Tina Gainsboro

Tina (née Helen) Gainsboro, a founding member of LA's historic Bob Baker Marionette Theater, died on Saturday, March 7th, 2020. A petite redhead, Tina enjoyed holding court in her 1950s-era Silver Lake home surrounded by mid-century modern furniture and cat figurines. Born in Brooklyn, she grew up in LA after her mother joined a puppet troupe and headed west. In the early '40s, Tina worked for Jazz Man Record Shop. She loved to regale everyone with tales from this period like the night she cooked eggs for Billie Holiday, or the two weeks that boogie-woogie pianist, Meade Lux Lewis stayed at her place, or that time Benny Goodman lectured her about drugs. "I never took drugs because Benny Goodman told me not to," she said. Tina married Roger Price, a comedy writer and one of the creators of Mad Libs™. They had two children, Roger and Sandi. Following their divorce, Tina remarried, moved to Silver Lake, and started working with her old friend, Bob Baker. She found the building that served as the Bob Baker Marionette Theater from 1963 to 2019. During her thirty-year tenure as theater manager, Tina organized field trips/parties, oversaw catering, and occasionally ran the show lights. A dyed-in-the-wool liberal who woke up every morning and asked "Is Trump dead yet?" Tina started her day with the LA Times and tuned in to Rachel Maddow at night. For years her living room doubled as the local polling station until she chased her cat off of a voting booth, tripped, and broke a hip. Alas, no injury could stop Tina from fighting the good fight and calling up city officials to speak her mind about injustices. Friends, family, and neighbors will remember Tina as a generous hostess who threw festive holiday gatherings and always invited "orphans" to attend. Tina is survived by her grandchildren, Kenda Burke, Taylor Heredia and her great-grandchildren, Cyrus, Willow, Angelina, Jacob, Lincoln.