Jim Henson

(born Sept. 24, 1936, Greenville, Miss., U.S.died May 16, 1990, New York, N.Y.) U.S. puppeteer and producer. He created a puppet show for a television station while in college and developed the first Muppets (melding marionettes and puppets). In the 1960s he made TV commercials. When PBS featured the Muppets on Sesame Street (from 1969), Henson achieved nationwide notice. He premiered The Muppet Show on television in 1976 and gained audiences in over 100 countries. He also produced and directed The Muppet Movie (1979) and its sequels.

For more information on Jim Henson, visit Britannica.com.

Jim Henson

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Influential children's entertainer Jim Henson (1936-1990) is best known for inventing the Muppets, asofter versions of puppets. His characters were a key component of "Sesame Street", the children's educational television program seen worldwide. Henson'screations also appeared in their own program, "The Muppet Show", as well as a number of other television programs and films.

Henson was born on September 24, 1936 in Greenville, Mississippi, and grew up in the nearby town of Leland. His father worked for the federal government as an agronomist. When Henson was about ten years old, his family moved to suburban Maryland when his father's job took him to Washington, D.C. While in high school, Henson became intrigued by television and its possibilities. He was a fan of early puppet television shows Kukla, Fran and Ollieand Life with Snarky Parker, and their creators Burr Tillstrom and Bil and Cora Baird, respectively. Henson became involved in a local puppetry club. During the summer of 1954, a local television station, WTOP in Washington, D.C., needed a puppeteer for one of their children's programs. Henson and a friend put together several puppets and worked there for a short time.

Created the First Muppets

In 1955, Henson entered the University of Maryland where he studied theater arts. He also landed a job as a puppeteer for another television station, WRC-TV, an NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C. Within a few months, Henson had his own show called Sam and Friends. The five-minute long program aired twice daily before two of the network's most popular shows for six years. While working on the show Henson met his future wife, another University of Maryland student named Jane Nebel. They eventually had five children together, who often accompanied their parents to work. Sam and Friends also marked the beginning of the Muppets, Henson's own invention.

Unlike puppets, who have solid, unchanging heads, Muppets were softer, with mouths that moved and expressive eyes. The Muppets were more animated than puppets. As was written in Broadcasting magazine: "Jim Henson was the first and the best to create a new form of puppetry tailored to the technical constraints and newfound freedoms of television." One of Henson's most famous Muppets, Kermit the Frog, was introduced on Sam and Friends in 1955. The original Kermit was made from Henson's mother's old spring coat and a ping pong ball cut in half. Kermit did not begin as a frog but evolved into one. Similarly, Kermit's character gradually became more complex. As Stephen Harrigan wrote in Life magazine: "he [Henson] did not just perform Kermit, he was Kermit." Harrison Rainie in U.S. News & World Report quoted Henson as calling Kermit "literally my right hand."

In addition to Kermit, Henson created over 2000 Muppets in his lifetime. James Collins of Time wrote, "The beauty of the Muppets … was that they were cuddly but not too cuddly, and not only cuddly. There is satire as sly wit.… By adding just enough tartness to a sweet overall spirit, Henson purveyed a kind of innocence that was plausible for the modern imagination. His knowningness allowed us to accept his real gifts: wonder, delight, optimism."

Henson took six years to graduate from the University of Maryland because of the demands of his television show. However, the success of Sam and Friends gave Henson the money to pay his way through college. On graduation day in 1960, Henson bought a Rolls Royce automobile to take himself to graduation. He then turned his attention to the Muppets full time. They were featured in commercials for Wilkins coffee, their first nation-wide exposure in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Throughout the 1960s, Henson and his Muppets appeared on television variety shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show, The Steve Allen Show, and The Jimmy Dean Show as well as NBC's The Today Show.

Moved to Sesame Street

In 1969, Henson was approached by the Children's Television Workshop for a new show they were creating called Sesame Street. Henson hesitated at first, because he did not want to be just a children's entertainer. But he eventually signed on and developed some of his most memorable Muppets: Grover, Big Bird, the Count, and Bert and Ernie, among others. Older Muppets like Kermit the Frog also made appearances. Henson's Muppets contributed to the popularity of the show. Sesame Street appeared in 100 countries in 14 different languages. Its international success made Henson famous throughout the world. As Eleanor Blau wrote in the New York Times, "the Muppets helped youngsters learn about everything from numbers and the alphabet to birth and death. They were role models and they imparted values."

