|
In 1955, WRC-TV, a Washington DC television station, began airing a short five minute puppet show named Sam and Friends. In addition to the manic title character and a skull-like omnivorous creature named Yorrick, it featured a lizard like creature made from an old green sweater and a pair of ping pong balls named Kermit. This was the humble beginning for both Kermit, who would eventually be refined in his design into a frog with a collar, and his creator and performer, Jim Henson.
Kermit, Sam and the other primitive creations of this show were the first Muppets, and Sam and Friends, as well as the concurrently produced commercials for Wilkins coffee, set a new standard for puppetry. Henson's techniques of setting the camera's point of view right at puppet level rather than using a traditional puppet show stage, and using a TV monitor so a puppeteer could see his own performance, were the first in a series of innovations he and the team of talented men and women who came to work for him made in the field. The Muppets would become popular features on variety shows, once even taking over The Ed Sullivan Show for a christmas special, as well as Jim's character Rowlf the Dog being a regular on the Jimmy Dean Show. Henson even experimented with non-puppet films such as the surreal short, Time Piece which was nominated for a Live Action Short Oscar. However, it wasn't until Joan Ganz Cooney, and a show brought to you by the letters "P", "B" and "S" (actually, originally "N," "E" and "T") came into the picture that the Muppets would become an institution.
Sesame Street launched dozens of characters who are now a part of the worldwide consciousness, including Jim's own characters Ernie and Guy Smiley. The program would also solidify the core performers he'd work with for years to come. Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson, Richard Hunt, Carroll Spinney, Fran Brill, and later David Goelz, Steve Whitmire and Kevin Clash all performed characters too numerous to mention here that are just as memorable as Henson's own. In fact, Henson and Oz, whether performing Bert and Ernie, or Kermit and Fozzie Bear, or Kermit and Miss Piggy, or the Swedish Chef (Henson did the voice and Oz did the hands) rank as one of the most prolific comedy duos in television history, and barely ever appeared on screen as themselves. The show even made a pop star (sort of) out of Jim Henson, with "Rubber Duckie" (performed in character as Ernie) becoming a Top 20 hit on the Billboard charts and a number of the accompanying albums also selling well. Unfortunately, the success of Sesame Street caused a lot of people to see the Muppets as strictly "kid's stuff," a notion that Henson worked to dispel (with varying degrees of success) for the rest of his life.
In the mid-70s, after both a season performing new characters on Saturday Night Live and a couple specials that would serve as pilots, The Muppet Show launched on first run syndication. Like the early variety show appearances, the Muppets used Slapstick so over the top it's a wonder Moral Guardians of the time didn't have a heart attack from all the explosions, Muppets eating smaller Muppets, and general mayhem surrounding the Muppet Theatre (in fact, the series does carry parental advisories on Disney Plus). Henson, in addition to Kermit and Rowlf, performed characters ranging from trippy keyboardist Dr. Teeth to the masculine and very dense Link Hogthrob. He also performed Waldorf to Richard Hunt's Statler, giving the theatre its heckling, cackling and long suffering Greek Chorus. It was said that The Muppet Show at one point was one of the most popular television series on Earth, though Sesame Street still dwarfed it in popularity in the U.S. The soundtrack album was a worldwide best-seller, spawned a worldwide hit single with "Halfway Down the Stairs" (sung by Jerry Nelson as Kermit's nephew Robin), and even won a Grammy in 1979.
A couple years later, Henson took a major gamble, bringing his characters to the movie theatres with the aptly named The Muppet Movie. Much like Walt Disney with Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, Jim knew he had to top anything his team had put out to that date. Complex sequences ranging from Kermit riding a bicycle to the Electric Mayhem rocking an old church to its rafters, made the Muppets believable in a more or less undiluted real world setting. The movie (which gave Kermit the Frog a Top-40 hit with "The Rainbow Connection," which went on to become a modern pop standard) was a critical and commercial success, paving the way for The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan (which in turn paved the way for the animated Muppet Babies, an unqualified Saturday-morning smash hit for CBS, though most of the original Muppet performers disliked it). With the success of the films and Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock and Muppet Babies (plus Muppet Show reruns) all ratings hits, the mid-1980s were likely the peak of Muppet mania.
