Waldo Lanchester and Ann Hogarth, together with her future husband Jan Bussell, became close colleagues after joining the British Model Theatre Guild in the early 1920s. Their shared interests in puppetry, design, and performance quickly formed the basis of a long‑standing creative friendship.
In the late 1920s, after Lanchester and Harry Whanslaw established the London Marionette Theatre, Hogarth and Bussell joined the company, contributing both as performers and, in Bussell’s case, as a writer of many of their plays. The pair later went on to form their own company, the Hogarth Puppets, which became one of the most influential British marionette troupes of the mid‑20th century.
