IT ALL BEGAN WITH ONE WOMAN, ONE PUPPET.

Byline: Keith Marder Daily News Television Writer

Shirley Dinsdale didn't want to go to a television industry banquet on Jan. 25, 1949.

She had a hot date and no desire to go to something called the Emmy Awards at the Hollywood Athletic Club, sit at a folding lawn table and waste a Tuesday night.

Dinsdale and her sidekick, puppet Judy Splinters, were done for another day and about to take off when her bosses at KTLA told her she had to go to an evening event to represent the station.

``I didn't know what it was,'' she said via telephone from her Long Island home, ``and they wouldn't tell me why I had to go.''

The reason for their insistence became apparent shortly after. Dinsdale and Splinters were the recipients of the first Emmy Award ever to be handed out - for Most Outstanding Personality.

``Judy accepted with me,'' Dinsdale said. ``She complained that she didn't get the Emmy and I did. I didn't know that night, but I realized quite quickly that it was a big deal.''

If Dinsdale hadn't shown up to accept the first trophy, who knows if they ever would have gotten to the second?

Fifty years later, the trophy of a winged woman holding a globe remains the same (``Mine is an old lady now''), but the awards ceremony has grown.

At the outset, the awards were regional; 600 people attended the event at a cost of $5 a ticket.

Television was a fledgling industry. There was no national or taped programming, not many television sets and not much money being invested. Emmy results were buried on Page 6 of Variety.

``It was very different then,'' Dinsdale said. ``It's hard to explain to people. It was a very innocent time.''

Dinsdale and Splinters' show-biz careers started on a radio station in San Francisco when Dinsdale was 14. With Judy, who was designed by her artist father, and ventriloquy lessons that came in a barter deal with one of her father's clients, Dinsdale would go far.

Back in 1942, she and her mother took a trip to Los Angeles and never returned to the Bay Area. She signed with William Morris shortly after, moved her act to Eddie Canter's radio show, did a lot of war work for the Hollywood Victory Committee, and then KTLA called.

At first she appeared on a five-minute daily spot to wish a viewer happy birthday (think of her as an early Willard Scott).

As television expanded, so did Dinsdale's exposure. She traveled to New York and Chicago to appear on local telecasts.

Then, in 1953, after a six-year television career, Dinsdale got married and left broadcasting.

``I came to a turning point in my life,'' she said. ``I went on to do other things. TV wasn't the only thing in my life.''

Dinsdale entered Stony Brook University on New York's Long Island at age 40 and found another new field to go into - respiratory therapy and cardiopulmonary therapy specializing in bypass surgery and transplants.

``Both careers were new careers,'' said Dinsdale. ``Because of that, they were both exciting.''

Dinsdale, 71, who has two children and two grandchildren (who sometimes get to see Judy Splinters leave the shelf to entertain them), will not be able to come to this year's Emmys.

Suffering from three forms of cancer, she is on chemotherapy and unable to travel.

But then, Dinsdale is used to overcoming hardships. She spent a year in the hospital as a child after being badly burned when a croup kettle tipped over.

What finally brought her out of her shell? A puppet named Judy Splinters. And the rest is history.

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Photo: Shirley Dinsdale does an interview with Walter O'Keefe at the first Emmy Awards presentation in 1949. A ventriloquist, she received her statuette in the Most Outstanding Personality category.