By the mid-1970s, Henson wanted his own television show, but had problems getting one on American network television. Henson created two pilots for ABC under the title of The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence in the mid-1970s, but all major networks eventually passed on the project. Brian Henson told David Owen of The New Yorker, "The show was so wacky, so out of left field, that the networks didn't want anything to do with it." Still Henson managed to expand his Muppet empire in other ways. Muppets appeared in the first seven episodes of NBC's Saturday Night Live during its first season in 1975.

Henson's pilot was viewed by a British producer named Lew Grade. He agreed to fund the first season of what became known as The Muppet Show. The first episodes aired in 1976, appearing in syndication in the United States. The Muppet Show used both Muppets and Hollywood stars in a parody of the backstage antics. The Muppet Show also introduced another popular Muppet, the femme fatale pig named Miss Piggy, who was perpetually in love with Kermit. At its peak, the show had 235 million viewers each week in over 100 countries, making it one of the most widely watched programs in history. After five years, Henson voluntarily ended the show in 1981, when he feared the quality might begin to diminish. As Henson Associates Vice President Michael Firth told Kristin McMurran of People Weekly, "every time he reaches a plateau, he rumbles around and comes up with something new."

Henson's horizons expanded in a number of ways after The Muppet Show. He created new television programs. In 1983, Fraggle Rock was introduced, featuring completely new Muppet characters. Airing on HBO in the United States, the program featured three species living below ground, the Fraggles, the Gords, and the Dozers. The show primarily followed five Fraggles, including Gobo and Mokey, and promoted harmony in living. Fraggle Rock aired for four season in the United States, Canada and several other countries. It was eventually syndicated in 96 countries. Of his experience on the show, producer Duncan Kenworthy told Kristin McMurran of People Weekly, "When Jim directs, there is an excitement and a delight. He draws the best from everyone. He keeps track of the small things that are so key to all puppet work on television." Henson also produced a successful cartoon based on The Muppet Show called The Muppet Babies, beginning in 1984, as well as numerous television specials.

Henson also produced television shows that were relatively unsuccessful, including Jim Henson's The Storyteller, a rather dark show which featured adapted folktales and stories from mythology. It was canceled after only a few episodes. In 1989, Henson produced a variety show called The Jim Henson Hour. It was canceled after ten episodes, though it eventually won an Emmy award. He also created a show for HBO called The Ghost of Faffner Hall, which featured music, Muppets, and special celebrity guests.

Henson had done some corporate work beginning in the late 1960s, when he produced short films and videos for IBM that touched on business topics. Beginning in 1985, Henson expanded his corporate work and produced more than two dozen short films and videos designed for business meetings, continually adding new titles. He also designed characters and creatures for other films via the Jim Henson Creature Shop, based in London, England. For example, he designed the face masks for the movie version of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Henson also dabbled in his own feature films. Characters from The Muppet Show were featured in a trio of films beginning in 1979 with The Muppet Movie. It was followed by 1981's The Great Muppet Caper, which was also Henson's directorial debut, and 1984's The Muppets Take Manhattan. All three movies did extremely well at the box office. His subsequent efforts, however, did not fare as well. The Dark Crystal, with all new Muppets, made a poor box office showing in 1982. The dark fantasy, Labyrinth, was also a box office failure. These failings affected Henson deeply, though he was wealthy and had had good business sense throughout his career. Though a quiet, kind man, Henson was also a strong leader who valued employees and let them have fun with their jobs. Harrigan of Life magazine described him as "a quiet, authoritative, beloved man without a trace of aggression but with a whim of steel."

In 1989, Henson began negotiating a merger with Disney Corporation to reduce the pressure of running his own business. Had the sale been completed, Henson's already large fortune would have increased by an estimated $100 to $180 million. Puppeteer Kevin Clash told Harrigan of Life, "He wanted those characters [the Muppets] to be around when he wasn't and the main company that could do that was Disney." Henson had doubts about the merger because Disney's corporate policies were quite the opposite of his. As Owen of The New Yorker explained, "To Henson and his associates, the Muppets were not products; they were friends."