Later Henson-helmed projects were met with more sporadic success. Fraggle Rock, born of Henson's desire to create something to end wars, was one of the earlier successes in its initial run on HBO and CBC. While the show was produced by him, his performing role was limited to two minor recurring characters, and Frank Oz (who was getting his own directorial career going) was not involved at all, with the lead roles being performed by less "name" performers such as Jerry Nelson and Steve Whitmire. Likewise, Henson had no performing role at all in Muppet Babies, in which other (non-puppeteer) actors provided the characters' voices. Two big-screen efforts into non-Muppet fantasy arrived in The Eighties — The Dark Crystal was a minor success, but its spiritual successor Labyrinth was savaged by critics and became a demoralizing disappointment for Henson. (Both films went on to be Vindicated by Cable and are regarded as cult classics now.) The Jim Henson Hour, which would feature segments from another series, The Storyteller, received very poor ratings, due largely to network meddling, and only lasted for about half a season. Then there was the posthumous Muppets Tonight, which set to update the concept of The Muppet Show for the 90's by introducing new characters, a new host, a new setting, and new skits, but it only lasted a few seasons before slowly dying into obscurity (although some of the new characters, notably Pepe the King Prawn, took hold as fan favorites).
In the meantime, Henson's Creature Shop had become a major font for further advancing puppetry. Building on full body characters like the Gorgs from Fraggle Rock, the Creature Shop was responsible for the title characters of the 1990 movie version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and its sequels. As well, the Shop also did forays into CG animation, namely Waldo, a gusty experimentation of a manually-controlled virtual 3D character who appeared in both The Jim Henson Hour and Muppet*Vision 3D which runs at Disney theme parks to this day.
Jim Henson died of sepsis shock brought on by a strep throat infection on May 16th, 1990. At the time, he was negotiating with Disney to turn over the rights to his characters (a deal that wouldn't be completed for 14 more years) so that he could focus on production and performing, and did not wish to visit the hospital (his wife would later state that the refusal was likely due to his desire not to be a bother to people). The Muppets have carried on in his absence with mixed success. Sesame Street is still going after 55 years, and Fraggle Rock (which was not part of the Disney deal) has been enjoying a successful reboot in the 2020s, but Kermit and the Muppet Show cast have had a hit-or-miss track record in the past three-plus decades, with successes like The Muppet Christmas Carol, 2011's The Muppets, and a CGI-animated reboot of Muppet Babies interspersed with flops like Muppets Tonight and the 2015 Muppets TV series. Numerous key performers have passed away (i.e. Jerry Nelson), resigned (i.e. Frank Oz) or been fired (i.e. Steve Whitmire) during that time. New productions featuring the Muppet Show gang now typically premiere first on Disney's Disney Plus streaming app, where the original Muppet Show and other classic productions featuring Kermit and pals can also be seen.
Other productions by the Jim Henson Company and its performers, ranging from Dinosaurs and Farscape to Bear in the Big Blue House and Dog City, continued Henson's legacy with new characters for new generations of fans. And classic characters, as in the
His funeral was pretty awesome. The downside was that it was never televised. Not once. And most of the videos of it have been taken down off YouTube. Keep Circulating the Tapes, they're absolutely worth tracking down.
A biographical documentary, Jim Henson: Idea Man, premiered on Disney+ in 2024.
Tropes Related to Jim Henson Include:[]
- Author Avatar: Those who knew him say that Jim was a lot like Rowlf the Dog — except he wasn't as good a pianist.
- While he wasn't a regular performer on Fraggle Rock, JIm's two recurring characters, Cantus the Minstrel and Convincing John, were so obviously based on aspects of his personality that it wasn't even subtle (especially with Cantus). Hence the reason why those characters weren't brought back for the 2020s Fraggle reboot and replaced with vaguely similar substitutes.
- Of course, there was also Kermit - the sanest member and leader of a group of crazy performers. Though unlike Kermit, Henson was far less likely to complain or criticize - apparently only saying "Hmm" if he disliked something.
"He can say things I hold back." |
- Author Existence Failure: One of the most heartbreaking examples. Henson had long had a strong sense of his own mortality, but that didn't make his passing any less shocking or sad.
- Badass Beard: Here's the reason he originally grew it.
- Berserk Button: Thinking that puppets were only for children was a good way to set him off.
- Beyond the Impossible: Henson pioneered several incredible techniques that sounded downright preposterous for the time, such as CGI Puppetry (in 1989) and fully animatronic characters that could walk on their own, namely the Doozers from Fraggle Rock.
- Cash Cow Franchise: The Muppets. Particularly Sesame Street and Muppet Babies in the U.S.
