Purse strings tighten at Bob Baker’s Marionette Theater

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The Bob Baker Marionette Theater is a place that is both magical and earth-bound. Operating from the corner of 1st Street and Glendale Boulevard just west of downtown Los Angeles for 49 years, it is a vestige of childhoods lived, where vegetables dance to old vaudeville tunes and musical instruments dance and jump across a black box theater festooned with crystal chandeliers.

But it’s also been struggling for years, trying to eke out an existence on $15-a-head admission, amid the fickle nature of children’s passions.