Video of Nantucket Sea Serpent, 1937
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 10th, 2012
In the summer of 1937, Tony Sarg and several others promoted a hoax in Nantucket. Sightings of a sea serpent were advertised… footprints were found… stories published… Then, the serpent appeared on South Beach (now Washington Extension — not where it was intended to land!): it was one of Sarg’s Macy’s Day Parade balloons.
Tony Sarg (1880-1942) was an American puppeteer, illustrator, designer and painter. He is famous for creating balloons for the Macy department store parades and many illustrations for magazines. He owned a store in Nantucket, the Tony Sarg’s Curiosity Shop.
Color silent film clip ; 48 seconds ; Film collection #1
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Measuring the footprint.
Photographs from scrapbooks of the times can be found here.
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Anthony Frederick Sarg (April 21, 1880 – February 17, 1942), known professionally as Tony Sarg, was a German American puppeteer and illustrator. He was described as “America’s Puppet Master”, and in his biography as the father of modern puppetry in North America.
Sarg was born in Cobán, Guatemala, to Francis Charles Sarg and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Parker. The elder Sarg was a consul representing Germany; Parker was English.
The family returned to the German Empire in 1887; Sarg entered a military academy at age 14 and received a commission as lieutenant at 17; in 1905 (in his mid-20s) he resigned his commission and took up residence in the United Kingdom, where he pursued a relationship with Bertha Eleanor McGowan, an American he had met when she was a tourist in Germany. They were married in her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, January 20th, 1909, and returned to England where their daughter Mary was born two years later. In 1914, with the start of World War I, he sent Bertha and the children to Cincinnati, followed them soon after, and settled the family in New York City in 1915.
He had been raised around puppets, inherited his grandmother’s collection of them, developed them as a hobby that enhanced the impression he made on other artists, and finally in 1917 turned them into a profession. In 1920, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
In 1921 Sarg animated the film The First Circus, an inventive cartoon for producer Herbert M. Dawley, who was credited as co-animator.
In 1928, he designed, and his protege Bil Baird built tethered helium-filled balloons up to 125 feet (40 m) long, resembling animals, for the New York institution of Macy’s department store, involving a number of issues familiar from puppetry; these participated in the store’s Thanksgiving Day parade. In 1935, he undertook the puppet-related work of designing Macy’s elaborate animated window display between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The pinnacle of Sarg’s visibility was at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, where his cumulative audience was 3 million; Baird was heavily involved in this production, as were Rufus and Margo Rose. Those three left his studio that year to start a new one themselves.
Sarg no longer innovated as much as competing puppet studios, and his economic fortunes declined as others gained a following; he both went into bankruptcy, and mounted his last production, in 1939.
In mid-February 1942, Sarg had surgery for a ruptured appendix, and died three weeks later of complications arising from it.
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Thanks to Doug Skinner for the tip.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
what an awesome idea to promote a hoax like that to show off a big piece of artwork. its theater of life. these days people hate the idea of being tricked. to me its fun and its like magic!!