Back in the early seventies, a company named Aniforms (I'm not sure if it was hyphenated) introduced a TV character named Elliot Nootrac, his last name of course being "cartoon" spelled backwards. Elliot was described as a living cartoon, meaning from his home on a TV monitor, he could interact and ad-lib with others in real time. A lot of folks were mystified as to how what looked like an animated character could do that.
The secret was that he wasn't animated the way Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny were. Elliot was a two-dimensional puppet operated on a flat surface over which a TV camera was suspended. The puppeteer did the voice and made Elliot move…and for a while, he was popping up on different shows, including Laugh-In, Sesame Street and The Dick Cavett Show. Somewhere — I don't recall where — I saw a program that revealed the whole process and showed what the "puppet" looked like backstage and it really was ingenious. There wasn't a lot of call for it but it was ingenious.
Here we have the episode of To Tell the Truth for November 7, 1973. The second segment will probably be of little interest to most of you but the first segment is all about Elliot, who more or less takes over as host from Garry Moore. And at the end of the segment, you meet the fellow who was operating Elliot and supplying the voice. His name seems to be David Doren or Doran or something like that and I would love to know what became of him. He was pretty good at what he did…