Joop Geesink is Power puppet of Dollywood (1961)

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Joop Geesink is the Power puppet of Dollywood

JOOP GEESINK would successfully star himself in one of his colorful puppet animations. He is a round man; with a round character and also round in terms of figure. He is amicable, he laughs a lot and his face shows the same pleasant expression Oliver Hardy showed when in his best moods in his movies. One can easily make a playful looking puppet from Geesink’s image. All other puppets would show admiration and honor for this “star-puppet”, because the successes in his life followed each other in a fast pace as the images on a filmstrip. “Dollywood”is what Joop Geesink and his brother Wim call the film studio full of activity and where they are the proud chiefs of board. Joop only rarely sits behind the massive desk in the boardroom of Dollywood. He travels across the world with laughter, busy gestures, bravura, seriousness, sucking on big cigars and negotiating with captains of industry about the construction of his famous commercials. His sales qualities are not insignificant. He spoke enthusiastically to an Italian industrialist about his plan: manufacturing puppet animation, based on the exciting adventures of the count of Monte Christo. Joop chatted and chatted. The Italian was moderate, but his gestures revived medieval times, he fenced with clear words and gestures, The Italian looking puzzled. But finally the industrial understood Joops intentions. "Nice idea." the Italian said, "but, ehm... I have never heard of the count de Monte Christo. ".
Joop Geesink felt as disappointed as a football player, who wants to score the winning goal, but kicks against a flat football. The disappointment was unnecessary. Joops quick gestures, his enthusiasm and his many words made a big impression on the industrialist. Without hesitating he said yes to making this puppet animation Dollywoods "Head - puppeteer" had just made another success.
Subscript
Above: Joop Geesink, the Head-puppeteer of Dollywood, clearly shows he knows the ropes. His field of activity: the world. Below: A snippet from a commercial that lasted 30 minutes for Philips. These instruments from the symphonic orchestra are playing themselves.

Sets for Parisian palaces

Joop Geesink speaks Dutch with a sing-song accent, within which inhabitants from The Hague can reveal their descent to their Dutch fellow citizens. In the chic residence his stunning career started. Joop was a virtuoso designer and established, still before his twentieth birthday, a private company on the Spui, that extends itself right in the Centre of the Hague. He did this with his brother Wim. The brothers manufactured the colourful placards and posters that adorned cinema hall facades: wide-shouldered men who rescue narrow-shouldered ladies from the gaping mouths of crocodiles and other very eloquent scenes, which already revealed the tantalizing contents of the movies in advance.
But crafting these masterpieces could not satisfy Joop in the long run, he wanted to achieve more. Therefore Joop Geesink designed sets for large-scale shows. For his sets, the legs of revue girls stretched far up and there were sketches, in which the revue-comedians did their utmost to offend each other to everyone's entertainment. Joop designed the sets so talenten, he was invited to design the sets for the Folies Bergère, the famous casino in Paris. These were honourable assignments, because the managers of these entertainment palaces examined the legs of the charming dansers just as careful as they checked the decoration of the setting. Joop passed every hard test splendidly. Het returned to the Netherlands to accomplish the evenly important national assignments. Joop designed the set for one of the rare pre-war movies “de Spooktrein”(Haunted train), in which Jan Mus starred. He also founded a advertising agency, where eight employees did their best to support “master Joop” in his ideas and business activities. The group of employees augmented to one hundred and fifty employees, who now take their place at the desks at Dollywood.  

Future plans

The Second World War caused Joop's advertising company to dwindle considerably. He occupied a small and dusty studio in Amsterdam and filled his abundant free time by ‘playing’ with a camera, a few lamps and a bunch of puppets. During the harsh war years he made the first puppet film, which would later be followed by a series of cinematic puppet adventures that millions of cinema-goers would follow with fascination in tens of thousands of theatres across the world. The year was 1945, German boots were no longer pounding on Dutch cobblestones and Joop was freed from his dusty apartment by the liberators, who set him on the path to a wonderful and exciting life. He travelled to the American army headquarters in Brussels, where he was successfully promoted to lieutenant and organised shows and lavish parties. He also designed the sets for the army shows that travelled to the major European cities. While the champagne corks popped at the parties, Joop Geesink pondered a new, bold plan: to start his own film studio. In 1946, a small building appeared on the muddy Duivendrechtsekade in Amsterdam. ‘Dollywood’ was written in elegant letters painted on the facade. Now, fourteen years later, Dollywood has become a small Hollywood. Around “Dollywood Avenue” you will find a colourful collection of studios, warehouses and offices. And you will (sometimes) find Joop Geesink, who considers the past much less important than the future. He is eager to talk about that future with a machine-gun fire of words, busy gestures, ever-changing facial expressions and every now and then a hefty blow from a chubby fist on the desktop. ‘Television,’ he argues, ‘gave Dollywood a quick lift,’ people are begging for good advertising films for television. I must expand, expand, expand. Soon I will be opening offices and studios in other countries, in Rome and Vienna and later in other world cities. In three years we will experience a big boom, a peak, and television will demand an endless stream of commercials. I am already preparing for that. Will the Netherlands also introduce commercial television? You bet. Good television is unthinkable without the support of advertising. I should know, I carefully study foreign television programmes. Sometimes I sit in American hotel rooms for eight hours a day in front of the screen. It's tiring, but educational."

