Last week this blog commented on this Christmas being the 75th anniversary of the debut of Mr. Bingle, the elfin marionette snowman created by Maison Blanche Depart stores to be its Christmas symbol. Mr. Bingle (whose initials stand for Maison Blanche) would have his own daily TV show during the season and would perform in MB’s display windows. Eventually there would be a towering fiberglass image of him attached to the MB building facade.
Over the years the MB name would pass on to different owners. In recent years it has been Dillard’s Department store, which has pledged to maintain the Bingle presence. (The original Maison Blanche building, where Bingle made his debut, is now the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Canal Street. Dillard’s is located at Lakeside Shopping Center. The fiberglass Bingle makes an annual appearance in City Park at Celebration in the Oaks.)
Bingle, we learned this week, has quite a following. There have now been stories about his anniversary on at least three tv stations and I have received e-mailed responses from his followers, some of whom were wide-eyed kids when Bingle made his TV debut in a 1948.
Unique to the story is Oscar Isentrout, the scruffily puppeteer who operated an unusual business in the French Quarter where his marionettes performed strip tease shows. Being the only puppeteer around, MB hired him to design the Bingle marionette and to pull his strings, and sing, during his performances.
This being the season for sentimentality and auld acquittances, there is more to his story:
Isentrout’s involvement was an unlikely contribution from a meek, unassuming, loner, sometimes cantankerous, little man. His life would eventually evolve almost entirely around Bingle. According to our colleague Julia Street, “he worked from a studio at the Maison Blanche store on the West Bank. While playing classical music in the background, he would labor on the puppets and he would design sets for the upcoming holiday season.”
His career path from burlesque to Bingle had rambled through the streets of the Quarter. Sadly, in July 1985, that path came to an end. There was no money to cover Isentrout’s funeral expense, so the Sternberg family that owned MB stepped in and provided for his burial. Only a few people gathered at the Hebrew Rest Cemetery #3 on Pelopidas Street for the burial service. Those in attendance were mostly people who worked for Maison Blanche. But there was one stranger in the group. He stood quietly until an appropriate moment when he stepped forward and placed an object on top of Isentrout’s coffin. Then he walked away. None of those there knew who the person was. What had he left? A peppermint candy cane.
Still, the Bingle persona that Isentrout nurtured lived on. This week Bingle fan Susan Andres, sent this letter:
“I am a New Orleans native who remembers the Mr. Bingle show each afternoon in December – I believe it aired at 4:55,” she wrote.
“In 2007, a friend (West Bank native) suggested we participate in City Park’s Celebration in the Oaks race/walk in costume and ‘Da Binglettes’ were born. We spread the word among friends and made our costumes. We walked in City Park every year until the race moved to Lafreniere Park in 2020 and we now walk there. We always have a great time and follow our stroll with poor boys, first at Liuzza’s and now at R & O in Bucktown.”
And may Da Binglettes lift cold Barq’s to toast the man who pulled the strings.
If logic did not prevail, it might seem magical that someone as unlikely as him became so entwined with Christmas in New Orleans. The man made Bingle, but in the end, Bingle made the man.
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