Sorry to hear of the passing of Van Snowden, one of Hollywood's leading puppeteers. The last 30 or 40 years, if you saw a puppet on your TV and it wasn't from the Henson bloodline, there was a very good chance some part of Van Snowden was inside that puppet or manipulating it. He did a lot of the puppetry on Pee Wee's Playhouse and he worked The Crypt-Keeper on Tales from the Crypt and he handled an awful lot of puppets — many of which you couldn't tell were puppets — in horror movies — rats, lizards, odd creatures, etc. But his main gig, and it was a long one, was with my frequent employers, Sid and Marty Krofft. When they needed puppeteers, which was often, Van was the first guy they called. Here he is playing H.R. Pufnstuf in one of their shows…
I want to emphasize that that is definitely Van in the Pufnstuf outfit. He wasn't the only person who played H.R., though he did it more than anyone else and it was probably him at least 90% of the time after around 1975. But others occasionally filled the suit and it sometimes made Van uncomfy when he was asked, as he often was, to autograph a Pufnstuf photo that wasn't him. Because of that, I dug out my DVD of one of the shows we worked on and I pulled a frame grab. I know that was Van because I saw him get into the costume.
He did not do the voice of Pufnstuf (Lennie Weinrib did) and I'm not sure Van ever did the voice of any of the hundreds of characters he brought to life, either by wearing costumes or working controls. He was a very shy, quiet man. One time over lunch on a show we were doing, he mused aloud that it might be fun to play a small part without a face-hiding get-up. He had family members who knew he worked extensively in TV and movies in front of the camera but they'd never actually seen him…so we gave him a role. He did his best with it but he just felt he was doing something he shouldn't be doing so he asked us to recast…and of course, we did. The odd part of it was that he was so introverted as himself and, once you put a full-body costume on him, utterly extroverted. He could dance and emote and do cartwheels as Pufnstuf but not as Van. It was like on a stage, he could bring anything to life except himself. He was just brilliant at it, which is why he was so respected by other puppeteers and why producers who needed puppeteers always tried to hire him.
Van was born in 1939 in San Francisco and he grew up on a farm in Branson, MO. He died September 22 from cancer at the age of 71. He was one of the best.