmes’ archenemy,” Kent said. “They had all these elaborate displays at their store; but all the people flocked to Maison Blanche for Bingle.”
Isentrout and Kent put on four different puppet shows a year. The Christmas shows were the most spectacular. “He was a man who dedicated his life to celebrating Christmas with others. He loved making people happy. His real love was performing,” Kent said. “He wasn’t just playing with dolls, he was going to work and trying to outdo himself every year.”
Jerilyn Faulstich remembers Isentrout as a sweet man who had found a calling working with Bingle. “My dad would have Oscar call us at Christmas and pretend to be Mr. Bingle and ask us what we wanted for Christmas every year,” she said.
For those who didn’t know Isentrout well, the line between puppeteer and puppet blurred. “They used to say Oscar was crazy. They said he was in love with Mr. Bingle. On the West Bank there was this little soda shop he ate lunch at every day. He would always wrap up a little food to go. Staff would ask, ‘Is that for Bingle?’ ‘Yep, I am going to give this food to him.’ It was really for the dog. Oscar would laugh and say, ‘People actually believe that.’”
In 1984 Isentrout’s health took a turn for the worse. “Oscar had heart disease and smoked like a chimney,” Kent said. “I remember it like it was yesterday. He got sick and I took him to the doctor. He had to go to Charity [Hospital], and he didn’t want to. I found out he was making $3.85 an hour and didn’t have insurance. He had been with the company since 1948.”
In the spring of 1985, Isentrout passed away. “When he died it was very sad. There were only a handful of people at his funeral,” Kent said. “It was the first time most people, myself included, realized he was Jewish.” For years Isentrout would remain in an unmarked grave in Hebrew Rest Cemetery No. 3 in Gentilly until author Sean Patrick Doles raised money to honor the puppeteer with a headstone.
After the funeral, the West Bank store called Kent; they were cleaning out Isentrout’s shop and invited him to come and get what he wanted. He took the original Bingle marionette from the Canal Street puppet shows. “He was wearing the last suit I had made him,” Kent said. Mr. Bingle remained the store’s mascot, but the puppet shows and animated commercials ceased.
Kent hung the Bingle marionette in the closet of his home. After Hurricane Katrina caused a breach in the New Orleans levees, the house took on ten feet of water. “It was the most valuable thing I had in my house that was damaged. [Mr. Bingle] was the one thing I had to save,” Kent said. “I got home on a media credential and found him in a sad state on the floor of the closet.”
Kent was still living in a FEMA trailer when he took up the task of restoring the little snowman. Many of the original fabrics were no longer available. “I used this curly fur [for the restoration]. I think it made him more cuddly,” he said, “but I wondered if Oscar would like that.”
The rejuvenated puppet made his debut a few weeks before Christmas on WVUE-TV FOX 8. Kent was an employee of WVUE at the time and produced the story. “It was at a time when New Orleans viewers were getting nothing but bad news,” Kent said. “This bad thing happened to Bingle, but we made it right.”
Today the little snowman continues to thrive during the holiday season, and new generations continue to fall in love with Bingle’s holly wings and ice-cream-cone hat. The two-story-tall fiberglass Mr. Bingle that adorned the Canal Street store sails through the streets of New Orleans in the Krewe of Jingle’s annual Christmas parade (Saturday, December 6 this year) before making his winter home at City Park’s annual holiday light festival, Celebration in the Oaks. In 1998, Dillard’s bought Maison Blanche but vowed to continue the Bingle tradition. The department store continues to sell plush toys, keepsakes, and ornaments featuring Bingle in over one hundred stores in the southeast.
“Some people say that Bingle is dead,” said Kent. “But as long as we have memory, he stays in our hearts.” Kent does lament that Mr. Bingle is no longer represented in an animated form. “You don’t really know who he is until he comes to life,” he said.
Perhaps he will get his wish and Mr. Bingle will once again take to the stage, spreading cheer to children. Much like the city of New Orleans, Mr. Bingle has a kind of magic about him. He is a survivor.
The Story of Mr. Bingle
by Emile Alline
When Santa left his shop one day
He found a snowman near his sleigh.
“You’ll be my helper now,” he said,
And tapped the little fellow’s head.
The snowman found that he could talk—
“Look, Santa, I can even walk!”
And then he gave a little sigh...
“Oh, how I wish that I could fly!”
So, Santa gave him holly wings,
Then, looking through his Christmas things,
Found ornaments the very size
To make a pair of shining eyes.
Then Santa said, “You need a hat;
An ice cream cone’s just right for that.
And keep this candy cane with you,
You’ll see what magic it can do!”
The snowman laughed and sang a jingle,
So Santa named him “Mr. Bingle.”
That’s how it happened. Now he’s here
With us at Maison Blanche all year.
