Marked Achievement
Finally, a tombstone has been placed on the
grave
of the man who was the voice of Mr. Bingle
Photo Courtesy Of Dominic Massa
"Jingle, Jangle, Jingle, here comes Mr. Bingle...
with another message from Kris Kringle.
Time to launch the Christmas Season,
Maison Blanche makes Christmas pleasin.'
Gifts galore for you to see,
each a gem from... MB."
Friday, December 16, 2005
Angus Lind Times-Picayune Column
Mr. Bingle, rescued and renovated, has taken up residence in City Park,
as the chief attraction of the scaled-down Celebration in the Oaks.
Some would say it's a small miracle that the spirit of Christmas in
New Orleans still lives on in the body of this snowman character wearing
an ice cream cone hat and wings of holly leaves -- a New Orleans icon that
has brought smiles to kids' faces for decades and now will continue to do
so.
There's even more reason to celebrate his return this holiday season.
Some two decades after his death, the original puppeteer and voice of Mr.
Bingle, Edwin H. "Oscar" Isentrout, finally has a tombstone at
his previously unmarked grave in Hebrew's Rest Cemetery No. 3 on Pelopidas
Street in Gentilly.
"I had written off the possibility of this coming to fruition under
the circumstances," said Sean Doles, the driving force behind restoring
some dignity to Isentrout's life and career. Doles is the author of "Saving
Mr. Bingle," the book that brought Isentrout's story to the forefront
in 2004.
Doles had teamed up with Dan Alfortish of Alfortish & Sons Cast
Iron Stone Products in Gretna and others to get the deal done.
"I knew they had come through the storm OK," he said. "Then
I got a phone call from Dan saying that the stone was finished, it was in
place and it was the nicest one there."
The commemorative marker includes an engraved picture of Mr. Bingle,
and underneath Isentrout's name it says, "Puppeteer & Voice of
Mr. Bingle."
For 37 years beginning in 1948, there would be four Mr. Bingle puppet
shows a day during the holiday season at Maison Blanche department store
on Canal Street, now the site of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. As television began
to blossom, Mr. Bingle appeared in TV commercials for the store from Thanksgiving
to Christmas and in his own daily show.
Isentrout, a native of Brooklyn, N.Y., worked with touring puppet shows
in New York and Canada before purchasing, on a whim, a bus ticket to New
Orleans, where he began doing puppet shows in the French Quarter. Emile
Alline, a window decorator for MB, created Mr. Bingle and recruited Isentrout
to animate the puppet.
The rest, as they say, is history.
"Oscar Isentrout literally gave life to Mr. Bingle," Doles
said. "But since his death, this man's contribution to New Orleans
history and culture had gone unrecognized, and his life had been all but
forgotten. As soon as I discovered this tragic oversight, I knew we had
to fix it. And amid all the suffering that's taken place over the last few
months, I'm glad that we can give the residents and supporters of New Orleans
some small reason to smile."
Just to show what a small miracle this really is, none of this would
have happened if Doles had not decided to write his Mr. Bingle book. While
doing research, Doles went to WTIX Oldie King Bob Walker's Web site, www.walkerpub.com, and found an obscure
essay by Paul Yacich, a longtime director and engineer for WDSU-TV.
In his writing, Yacich said that Isentrout, who never married, had died
in 1985 at age 61 after a long illness. Having no immediate family, he was
buried in an unmarked grave and, sadly, forgotten.
When Doles read those words, he recalled, "It was jaw-dropping.
I could not believe it.
"It became the central motivating theme behind my book. And once
I found out the situation, my main goal was to correct the oversight."
More information on the subject is available at www.savingmrbingle.com.
It would be difficult indeed, if not impossible, to explain to someone
who did not grow up here, or live here during Mr. Bingle's heyday, how important
this make-believe symbol of the holiday season is to New Orleanians. So
we won't try.
It's one of those things that signal the start of a season, like the
first strains of "Mardi Gras Mambo" or "Carnival Time"
a couple of weeks before the first parade rolls. It's the bugler playing
the first "Call to the Post" on Thanksgiving Day at the Fair Grounds.
It's what we are all about.
Back when Isentrout was still puppeteering, he took his Mr. Bingle puppet
show on the road, visiting other MB store locations as well as hospitals,
schools, orphanages and even homes for the elderly -- any place that cheer
needed to be spread. And Mr. Bingle could always be relied on to do just
that.
The final chapter of the Mr. Bingle and Oscar Isentrout story has yet
to be written. But the groundwork has been laid. Along with Doles, Lauren
Brown (who runs the Web site www.mrbinglefans.com), Char Schroeder of the
Ritz-Carlton and WWL radio's Spud McConnell had been lobbying Dillard's
department store -- which, with its purchase of the city's Maison Blanche
stores in 1998, inherited a storefront-size Mr. Bingle -- to get the symbolic
snowman returned to Canal Street. Dillard's, however, donated it to Celebration
in the Oaks, which was fine with the group.
Getting the tombstone in place, said Doles, "was a nice way to
cap it off. We followed through -- but we're not really done. What we'd
like to do is get a permanently displayed plaque at the Ritz-Carlton and
have a formal ceremony at the cemetery next year."
Which no doubt would include a blast from the past:
Jingle, jangle, jingle, here comes Mister Bingle
With another message from Kris Kringle.
. . . . . . .
Back