Louis Bunin (28 March 1904 – 17 February 1994) was an American

puppeteer A puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object, called a puppet, to create the illusion that the puppet is alive. The puppet is often shaped like a human, animal, or legendary creature. The puppeteer may be visible to or hidden from ...

, artist, and pioneer of

stop-motion animation Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appear to exhibit independent motion or change when the series of frames i ...

best known for his 1949 adaption of ''

Alice in Wonderland ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatur ...

''.

Early works

While working as a mural artist under Diego Rivera in

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...

in 1926, Bunin created political puppet shows using marionettes including a production of

Eugene O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier ...

's ''

The Hairy Ape ''The Hairy Ape'' is a 1922 expressionist play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. It is about a beastly, unthinking laborer known as Yank, the protagonist of the play, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich ...

''. Photographer Tina Modotti took many pictures of Bunin and his puppets, including her renowned work, "The Hands of the Puppeteer."Lou Bunin, obituary. New York Times, February 20 1994.
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Career

On his return to the United States, Bunin created animated three-dimensional puppets to appear in the

1939 New York World's Fair The 1939–40 New York World's Fair was a world's fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchas ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. His 1943 political stop-motion satire, '' Bury the Axis'', is well known. Later Bunin landed a job with

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by amazon (company), Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded o ...

where he created the stop-motion Prologue to the famed film, '' Ziegfeld Follies''. He was subsequently fired as a casualty of

McCarthyism McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner. The term origin ...

''Alice in Wonderland'' (1949)

Bunin went on to create a feature-length stop-motion animation film adaptation of ''

'' in 1949, starring Carol Marsh as a live-action Alice. A lawsuit from

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...

prevented it from being widely released in the U.S., so that it would not compete with Disney's forthcoming 1951 animated version. Further, the film was kept out of Britain as his representation of the Queen of Hearts was seen as too close and too unkind to Queen Victoria. The film was restored with 12 additional minutes and shown at museums around the US, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.Bunin's Alice, Cartoon Brew
/ref>

Death

Creator of the popular Talking Utica Club Beer Mugs and a plethora of memorable short films, Bunin died of a

stroke A stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and hemorrhagic, due to bleeding. Both cause parts of the brain to stop functionin ...

on 17 February 1994 at age 89 in Englewood, New Jersey, USA.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bunin, Lou American puppeteers American animators Stop motion animators American animated film directors 1904 births 1994 deaths Place of birth missing American expatriates in Mexico