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/index.html
Other Professional Information
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Cabaret Act LOUISE GOLD . . . By Appointment, see http://www.louisegold.com/ - The official show site for
Louise Gold’s cabaret act.
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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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 Paul Webb, one hot summer’s day,
while Louise was appearing in Follies at The Royal
Festival Hall. Although the interview is ostensibly about her role in Follies
she also talks about her other Sondheim performances, along with:
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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.
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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)
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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 cum puppeteer.
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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 - she
can even sing in accent.
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She
has an incredibly powerful singing voice, which often gets compared to Merman!
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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).
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)
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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)
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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)
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The Making Of The Dark
ISBN: 003063332X
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Tooth & Claw - The Inside Story Of Spitting Image. By Lewis Chester, first
published in 1986 by Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-14557-4
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Jim Henson The Works. By Christopher Finch, first published in 1993 by Random House.
ISBN 0-679-41203-4
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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)
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Voices, Faces, Characters - by Christopher Hillard, published in 2001, by Cavilier Productions,
