Les Poupées de Paris

Les Poupées de Paris
Les Poupées de Paris soundtrack album
Music	Jimmy Van Heusen
Lyrics	Sammy Cahn

Les Poupées de Paris (The Dolls of Paris) was a musical puppet show created, produced and directed by Sid and Marty Krofft, that toured the United States throughout the 1960s.

Puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft had had a successful career on stages in America and Europe throughout the 1950s. One morning, Sid awoke with the idea to create a show with his marionettes for adults only, complete with music, comedy, horror, celebrities and topless puppets.

Nat Hart, a maître d' at the Flamingo Hotel, became a fan of the Krofft's work during repeated viewings of their shows at the hotel. Hart approached the Kroffts one day and announced that he was going to open a club, and he asked the Kroffts to put together a puppet show as an attraction for the new club.

The resulting show, which came to be known as Les Poupées de Paris, was modeled after the Paris revues Lido and Folies Bergère. The Kroffts opened the show at their newly built theater the Gilded Rafters in the San Fernando Valley, California in October 1961, though the show was later relocated to P.J.'s, a 200-seat dinner theatre in Los Angeles.

In addition to original characters, many of the puppets were modeled after celebrities. The Kroffts had previously been the opening act for entertainers like Judy Garland and Sammy Davis Jr., so they were able to get many celebrities to record voices for their puppets. Some of these puppets included Pearl Bailey, Milton Berle, Cyd Charisse, Gene Kelly, Liberace, Jayne Mansfield, Tony Martin, Phil Silvers, Loretta Young, and Mae West, whose puppet appeared topless. A handful of puppets were unofficially modeled after other celebrities (Pelvis Essley), and several weren't created specifically for the show — their Frankenstein, Dracula and Madame Jenkins Foster puppets all made brief appearances in the 1957 television pilot Here's Irving.