Film for Life

Joop Geesink has become a businessman with a broad outlook thanks to his travels around the world. Ask any Dutch businessman about the prices of his products and ten to one he will look at you in surprise, shocked and unwelcoming. Not Joop Geesink. ‘You want to know the price of my most expensive film? Okay: half a million guilders. I made the film for Life, the American magazine with the million-dollar layout. What a film! It depicted the origins of life on earth. A mighty assignment. And my cheapest film? Two and a half thousand guilders,’ Joop Geesink explains without any hesitation. The production of puppet films for Dollywood has become less important due to the production of television films. Television commercials are short, and the movements of puppets are too slow to get the ‘advertising message’ across to viewers in a few seconds. So no puppets. As a result, Joop Geesink and his helpers play more with industrial products than with puppets. An industry wants to make its product, packaged in a handy box, popular on our screens. The Dollywood designers study the handy box, let it slide through their hands, lay it flat and then stand it upright in front of them, make it walk in a series of movements; they talk about the box, nodding approvingly and disapprovingly and during their lengthy deliberation the idea matures. The package becomes a soldier on parade, strutting along a line of waving banners, left-right, left-right, to the sounds of blaring marching music. Suddenly the package's flap opens, or rather the mouth of the soldier on parade. The package shouts at the top of its voice, flapping its lid with the trademark written on its cardboard belly. And thousands of housewives decide – as experience has taught us – to dutifully order a package the next day. The product in question has marched into living rooms with flying colours. (read more below the images)

Price sample card

Shooting advertising films with puppets or boxes or whatever as actors is a curious experience for the layman. What endless patience the film-makers from Dollywood must have! The puppets, which are only about one-handed tall, have to make the spectators in the cinema seats believe that they are really walking, waving their arms, kneeling, laughing, eating and talking. The films are shot frame by frame; for just one second of film, the puppets, boxes or whatever have to change their pose twenty-four times. Three thousand frames together make up just sixty metres of film. A three-minute puppet film requires three months of hard work. The Dollywood staff represent a rich variety of professions' lyricists, illustrators, art directors, animators (who determine the movements of the puppets), set builders, puppet carvers, hairdressers, metal workers, costume makers, wood workers, painters, blacksmiths, carpenters, welders, decorators, electricians, sound engineers and laboratory technicians. In addition to permanent staff, composers, musicians and commentators from all countries also work hard to ensure the success of the Dollywood films. Approximately forty films are constantly in production for clients from the Netherlands, America, England, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Austria and Latin America. The commercial film company has sixteen cameras, each of which records one and a half metres of usable film per day. Each camera has a ‘unit’, a group of workers led by the art director. A unit also includes a cameraman and his assistant, an animator, a lighting technician juggling lamps and a young man, the ‘stage boy’, who must be able to respond to the wishes of the other unit members, a handy ‘jack of all trades’. Dollywood's films have already won more than sixty awards. Joop Geesink recently received the Coupe de Venice, a beautiful trophy that is the highest honour a producer of commercials can receive. Of the fifteen films submitted by Joop Geesink, no fewer than seven were awarded prizes. The walls of Dollywood's boardroom are a ‘price catalogue’, a long series of medals, plaques and written tributes that bear witness to Geesink's many successes at film festivals. Joop Geesink is rich in prizes, thanks to his wealth of ideas. Once he had to show a work copy of a film to an English friend. Such a work copy rivals a high school student's rehearsal work in terms of scratches, on which the outraged teacher has expressed his displeasure about the poor quality with a series of heavy pencil strokes. Joop Geesink therefore wanted to diplomatically prepare the relationship for the multitude of scratches, crosses and stripes in the work copy. But how? Suddenly the idea came to him. ‘Consider me,’ said Joop, ‘a tailor... you must try it on for the first time. The suit has no lapels or buttons yet and it has white stitching. Well, my working copy looks like a suit during the first fitting...’ The Brit saw the working copy and gave his opinion. Later, when the film was ready, he sent a telegram with the following jubilant lines: ‘Costume fits perfectly. Thanks! Start thinking about a summer suit.’ JOOP TERMOS.

Source: de Revue - no. 6, February 1961. With thanks to the editors for their kind cooperation.