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You very well may recognize the voice, so stop reading if you want to watch and guess who did this little film. Okay, now? This film was produced in 1963 for a Bell Systems seminar in Chicago, by Jim Henson. It was recently retrieved from the AT&T Archives. -via Dangerous Minds
Jim Henson’s career wasn’t just The Muppets. He and writing partner Jerry Juhl worked on a project on and off over the years. The story Tale of Sand was adapted by Ramón Pérez and is now available in graphic novel form! Read a review of it at mental_floss. Link
With the Dark Crystal, Jim Henson established a fantasy world rich with culture, character and a history we discover little about during the course of the movie. To me, it always felt like it should have been the last in a trilogy, the grand finale for a storyline that could have spanned generations.
If there’s one person who can deliver a prequel that lives up to Henson’s standard of excellence it’s illustrator and creative mastermind Brian Froud, who served as the concept designer for the original Dark Crystal film. The first book in his three-volume graphic novel series entitled The Dark Crystal:Creation Myths is about to be released, and it looks fantastic!
You can scan through a few pages for yourself at the link below. Do you think it looks like a worthy addition to Jim Henson’s fantasy masterpiece?
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If you love The Muppets and happen to be in Alhambra, California from now until January 2, don’t miss the chance to stop by the Gallery Nucleus and check out their newest show, The Lovers, The Dreamers, And Me. If you couldn’t tell by name, it’s a gallery tribute to the late, great Jim Henson and the art featured online is simply fantastic.
Link Via Laughing Squid
Comments Off I don’t know about you guys, but I have loved The Muppets since I was in diapers and I can’t wait to see the new Muppet movie that’s coming out today. But as long as we’re celebrating The Muppets’ return to the big screen, we may as well celebrate their original rise to the small screen. So for all the fans out there, here’s a little history and general trivia info on the greatest puppet team ever created.
We’ve talked about Jim Henson’s show Sam and Friends, where Kermit originated, before, but that wasn’t Jim Henson’s first experience working with puppets. It actually started all the way back in 1954 when Henson was still attending high school. He was quite ambitious because before he graduated, he already was creating puppets for a Saturday morning kid’s show called The Junior Morning Show featured on WTOP-TV.
Interestingly, Jim didn’t really intend to work on puppets for a career. He actually originally went to the University of Maryland, College Park, to become a commercial artist. But when he was only a freshman, he was asked to create a five-minute long puppet show for WRC-TV named Sam and Friends. The show ended up playing a huge role in the inspiration for The Muppets and featured a prototype version of Kermit the Frog.
Image Via zhurnaly [Flickr]
Well, Sam was a puppet that looked like a human and his friends were a variety of other human puppets, a few weird monstery creatures, a snake and a lizard that eventually morphed into the world’s most famous frog. The show started out just featuring the puppets lip-synching to popular songs, but as the show started gaining popularity, they started writing real sketches, many of which involved featured spoofs of popular TV shows.
One of the best-known sketches involved Kermit nibbling on something that looked like a worm, but eventually turned into the tongue or nose of the character Big V, a giant monster, who would eventually eat him. Near the end of the show’s run, Esskay Meats started showing ads at the end of the show, which would feature characters from Sam and Friends.
While the show was best known for introducing Kermit to the world, it also played a huge role in letting Henson perfect his puppetry techniques that would eventually change the way puppets were shown on television forever. One of his biggest innovations was setting up the camera shots so the people operating the puppets would not be seen on screen. He also made the puppets more flexible than puppets previously seen on television so they could express a wider array of emotions on screen.
In honor of the soon-to-be released Muppets movie, and my undying love of all things Jim Henson, i’d like to share this alphabet/poster series drawn by David Vordtriede with you, which features characters from the various Muppet tv shows and movies.
The fresh designs and pleasing color palette really made me happy, and happiness is what the Muppets are all about. And remember, you can’t spell Muppets without various letters from the alphabet!
Link to entire alphabet –via Drawn
Before The Muppet Show, before Sesame Street, there was Sam and Friends, a 1955 series of local TV sketches created by a college student named Jim Henson.
Despite getting top billing, the star of “Sam and Friends” was not jug-eared Sam, whose round nose and bald head suggested Popeye. No, the show’s heart was an olive-drab, lizard-like creature named Kermit, who was sewn from one of Henson’s mother’s cast-off wool coats (that’s him, Sam, and a few other Friends at the top of this article, with Henson circa 1956 or 1957). The original Kermit had rounded feet instead of flippers, lacked Kermit’s classic crenellated collar, and viewed the world through a ping-pong ball that had been sliced in half and painted. Henson lined his creation with denim from an old pair of jeans.
