This marionette of Professor Fyodor Lethetinsky is one of the many superbly crafted marionettes created by Frank Mumford and used by him and his wife Maisie with their company, the Mumford Puppets. Professor Fyodor was the short-tempered Russian pianist who accompanied the cabaret chanteuse Mademoiselle Zizi, occasionally threatening her to toe the line with his miniature revolver.


Frank Mumford was born in North London in July 1918 and created his first puppet theatre aged six while ill in bed. At the age of 11 he entered a schoolboy craft contest at London's Alexandra Palace and won first prize, along with an apprenticeship at Edmonds of Wood Green to learn window display where he created a puppet troupe and performed afternoon shows and a Christmas show. Originally billed as 'Master Mum ford and his Marionettes', he played the Wood Green Empire aged 24. It was partly thorough the British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild that he made contact with other puppeteers. He became a tea boy at the Lanchester puppet theatre and, with other puppeteers and his future wife Maisie Tierney, formed his first puppet company that performed in London theatres including the Players' Theatre, the Grove, the Gate, Kew, Little, the Arts, 20th Century and the Grafton amongst others. The company disbanded due to war in 1939 when Frank served in the 16th Parachute Surgical Team Field Ambulance. He was taken prisoner in Arnhem in 1944 and returned to the UK in 1945. Shortly afterwards he was transferred to the Central Pool of Artists and put together the two-hour touring show Stars on Strings for the Army and Navy Air Force's Stars in Battledress organisation. The show toured air bases for six months, manned by 11 staff with a large cast of puppets, until Frank was demobbed in 1946 and the show was converted into a commercial enterprise. The Mumford Puppets, featuring Frank, Maisie and occasionally other operators, played their first performance in Littlehampton in 1946.

Since large-scale shows were expensive to tour, the Mumfords created shorter acts with larger puppets, designing and building practically everything themselves including their stage costumes. The result was a slick, glamorous, fast-paced international cabaret act that they continued to perform for audiences all over the world until Maisie's death in 1985. They regularly played top London nightclubs including the Coconut Grove, Churchill's, Governor House, Ciros, the Embassy, Dorchester and the Savoy Hotels, and the Starlight Room,. This led to engagements abroad - a three-month contract in 1949 in a revue at Le Boeuf Sur le Toit in Paris; and performances for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor; Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly, for Madame and General Franco, and for the Sultan of Oman. The Mumford Puppets appeared on television, and after Maisie's death in 1985 Frank continued to perform, giving his last show at the Leeds Variety Theatre in 2004, aged 86.