Help Preserve Kukla, Fran and Ollie

YOU DID IT - THE (NEAR) FINAL FILM HAS BEEN TRANSFERRED! KFO fans from all over stepped up and raised the funds needed to transfer all 700 episodes, so they could be released for free on YouTube!  https://www.youtube.com/kuklafranandollie

I'm going to keep the fundraiser up since there are a handful of episodes that were too warped to transfer normally. Their transfers will be more expensive, so I'll see if we can raise the funds to do even those damaged films.

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In 1947, Burr Tillstrom created "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" - a beloved television puppet show that was watched by more adults than children. It counted Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Tallulah Bankhead, and Marlon Brando among its many adult fans, and James Thurber once wrote that Burr was "helping to save the sanity of the nation and to improve, if not even to invent, the quality of television."

I've worked as a volunteer producer of DVDs of this classic show for The Burr Tillstrom Copyright Trust since 2010. We were able to release over 80 shows and excerpts before sales ended.

Unhappily, about 270 shows remain untransferred. Worse, in my last round of transfers, I found that a number of these 16mm films had begun showing signs of deterioration. Since they are over 70 years old, that's to be expected. But I worry if we don't transfer them soon, they may be lost forever.

I'm hoping fans can pitch in to preserve what we can. $9,400 would be enough to transfer all the remaining shows, and we've received grants from the Jane Henson Foundation and the Burr Tillstrom Copyright Trust - so as of Feb. 2022, we only have about $1,200 left to raise.

$30 can cover the cost of transferring an episode. Can you help? Let's preserve these wonderful episodes before they are lost forever!

Thank you,

Mark Milano