Collector’s Weekly talks to Smithsonian curator Dwight Blocker Bowers about the history of Kermit and Henson’s other puppets, and gives us a glimpse at the collection of Muppet memorabilia on display at the Smithsonian Institution. Link
Comments Off Muppet creator (and the most renowned puppeteer ever) Jim Henson was born on September 24, 1936, which would make him 75 years old if he were with us today. In honor of the occasion, the Google Doodle features a group of Henson’s monsters -and you can act as the Muppeteer!
Link to Google.
Link to a memorial at the Google Blog.
Link to more from and about Jim Henson.
Link to more from the Muppets.
There’s a fuzzy new exhibit coming to a museum near you that showcases the works of puppet messiah Jim Henson. The Fantastic Voyage is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute and showcases some of Henson’s most beloved and well known characters, like Bert and Ernie, Kermit, and Rowlf the piano playing dog, so you can see your Muppet pals up close and personal. Plus there’s lots of concept art, sketches and photographs spanning the entire career of the world’s most beloved puppeteer. Jim Henson fanatics unite and show the puppet master some love when the exhibit comes to your town!
Link image via Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service
In Over Time, a group of puppets find that their creator has passed away. This 2004 film by Oury Atlan, Thibaut Berland, and Damien Ferrie doesn’t explicitly say it is about Jim Henson, but you recognize it anyway. When I first saw this a few years ago, I couldn’t help but tear up. -via the Presurfer
Jim Henson wasn’t all puppets and special effects, sometimes his mind wandered into strange places, and this clip from the TV special The Cube illustrates that his genius knew no bounds. This surreal show aired 2 episodes on NBC during their Experimental Night Of Television in 1969.
Remember the incredibly violent coffee commercial by Jim Henson before The Muppets became big?
Here’s another one he made for La Choy Chow Mein, featuring a fire-breathing dragon. Miss Cellania has the clip: Link
Comments Off In the 1950s, before the Muppets, Jim Henson produced these commercials for Wilkins Coffee. They are, uh, very blunt. To summarize, the message is “Buy our coffee, or we’ll kill you.” The brand appears to be defunct. Read more about Henson’s early puppetry at Network Awesome. Link -via Boing Boing
In 1969, Jim Henson of later Muppet fame shot a short pilot film for Johnny Hart’s comic strip The Wizard of Id. By the time that Publishers-Hall Syndicate expressed an interest in such a show, Henson was already busy with Sesame Street and other projects, so it never went forward. Do you think that it would have succeeded?
[YouTube - Link]
Cookie Monster apparently began his life as a creepily toothed puppet in an IBM training video. Whether the technical information being conveyed is at all true, or simply for comic effect, I have no idea, but it’s interesting to see the original incarnation of one of Sesame Street’s (and Jim Henson’s) most famous creations.
Via Presurfer
To fill time while they waited for an appearance on The Jack Paar Program in 1964, Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Don Sahlin and Jerry Juhl decorated some pipes in their dressing room. They left a note that said, “With love, from the Muppets.” It was just a spur-of-the-moment prank, and Paar mentioned they would be painted over the next day. But the pipes remained as they were for 46 years. Read the rest of the story at Muppet Wiki. Link -via Metafilter
It’s hard to believe that twenty years have passed since Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, passed away on May 16, 1990. A half-dozen authors at GeekDad got together to post remembrances and a tribute to the Muppetmaster. Matt Blum says:
I was seventeen when I heard Jim Henson had died. It seemed impossible: he was Kermit, and Kermit was always there. He was only a few years older than my parents, so what kind of world was it where someone that young and that brilliant could die? I was, truly, as sad as I would have been if a friend had died suddenly, and felt the loss as keenly. I was angry, too, when I heard that he had died of untreated pneumonia, angry that he hadn’t gone to the doctor. Angry that the Muppets would never be the same.
I’m not angry any more, but the sadness is still there. I feel it every time I see — or, more accurately, hear — any of the characters he used to play. I don’t envy Steve Whitmire his job: how hard must it have been to pick up Kermit the first time after Henson’s death, put his hand inside the sleeve, and try to sound as much like Henson as possible? I’m glad that the Muppets, and Henson’s former characters, are still around. But they will never quite be the same.
Oh yes, there are videos as well. Link
(Image credit: Alan Light)
If you’re of a certain age, you’re no doubt familiar with Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, Gonzo the Great, the terrible jokes of Fozzie Bear and the dry humor of Statler and Waldorf. But are you familiar with what went on behind the scenes of The Muppet Show? Check out these tales from backstage (and a few others) for a few facts you may be less familiar with.
Although The Muppet Show had well over 100 guest hosts (and no host ever appeared twice), at first it looked like even turning up a single star to kick off the season. Eventually, all of the producers started to call in personal favors from friends in the industry, begging them to come cavort with puppets for a mere half hour. That all changed in the second season when ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev appeared. The Muppet Show was, well, kind of a strange form of entertainment at the time, so when people like Vincent Price and Florence Henderson and Phyllis Diller appeared, it sort of made sense. Rudolf Nureyev opened up the guest hosting spot to celebrities from all walks – once someone of his prominence hosted, everyone wanted to host.
