Talented husband-and-wife team Martin and Heather Granger comprised two-thirds of the puppeteers on Space Patrol, and the follow-up pilot Paul Starr. Sadly, after many years in the business, Martin Granger passed away in 1986. But his widow Heather spoke to Space Patrol - The Website recently about their work. Heather Granger SP-TW: Could you give us a little of your history, and how you came to be in the entertainment profession? Heather Granger: I was trained at 'The Old Vic' school in Bristol and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. I worked in Rep as an actress. When 'resting' I worked for BBC TV doing all kinds of things from animating cut out puppets etc to Glove Puppets. Then I met Martin who taught me marionettes (string puppets). Martin trained to be a textile designer at Oxford. Then decided he would like to do set design for the theatre. Met John Wright and an hour later became a puppeteer. He was constantly thinking up impossible tricks ie arrow firing, plate spinning, Diabolo juggling and a puppet who played an electric contra bass. He also invented an electronic puppet who walked alone on stage and appeared twice on Tomorrow’s World on BBC. How did you come to be involved with Roberta Leigh and the production of Space Patrol? We always worked 52 weeks a year frequently doubling, for instance the London Palladium and Savoy Hotel. When suddenly 2 months work literally went up in flames - the venue literally burned to the ground - we returned to England and within a few hours of arriving home had two TV appearances and a year’s contract with Roberta Leigh. I can’t remember now who told who to contact her. After a year we had a break and played The Casino Montecarlo and the Hollywood Palace in Hollywood for a TV show. I gather the puppets on Space Patrol were not made by yourself. Did this cause any problems operating them? Quite a few problems as they were very different to our own, but Martin altered them and rebuilt a few then it was okay. I also gather you were not involved in the pilot of Space Patrol, but would you have seen it before starting, to see what was being aimed at? Never having worked for a series before it was all very new. Although we had to get up at 6am to see the previous days rushes and then onto the studios for quite a long day, we couldn’t go to bed before 2am at the earliest, as having worked cabaret we were used to late nights. We just accepted both the series and the scripts as this was all new to children’s entertainment. Also we only had scripts for the day’s filming. There were some quite innovative moves for the puppets seen in Space Patrol - a fist fight, running and a more realistic walk than is usually associated with TV puppets. Obviously you and Martin are very talented puppeteers but was this how you normally operated the puppets, or was there an attempt to push boundaries? Conversely, were you ever asked to do things with the puppets that were impossible or impractical? Martin and I were well known for our puppet’s walks and the only difference was the length of the strings. I can’t remember being asked to do something impossible. There were the odd difficult shot but we always managed to pull it off. I hope! How long did it take to film the series overall? You would have started some time in 1962...? I’m very bad at dates, but the series took about two years. Can you recall who would have been present during the filming? (see photo, right, taken at Stoke Newington) The three puppet operators, film crew, chippy (carpenter), electrician, occasionally the set designer and Roberta Leigh. Some publicity articles on the series describe there being different types of puppets - some electronic, some operated manually. Would this have referred to the mouth movements (as the puppets ‘mimed’ to pre-recorded speech), or eye mechanisms, or something else? As far as I can remember only the eye movements were electronic. These were operated in close ups by Arthur Provis sitting on the front of the camera dolly. After the human looking puppets, you had the alien ones such as Jovians, Saturnians etc. Can you recall how these were operated? Apart from different stringing they were operated like any other puppet. Did each puppeteer operate a ‘set puppet’ throughout the series - that is, would you always have worked Larry Dart, or Husky or Slim etc, in a shot regardless, or was it simply a matter of who was in the best position? We had our favourites but we all operated all the puppets at some time or other. The robot on Space Patrol had a walking mechanism, and model-maker Derek Freeborn recalls a similar thing being tried on the main puppets. Was this actually the case? When we joined Space Patrol the walking mechanisms had been disconnected as they had not been very successful, we were told. As the mechanisms were rather bulky and heavy they were removed and new bodies were built. Would you have been involved in operating the Galasphere spaceship, which on one occasion was seen in the same shot as a puppet? We operated everything on strings regardless of shape and size. On to Paul Starr, which was filmed in colour and with yourself and Martin Granger also credited as making the puppets. These seemed to have flexible jaws rather than just a moveable lip. Can you recall how the decision to evolve the puppets this way came about, and what was involved in their construction? We already had made puppets with moving jaws so I sculpted and moulded the heads, Martin made the skulls and moving jaws etc. Then I cast the faces in Latex rubber, stuck them all together, painted the faces with special rubber paint, added a wig and Voila! What kind of guidelines would you have been given to make the characters, or did you have e free hand in their look? I sculpted the heads, then Roberta and Arthur looked them over and if they liked them said okay. So more or less I did have a free hand. After Space Patrol and Paul Starr, did Roberta Leigh or Arthur Provis ask you to work on anything else? I gather they tried a couple of other puppet shows? By then we were fully booked again and not even in the U.K. After working with Roberta Leigh, I gather you gave up TV puppetry and went back to cabaret, variety and the theatre, and travelled all over the world? Can you fill us in on this period? Chronologically it’s very difficult for me to say. I can remember at one point doing a TV show in Madrid one Sunday, the following Sunday a TV in Brussels then the following Sunday a TV in London at the Palladium and the following Sunday in New York on The Ed Sullivan Show. We played France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia, South Africa twice, Australia, Japan, Tai Wan, and Hong Kong. Finally, any message for those who remember Space Patrol from their childhood, and those who are seeing it for the first time? I hope you enjoyed it. Please forgive us for being in black and white, and please remember TV puppet series was in its infancy. Space Patrol - The Website thanks Heather Granger for her time, and sharing her memories with us.