- The Character Died With Him: Averted with most of his most popular characters, including Kermit, Ernie, Rowlf, Dr. Teeth and Waldorf, who were all eventually recast, but played straight with Cantus and Convincing John of Fraggle Rock. Those characters did not return in the rebooted 2020s Fraggle series, likely out of respect for their creator.
- Cloudcuckoolander: A more subdued, clearer-headed example than most, but still qualifies.
- Creator Breakdown: He had one in the mid 1980s, involving the disastrous reception to Labyrinth and a separation from his wife. He became morbid and reclusive and was just starting to come out of that stage when he died.
- Darker and Edgier: While the The Muppet Christmas Carol did have some dark moments, Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal is by far the darkest films involving puppets he's done, the latter for Surreal Horror and the latter for a rather alien and cruel world.
- Friend to All Children: Despite disliking being typecast as a children's entertainer, he was the man who made the single best and most successful children's show what it is. Check out those letters the Muppets read at the end of The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson. That says it all. He had five children of his own, as well.
- The Fun in Funeral: He personally requested that his funeral not be a dour occasion and demanded a dixieland jazz band play. Everyone had to wear colorful outfits, and everyone was assigned a basic puppet on a string to play with as they watched. It's true there were sad moments but the whole thing crested when Kevin Clash, using his Elmo voice broke out into the bawdy "Lydia the Tattooed Lady".
- Gray Eyes: Types 1 and 3.
- He Also Did: Henson did many experimental films early in his career, including the Oscar-nominated Time Piece and the NBC TV special The Cube, about a man trapped in a small cube who's visited by various strange people as he tries to find his way out. The runaway success of Sesame Street largely spelled the end of that phase of his career.
- Heterosexual Life Partners: With Frank Oz.
- Hey, It's That Voice!: Most of Jim's characters spoke with variations of the same two or three voices.
- He had a rather idiosyncratic voice to begin with, so he really didn't need to do much to it.
- It Will Never Catch On: He and the rest of the crew got a lot of this when The Muppet Show was being shopped around and when it first premiered. Happened again before The Muppet Movie was released.
- Looks Like Jesus
- Magnum Opus Dissonance: Jim poured his heart, soul and years of his life into The Dark Crystal. And it released to become an Acclaimed Flop that only ever managed a Cult Classic status, parents and critics scoffing that his latest children's movie was too dark.
- Nice Guy
- Precision F-Strike: Henson replied to a negative review of the aforementioned The Cube with a single-sentence note: "What the f**k are you talking about?" All the more unusual because he didn't swear very often.
- Retirony: Inverted. Henson died just when he was ready to go back to being a full-time performer instead of running a production company.
- And yet he was not going back to performing his signature character, he had already tapped fellow Muppeteer Steve Whitmire for that.
- Something Completely Different: The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and Mirror Mask were Darker and Edgier than the Jim Henson Company's other productions. Even Fraggle Rock had a sophistication one didn't find in Sesame Street or The Muppet Show, and attained a sizeable Periphery Demographic of adults.
- Southern-Fried Genius: Hailed from Leland, Mississippi.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Considering that he died suddenly and at a relatively young age (53), this also got bandied about after his death. One anonymous child was quoted as saying "God must have needed Muppets in heaven."
- Trope Makers: Henson was responsible for several leaps in the art of puppetry which changed the art forever, such as the obvious combination of the hand puppet and the rod puppet, the use of raised platform sets (which gave much more freedom for the puppeteers to go wild), to the use of radio-controlled animatronics. All of these and more paved the way for new puppeteers.
- What Could Have Been: It's impossible to look at anything made by the Henson company post-1990 without asking this question.
- On a related note, Jim was the first person George Lucas approached to play Yoda. Jim deferred the character to Frank Oz due to his busy schedule, but who knows how Yoda would have turned out under a different performer?
- Henson died while he was negotiating selling the Muppets to Disney. That ultimately did happen, but not for over a decade. One wonders if/how things would've been different for Kermit and the gang.
- One immediate difference would have been a Muppet theme park, or at least an entire Muppet "land" at Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM Studios). Only the Muppets 4D show building remains of this plan.
- He spent years developing The Dark Crystal. Unsurprisingly its initial draft, The Mithra Treatment is very different from the finished product.
- Worldbuilding: Both of his theatrical releases that stepped away from the Muppets had their own, in depth settings. These unique worlds were a combination of the genius of Henson and artist Brian Froud.