Fact File On Louise Gold
Spotlight
Information
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Height: 5 feet 9 inches
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Eye colour: Brown
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Agent: Gavin Barker Associates, See: http://www.gavinbarkerassociates.co.uk/index.htm
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Voice Overs Lip Service, See http://www.lipservice.co.uk/
Other Professional
Information
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Cabaret Act LOUISE GOLD . . . By Appointment
Other Information
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Born in:
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Trained: Arts Educational School, London. (from the age of 11)
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Professional
Debut: 22 December 1973, as
Fairy Bowbells in Dick Whittington, at the
Malvern Festival Theatre (while in her last year at stage school)
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Professional Musical Theatre Debut Hair, in
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Puppetry Training Jim
Henson and Company, on the job (on The Muppet
Show)
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Joined The
Muppets: 1977 (during the second
season of The Muppet Show)
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West End
Debut: 26 May 1982 at
Theatre Royal Drury Lane in The
Pirates of Penzance (at least that is the first proper West End acting
credit I’ve managed to find - although she did appear at The London Palladium
on 21 November 1977 as a Muppeteer in The Royal Variety Performance
(1977))
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Best
example of her singing on record: Anything Goes (Recording) - (CD Music Theatre Hour) CDTEH6011
(well in the webmaster’s opinion it’s the best)
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Best known
Tv appearance: Blackadder (First series episode 5)
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Best known
Tv shows, as a puppeteer: The
Muppet Show, Sesame Street and Spitting Image.
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Most
notable puppetry characterisation: Annie Sue Pig on The Muppet Show
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Non/Semi-Professional
work Was roped into appearing with the
politically-minded semi-professional Fall Out group’s
shows in the early 1980’s.
Interviews
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Muppet Central/Tibby's Bowl Interview http://www.muppetcentral.com/articles/interviews/gold.shtml This is an
offsite link, to the Muppet Central website, where you will find an interview,
that was conducted by Fax and Letter with Louise Gold, during the autumn of
1998 (The interview was actually published on the web at the end of February
1999). In this interview she tells the reader about both strands of her
extraordinary career.
·
TheatreNow.Com interview: Gold On Stage: Louise
Gold In Follies: http://www.theatrenow.com/asp/link.htm?news.asp?art=3430&cat=1 This is an offsite link, to an interview carried out by Theatre.Com’s
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Mistress Of Puppets: http://www.enfieldindependent.co.uk/display.var.653310.0.mistress_of_puppets.php
This Offsite link is
to an interview carried out by Enfield Independent’s Alex Kasreil, to publicise
Louise’s performance of the short version or her Cabaret Act at Lauderdale House in
November 2005.
·
BFI Transcript of BFI event about Spitting
Image: https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/interviews/spitting-image.html
This Offsite link is
a transcript of the BFI Spitting Image
event (they had a few problems with audibility, so some comments got lost)
·
Theatre
Radio’s interview with Louise Gold: http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/news/display?contentId=88986 This Offsite link is to the official download
page for an interview carried out by Tim McArthur, just after Louise had joined
the cast of Mary Poppins, other shows mentioned
are: Anything Goes, Assassins, Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang, and, Merrily We
Roll Along.
Miscellaneous
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Louise Gold
is an actress who "sort of fell into
puppetry".
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She might be
described as An Actress & Puppeteer.
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Louise was
the first British puppeteer to work for Jim Henson (and the only British
puppeteer to work on The Muppet Show). She
learned her craft as a puppeteer by being taken on as a trainee puppeteer on The Muppet Show.
·
Louise is
left - handed and puppeteers that way (which is very unusual for a
Henson-trained puppeteer)
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True to her
Henson training Louise is a ‘Straight Scan’ puppeteer (that means that when she
is puppeteering on film or TV she uses an ordinary monitor - for an explanation of
Straight Scan and Reverse Scan monitors, see Marcus Clarke’s informative
article on the subject: http://www.handsuppuppets.com/html/Puppeteer-Monitors.html )
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As a
puppeteer Louise has worked with a variety of puppeteering techniques.
Obviously she is primarily well versed in the arts of Hand-and-Rod-puppetry, and,
Live hands puppetry. As a Henson Puppeteer she has also: operated her share of
Rod-Puppets (most notably on Muppet
Treasure Island); While on The Dark Crystal
she worked pretty sophisticated Cable Control Puppets and did her share of
working radio control functions. And she performed a CG Puppet (Computer
Generated Puppet) using HPCS (the Henson
Performance Control System) on The Animal Show.
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Her ability
to do different accents is amazing – for
example a linguist once described her
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She has an incredibly powerful singing voice,
which often gets compared to Merman!
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Louise was the first puppeteer hired to work on
the pilot episodes of the programme that became Spitting
Image, and was their original Leading Puppeteer, for the pilots episodes
and first series.
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She was the lead singer of Spitting Image’s first single Da Do Run Ron
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Louise has twice been in shows that made it into
the Guinness Book Of Records, as flops. These are Ziegfeld (one of the Greatest Theatrical
Losses) and Bag (Lowest Theatre Attendance).
·
On her voice-over resume (with Lip Service)
Louise is one of only 12% of actors who actually specifies that they can lip
synch. (in her case “Extremely proficient
at lip synching”)
Awards and Accolades
When it comes to awards Louise often seems a
bit left-out, however, for details her few Awards and
Accolades please click here.
Further
Louise herself (or at the very least her work) has been mentioned (and in some cases interviewed) in the following books: (For some strange reason it always seems to be her puppeteering that gets her mentioned in books, whereas her acting & singing tends to get her mentioned in magazines and newspapers)
· The Art Of The Muppets - By Henson Associates, first published in 1980 by Muppet Press and bantam book. ISBN 0-553-01313-0 (Louise was not singled out in this book, but she is in one of the pictures, and is obviously one of the people referred to in the line about bit players)
· Of Muppets and Men - The Making Of The Muppet Show. By Christopher Finch, first published in 1981 by Michael Joseph Ltd. ISBN 0 7181 2112 0 (Note, the details on this book, such a publisher info and ISBN may vary)
·
The Making Of The Dark
ISBN: 003063332X
· Tooth & Claw - The Inside Story Of Spitting Image. By Lewis Chester, first published in 1986 by Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-14557-4
· Jim Henson The Works. By Christopher Finch, first published in 1993 by Random House. ISBN 0-679-41203-4
· No Strings Attached - The Inside Story Of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. By Matt Bacon, first published in 1997 by Virgin. ISBN 1-85227-669-X (Louise isn’t specifically mentioned, but her work on certainly is)
·
Voices, Faces, Characters - by
Christopher Hillard, published in 2001, by Cavilier Productions,
