Tony coffin

The First Circus (1921)

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The Original Movie (1922)

Tony Sarg (born April 21, 1880 in Cobán , Guatemala ; † February 17, 1942 ; actually Anthony Frederick Sarg ) was a German-American puppeteer and illustrator. He has also been referred to as the American master of dolls and the father of modern puppetry.

Sarg was born in Guatemala as the son of the German consul Franz Karl Sarg and the English March Elizabeth Parker. In 1887 the family went to Germany , and Sarg entered a military academy at the age of 14. Promoted to lieutenant at the age of 17, he gave up his military career in 1905 and moved to England , where he had a relationship with the American Bertha Eleanor McGowan, whom he had met as a tourist in Germany. After the marriage on January 20, 1909 in Cincinnati , the couple returned to England, where their daughter Mary was born two years later. At the outbreak of the First World War, first in Cincinnati, the family settled in New York City in 1915 ; In 1921, Sarg became an American citizen.

Sarg, who had grown up with dolls and inherited the grandmother's doll collection, increasingly occupied himself with this hobby in his spare time. In 1917 he started his own business as a puppeteer. He was also known for his humorous illustrations in magazines, especially in the Saturday Evening Post . He also wrote and illustrated children's books, created his own puppet theater, and made mechanical toys.

In 1928, Sarg designed for Macy's Department Store , a well-known department store in New York, up to 40 m long, helium-filled balloons that looked like animals and were used for the department store's Thanksgiving Parade. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas in 1935, Sarg designed a sophisticated, animated shop window design with dolls, also for Macy's.

At the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago , in which Sarg was involved, he reached the peak of his career and an audience of 3 million people. However, Sarg could not keep up with the increasingly competing doll studios and he was forced to file for bankruptcy.

In mid-February 1942, Sarg, who had illustrated the book Speaking of Operations , had an operation for a ruptured appendix and died 3 weeks later of complications from the operation.