Behind the scenes of the Tickle Trunk

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This article was published 13/10/2023 (1054 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This gentle new documentary is completely uncritical about its subject.

And that’s a good thing, because its subject is Ernie Coombs, also known as Mr. Dressup, and he was a kindly, creative, reassuring daily presence to generations of Canadian kids. Even better, as we see here in interviews with his colleagues, family and friends, he was just as lovely off-camera as on.

As Coombs himself says in an interview in the 1980s, “Having been Mr. Dressup for 20 years has probably made me a better person.”

During the run of this quiet, slow-paced series, from 1967 to 1996, Mr. Dressup would lead his young audience in songs and stories. He would draw scenes and make crafts, always with everyday materials like toilet paper rolls and cardboard egg cartons so no one at home would be excluded.

He would have conversations with Casey and Finnegan, with occasional drop-ins by Aunt Bird and Alligator Al. Brought to life by puppeteer Judith Lawrence, Casey was never definitively identified as a boy or a girl and, as one interview subject suggests, was probably “the first non-binary character on children’s TV.”

Finnegan the dog, who never spoke directly but only whispered to Casey, was a pal for shy children everywhere.

And of course, as the title suggests, Mr. Dressup would dress up, using hats and jackets and homemade outfits taken from the Tickle Trunk to transform into a sea captain or a band leader or a robot. (As with so many Canadian households, our dress-up box was also called a Tickle Trunk, in homage.)

Ernie Coombs may have starred in one of the most quintessentially Canadian shows ever, but he was actually born in Maine. He served in the American air force in the Second World War, toured with a children’s theatre in the ’50s, and started a family. And he began working with Fred Rogers in Pittsburgh.

He and the man who would become known as Mr. Rogers actually came to Canada together in 1962, with Rogers getting his own program on CBC. When Fred returned to the States, Ernie stayed on, as part of a show called Butternut Square, which later transformed into Mr. Dressup.

This documentary look at the man and his TV series is thorough, careful and unfussy, its poignance and power relying mostly on the tremendous affection viewers feel for the subject.

Director Robert McCallum follows a roughly chronological telling of the Mr. Dressup story, balancing archival material and talking-head interviews with a little added animation.

We meet Coombs’ two children, many of his co-workers and a gallery of Canadian celebs who grew up alongside the show, including Michael J. Fox, Bif Naked, Graham Greene, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, some Barenaked Ladies, a couple of Kids in the Hall. Canadian historians, cultural critics and CBC insiders provide additional context.

One of the most moving stories comes from Winnipeg’s own Fred Penner, who recalls filming his own show with Mr. Dressup as a guest, only weeks after Coombs’ beloved wife Marlene, known as Lynn, had died.

Penner offered to cancel, but Coombs found comfort in working. They ended up singing a Tom Chapin song called Together Tomorrow, about missing the people you love. It’s a beautiful moment.

I wish there were a few more clips in the doc, but even the brief sequences we see convey how different the Mr. Dressup show was from so much of today’s children’s entertainment.

There wasn’t a lot of management oversight on the series, partly because the higher-ups didn’t care that much about children’s programming. Left to themselves, Coombs and his crew made something that was in some ways low-tech and comfortably old-fashioned, in other ways revolutionary, sometimes a bit surreal.

With sketched-in scripts, the show spoke softly but directly to the children in its audience, allowing imagination and play and creativity to lead the way.

This documentary isn’t as groundbreaking as its subject. But it is modest and generous and kind. And as Mr. Dressup taught us, and so many of these interview subjects confirm, those are not small things.

alison.gillmor@winnipegfreepress.com