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Recently the entertainment world lost two diverse but memorable talents. Stage and screen actress Mary Beth Hurt, who debuted in Woody Allen’s Interiors and co-starred with Robin Williams in The World According to Garp, died this past March at 79. And earlier this week TV producer Sid Krofft, who along with his late brother Marty turned from puppetry to creating such Saturday morning faves as H.R. Pufnstuff, Lidsville, and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, passed away at 96.
Born Mary Beth Supinger in central Iowa in 1946, she studied drama at both the University of Iowa and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In 1971 she wed another acting student, William Hurt. The marriage only lasted 12 years, but Mary Beth kept the Hurt surname throughout her career. Her first Broadway role came in 1974 revival of the English Restoration comedy Love for Love, and the following year she received the first of three Tony nominations for the play Trelawny of the “Wells.“
Mary Beth co-starred with Diane Keaton and Kristen Griffith as three adult sisters taken aback by the sudden dissolution of their parents’ seemingly stable marriage in Allen’s 1978 drama Interiors. The film was a critical success but did mediocre box office business due to Woody’s fans expecting a comedy. Hurt next played opposite William Heard in the compelling 1979 seriocomedy Chilly Scenes of Winter, which also failed to find an audience at first. In 1981 she was back on Broadway in Crimes of the Heart, which earned her her second Tony nom, and the following year she played Helen Holm, who falls for and marries T.S. Garp (Williams), in the screen version of The World According to Garp.
’80s and ’90s moviegoers saw Hurt in such efforts as the sci-fi adventure D.A.R.Y.L. (1985); with Randy Quaid as a possibly cannibalistic couple in the dark comedy/chiller Parents (1989); and as Ginger Booth in the Merchant/Ivory adaptation of the best-seller Slaves of New York (also ’89). She was also in a pair of Martin Scorsese dramas, 1993’s The Age of Innocence and 1999’s Bringing Out the Dead. On the small screen Mary Beth had recurring roles in two short-lived sitcoms, 1988’s Tattingers and 1990s Working It Out.
1992’s Light Sleeper was the first of four films Hurt made in collaboration with her second husband, writer/director Paul Schrader. Among her later movies were M. Night Shyamalan’s The Lady in the Water (2006) and Schrader’s The Walker (2007). Health issues forced the couple to move to an assisted living facility in 2013. Her final role came in the 2018 drama Change in the Air. After living with Alzheimer’s disease for several years, she passed away due to complications from it on March 28.
Second-half Baby Boomers and Gen Xers who grew up on a diet of “cereal and cartoons” on the weekends are more than familiar with the names Sid and Marty Krofft. The Montreal-born (Sid in 1929, Marty eight years later) brothers started out in show business performing puppet shows in vaudeville and burlesque venues. Their ribald Les Poupées de Paris revue was a success in Southern California and featured at the 1962 Seattle and 1964-65 New York World’s Fairs (where Billy Graham criticized the “topless” puppets). The Kroffts also broke into TV with their creations on The Dean Martin Show in 1965.
Sid and Marty were hired by TV animation giant Hanna-Barbera to design the look of the live-action characters for their 1968 series The Banana Splits Adventure Hour. Seeing how lucrative Saturday morning programming could be, the Kroffts developed their own live-action entry for NBC, H.R. Pufnstuf, the following Fall. Starring Oliver!’s Jack Wild as a boy who finds himself in a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures, Broadway veteran Billie Hayes as the evil Witchiepoo, and Lennie Weinrib as the voice of lovable dragon Pufnstuf, the show was an instant hit and even led to a 1970 spin-off movie.
Pufnstuf’s success set the template for many of the Krofft’s subsequent series. 1970’s The Bugaloos featured four winged British pop musicians and Martha Raye as their rival, Benita Bizarre. The following year’s Lidsville offered Eddie Munster himself, Butch Patrick, in a world of talking hats and Charles Nelson Reilly as Hoodoo the villainous magician. And 1973’s Sigmund and the Sea Monsters had two brothers taking in the friendly Sigmund (Billy Barty), who ran away from his nasty sea monster family. Some folks claim that the shows’ audience was made up half by sugar-charged kids and the other half by teens and young adults still slightly high from the night before.
One of Sid and Marty’s most successful efforts changed things up a bit. 1974’s Land of the Lost followed a father and his two children whose rafting expedition landed them in a mysterious “lost world” of living dinosaurs, apeman-like creatures, and reptilian beings known as Sleestaks. There was a ’90s revival series and a 2009 big-budget film starring Will Ferrell. There was also Far Out Space Nuts, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, Bigfoot and Wildboy; the list goes on and on.
In the late 1970s and early ’80s they offered tried their hand at reviving the near-extinct prime time variety show genre. The results were equal parts success (Donny & Marie, Barbara Mandrell & the Mandrell Sisters) and failure (The Brady Bunch Hour, Pink Lady & Jeff). The Kroffts also tried mixing puppetry and political satire with the 1987 syndicated series D.C. Follies. Apart from attempted reboots of some of their ’70s hits, the brothers’ last TV work was co-producing (with “Dog Whisperer” Cesar Millan) the Nick Jr. show Mutt & Stuff in 2015.
Unfortunately, a legal schism came the siblings before Marty passed away in 2023. Sid, now an elder statesman of children’s television and the co-creator of many pop culture icons, died on April 10 in Los Angeles. Rights issues have held up the home video re-release of the Krofft Brothers shows; here’s hoping that will change soon.