Many times, guest stars would request scenes with their favorite Muppet. Not surprisingly, Miss Piggy was the highest in demand (not that she would expect anything less) with Animal coming in second.
Sometimes The Muppet Show did theme episodes that usually revolved around the talents or interests of the guest host for the week. For example, the theme of the Vincent Price episode was Monsters and Ghosts; the Muppets busted out their Western wear for Roy Rogers and Dale Evans; and the theme of the Paul Simon episode, was, appropriately, Paul Simon songs.
For the first few episodes, guest hosts were presented with a likeness of themselves as Muppets during the closing scenes. That’s dancer and actress Juliet Prowse with her mini me to the left. However, this ended up being too costly to do for each show, especially while the show was struggling during the first season. The practice stopped after the second episode, which Connie Stevens hosted. However, guest hosts did sometimes still receive a Muppet likeness when it was relevant to a sketch – for instance, Paul Williams sang “Old Fashioned Love Song” with a couple of his Muppet clones later in the first season. Picture from Muppet Central.
Kermit the Frog and Waldorf are the only two Muppets to appear in every single Muppet Show – 120 episode. Statler – Waldorf’s cohort – appeared in 119 episodes. He did not appear in episode 13, season four – but Waldorf’s wife Astoria does. Strangely, she looks exactly like Statler (that’s her in the picture). Fozzie Bear was in 115 episodes, Miss Piggy claimed 111 and Gonzo was in 106. Picture from MuppetWiki.
If you prefer to read your Muppet Show instead of watch it, you can do that. The Muppet Show Book chronicles the best parts from the first two seasons of the show. The scenes are illustrated and the dialogue looks like a script.
One of the pilot episodes of the show was called The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence, and it aired on ABC on March 19, 1975. Kermit and Co. spent the half-hour show making fun of all of the sex and violence on T.V. at the time by performing skits such as “The Seven Deadly Sins Pageant” and “The Wrestling Match.” The other pilot episode was called “The Muppets Valentine Show” and aired more than a year earlier, featuring guest host Mia Farrow.
Dr. Bunsen Honeydew used to have Muppet Labs all to himself – at least, until the second season. That’s when the red-headed, nonsense-speaking Beaker showed up to assist him with his experiments and inventions. Some of those inventions have included a gorilla detector, a banana sharpener, edible paper clips and exploding clothes.
Not directly related to The Muppet Show, but an interesting story nonetheless. If you’ve seen the movie Love Actually no doubt you remember the wedding scene where various members of the audience burst into “All You Need is Love,” complete with instruments. The movie’s director, Richard Curtis, got the inspiration for this scene from his attendance at Jim Henson’s memorial service. This is what he says about it:
“This was, in fact, inspired by Jim Henson’s funeral, which was the most moving thing I’ve ever been to, and at the end of it, one of the … Frank Oz was talking and he suddenly lifted up Kermit’s puppet and started to sing this song called “One Voice” ["Just One Person"], and it turned out that all the guys in the, in the memorial service, had brought their puppets with them, and they lifted them up, and when you turned around and looked backwards, there were fifty puppets all singing, and Big Bird walked down the aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral. They all came forward, and just this massive chorus of puppets all singing.”
The Harry Belafonte episode of The Muppet Show was one of the most critically-acclaimed episodes in the show’s entire run, thanks largely in part to the segment where he sings “Turn the World Around” with Muppets decked out in African tribal masks. It was reportedly one of Jim Henson’s favorite Muppet moments ever, so it’s fitting that Belafonte sang the song at one of Henson’s memorial services (he had two – New York in addition to London). You can still see The Muppet Show performance of “Turn the World Around” in its entirety:
Elizabeth Blair of NPR has interviewed many people, but she may have just met her match in Cookie Monster. From a February 2009 All Things Considered interview:
Years before Sesame Street, Muppet creator Jim Henson made a very similar monster who ate snack foods and computers in television commercials. The basic look and spirit were there, but the character we know today was still a ways off.
Enter puppeteer Frank Oz. For nearly 30 years, Henson and Oz were an extraordinary team. Cheryl Henson, Jim’s daughter and the president of the Jim Henson Foundation, says the two men shared a subversive sense of humor. Their Muppets were regulars on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show.
It was later, on a Muppet game show, that the cookie-fixated creature we know emerged, Oz says. The winning contestant was offered the chance to choose a prize: a vacation, a new house, $10,000 cash, or a cookie. He chose the cookie — and the Cookie Monster was born.
Om nom nom nom … COOKIEEE!!! … Link | The Cookie Monster Interview [embedded YouTube clip]
