"Pink Panther Show" puppeteer Mary Ritts dies

Posted:
May 25, 2006

Mary Ritts, who, with her husband Paul, hosted puppet wraparounds for NBC's The Pink Panther Show, died May 14 at 95.

Two puppets, also named Paul and Mary Ritts, and Lenny Schultz appeared in wraparound sequences for the Saturday morning animated series, which combined theatrical shorts of The Pink Panther and The Inspector. The DePatie-Freleng Enterprises show ran for 32 episodes in 1969-70.

Mary Ritts died of natural causes in a retirement home in Pasadena, California, her son Mark told the Trenton Times.

She and her husband created the long-running Ritts Puppets act on TV.

In the early 1950s, Paul Ritts began the couple's puppet act when he offered to make a puppet for WCAU, the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia, where he directed a sportscast. The puppets appeared in In The Park, a 1951-53 CBS series starring Bill Sears as a man who befriends a group of animals in Central Park Zoo.

In the Park followed Sears (dressed in suit jacket, vest, string tie and hat) as he sat leisurely on a bench and conversed with his puppet friends Geoffrey the Giraffe; Albert the Chipmunk, who lived in a tree by the bench; Calvin the Crow who originally smoked a nasty cigarette; and long-lashed Magnolia the Ostrich, a sweet-talking bird.

Mary Ritts supplied the voice for Magnolia, a stereotypical Southern belle who sang soprano. Husband Paul provided the voices for the male puppets.

The characters made a memorable appearance in the 1961 Jerry Lewis comedy The Errand Boy.

"My parents together made the three primary puppets: Albert Chipmunk, Geoffrey Giraffe and Calvin Crow," Mark Ritts said. "Then they decided they needed a female character, and Magnolia the Ostrich was born, along with my mother's career as a puppeteer. "

As well, the Ritts Puppets appeared regularly on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and The Merv Griffin Show.

Born Mary Donnelly on June 16, 1910 in Philadelphia, the puppeteer was a longtime resident of the Princeton, New Jersey area. She graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and later became a fashion illustrator for Bonwit Teller, John Wanamaker and Stetson hats. Her work was often seen in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.

In the 1950s, she played organ and piano on a series of radio programs in Philadelphia and Dallas.

Mary Ritts was a talented singer both as herself and as Magnolia the Ostrich. She sang hundreds of songs on television with such "diverse and noteworthy accompanists" as Lionel Hampton, Skitch Henderson, Mort Lindsey and the Tonight Show Orchestra, her son said.

Mary and her husband Paul -- 10 years her junior -- first moved to Princeton Borough in 1959. They later moved to Princeton Township.

From 1959 to 1962, she and her husband hosted Family, a combination live-action and puppet show, on New York's WNBC. The hour-long show featured celebrity interviews, puppet vignettes and live keyboard music played by Mary.

The couple were featured performers on Exploring, an NBC science series for young people in the 1960s, and The Watch Your Child/The Me Too Show, a 1970s daily pre-school series on NBC.

The Ritts Puppets starred in three NBC specials, including For the Love of Fred, about a caterpillar who forgets how to turn himself into a butterfly. Broadcast in many countries and winning many awards, the program was filmed in Princeton and Lawrence and featured local residents in cameo roles.

Paul Ritts died at 60 in 1980. "They were so inextricably a duo that when my dad died, the [puppet] act pretty much died with it," Mark Ritts said.

Following her husband's death, she established the Paul Ritts Memorial Scholarship Fund for the Greater Princeton Youth Orchestra. In 1998, she moved to California in 1998 to be closer to her family, her son said.

In addition to her son, Mark, of La Canada, California, she is survived by grandchildren Dan Ritts, of Upton, Massachusetts; James Ritts, of San Diego; and Gabriella Ritts, of La Canada.