In the television advertising industry magazine Television Mail, dated May 22 1964, a four page supplement entirely devoted to Space Patrol was issued. Most of these comprised adverts relating to production crew and services used on the series but central to the supplement was an interview with Roberta Leigh by Mail journalist John Mountjoy, in which she talks about the use of puppets in films and commercials. We reproduce the interview in its entirety, along with some of the adverts.




John Mountjoy talking to ROBERTA LEIGH

Roberta Leigh and Arthur Provis her partner say that the field of puppetry has so far remained virtually untapped for industrial and commercial use. She herself didn't relise their potential until she made 'Twizzle,' her first televsion series.

Basking in Whit Sunday's sweltering heat on the lawn of her Hampstead home - a Georgian house named after a Georgian named Lord Pelham - she told me "When I first decided to make puppet films I was swamped with loads of arty crafty people with grotesque puppets which might have looked good on stage when the viewer was 20 yards away but grim and ghastly seen in the close-up of a camera eye. I decided this was the first thing I must change. They must be finished in prefect detail. And detail is something most puppeteers don't understand. Fortunately my team think like I do so although we've still got the perspiration there is no aggrevation."

Apart from revolutionising the puppets she did the same - with Provis - to the making of the films.

He says they think of puppets as living people and hence they film them that way. There is a variety of angles, big close-ups and all the usual technical apparatus normally associated with feature film production.

She says that it is this refusal to recognise the limitations of puppets which has made their latest series 'Space Patrol' a success. In one month in New York it has achieved the highest rating of any juvenile show.

The next step must be industrial films and commercials.

"Puppets have a unique quality of realism and fantasy - and they are easy to believe in so it is much easier to get across the selling point. Animation and puppetry is the ideal - as in 'Space Patrol' and we can do both."

Realism plus fantasy is best explained by the story of a food manufacturer wanting to stress hygiene to his employees. A polite reminder that people should wash their hands regularly might not register whereas a blunt one might provoke an unofficial strike. People resent being told they are dirty. His solution was a comedy - puppets and animation - showing someone of the Mr Magoo type and all the unhappy things which befell him because he wasn't wshing his hands and was contaminating all the food he was handling. The audience laughed. They got the message without feling they were being 'got at.'

She spends most of her present days either in their Soho Square offices where they share a large Hollywood type desk made of glass and their Harlesden studio. Live commercials, cartoons and photo animation are done in Soho Square, the puppets filmed in Harlesden.

"Life is one long mad rush," she said looking very happy about it. "We've just finished a colour film for the Electricity Board and our COI agricultral film got us a prize - the only British company to get one - at the berlin Festival."

They see their future as a mixture of live action, animation and puppetry.

But apart from all this current pace of production she is a prolific writer with 30 novels and 24 children's books to her credit. Not only that but she launched a record written and narrated by her titled 'The Wonderful Way You Were Born' designed in two parts for youngsters and teenagers. As well as creating the characters in all her pictures she also writes the music and lyrics. There are Torchy records and Twizzle recorda.

I asked how she managed it all plus being Mrs Michael Lewin and 13-year-old Jeremy's mother.

"I was born with energy. A person has or hasn't it. In my case I have an all consuming energy which I must channel into different functions. One kind of work isn't sufficient."

At home she works in her French Empire style library with its long desk from which her secretary takes dictation as she sits in a comfortable armless chair surveying a scene which pleases her mind. The library walls are red speckled with golden lyres. "They remind me of my friends." she quipped. Jeremy's portrait painted by a friend looks at her. This is another of the Leigh powerhouses. It struck me that wherever she is is packed with thought and action. Except when she is a lizard - as she puts it - in the sun. Which in a black cotton coat and a sun suit is where I found her when we came in.

© 1964 John Mountjoy/Television Mail

The other adverts can be seen on other pages:

National Interest Pictures

Martin & Heather Granger

Global Television Services

Derek & Patricia Freeborn


This article was reprinted in the National Interest Pictures brochure reproduced as an extra on the Space Patrol Complete Series Box Set.

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