Puppeteer Bob Baker dead at 90.

LOS ANGELES -- Bob Baker, the founder of one of America's oldest puppet theaters, died Friday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 90.

The cause of death was kidney failure, his biographer, Gregory Williams, said.

The Bob Baker Marionette Theater captivated children and adults with its ornate wooden puppets and props. The theater was a vestige of the days when marionettes were widely used on stage and television and playhouses dotted the streets of downtown Los Angeles.

''He really contributed to the continuation of puppetry as an art,'' Williams told The Associated Press on Friday. ''With the digital age, it's going in a different direction. But people still come to it because it's an introduction to theater for young people. It's real-life 3-D.''

Baker discovered puppetry as a child and described being immediately transformed. ''He couldn't talk about anything else when he came home to his mother and he knew what he wanted to do,'' Williams said.

At an early age, he began constructing his own puppets and performed...