While the negotiations were still in progress, Henson became seriously ill. A kind and patient man, Henson did not alert a doctor or visit a hospital because he did not believe he was sick; nor did he want to bother anyone. He had been raised as a Christian Scientist, a religion that does not subscribe to conventional health care practices. By the time he sought medical attention, it was too late to treat him. Henson died an untimely death from an aggressive form of pneumonia called Group A streptococcus in New York City on May 16, 1990.

Henson left his company to his children, as he and his wife had separated in 1986. His son Brian continued the family tradition by becoming a puppeteer and president of Jim Henson Productions. The deal with Disney was never completed, but the companies did do some business together, most notably by including the Muppets in Walt Disney World and producing one of Henson's last ideas, the television show, Dinosaurs. At the time of Henson's death, James Collins in Time magazine wrote, "Through his work, he helped sustain the qualities of fancifulness, warmth and consideration that have been so threatened by our coarse, cynical age."

Jim Henson

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Henson, Jim (1936–1990), American creator of a puppetry style involving remote animatronic control and whole human bodies as well as the more traditional hands and rods. Buoyed by the international success of Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, and their spin‐off features, Henson and his team devised a range of creatures and narratives which pushed back the boundaries of the possible. In the two decades before Henson's death, his company produced two original fantasies and some characters in Alice in Wonderland for the cinema, and various Muppet variations on Grimm and nine invocations of the fireside storytelling tradition for television.

After Kermit the Frog became a favourite with American children following the 1969 start of the Sesame Street TV series, it was natural that one of the tales customized for him and other Muppet characters to perform would be ‘The Frog Prince’ (1971). However, Kermit does not play the hero; instead, he is the narrator, giving a frog's‐eye‐view of Grimm. Sitting by a pond, he recalls Robin, a frog he once met, who claimed to be really an enchanted prince and proved it by showing how he was unable to swim. A princess who could restore Robin lived nearby, but she, too, was bewitched and could only speak backwards. Kermit continues his recollections and recalls how he saved Robin from being eaten by an ogre and how all the other frogs rallied around to thwart an evil witch who was the cause of Robin's problems. Kermit reveals that once the princess kissed Robin, who became human and succeeded to the throne, the two were married. As the film ends, the royal couple arrive with their baby, Prince Kermit. The story thus becomes, in Henson's hands, a fairy tale about friendship and trust enlivened by comedy and songs.

During the rest of the 1970s Henson's energies went mainly into Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, but with the cinema feature The Dark Crystal (UK, 1982) he broke away from them completely, seeking to create a comprehensive other world, free of both Muppets and humans. In its conception there was inspiration from the bleak terrain and carrion‐eating birds of Dartmoor, from the fantasy illustrations of the artist Brian Froud, and from skills, such as stilt‐walking, that particular performers happened to have. Out of this mixture came such creatures as the Skeksis, decadent reptilian predators; the Garthim, crab‐like enforcers of the Skeksis law; two Gelflings, survivors of an elf‐like race; and the Landstriders, spidery long‐legged carriers. Around them Henson wove a complex story of a world under threat, ultimately saved by the triumph of Good over Evil.

Labyrinth (UK, 1986), Henson's second cinematic fantasy, differs from its precursor by having human characters at its centre: Henson had decided that puppet creatures are good at being funny or nasty, but do not work as protagonists, because an audience cannot satisfactorily identify with them. Chief among the humans are Sarah, a teenager who wishes herself rid of her grizzling baby brother; and David Bowie playing Jareth, the goblin king who grants Sarah's wish. The plot gives her 13 hours in which to find her brother in Jareth's labyrinth. She makes friends (an unreliable gnome, a gentle lumbering giant), who more or less help her. At the climactic moment, Sarah realizes that Jareth exists only because her mind has created him; when she states firmly that he has no power over her, he disappears. As well as this Wonderland/Oz scenario, the film contains some traditional fairy‐tale elements—an uncaring stepmother, a piece of poisoned fruit, a ballroom where Sarah dances precious hours away.

In 1988, as producer of an animated TV series about the Muppets as babies, Henson offered a critique of Disney in an episode called ‘Snow White and the Seven Muppets’; then, in the same year, he showed how he thought innovative fairy‐tale cinema could be done with The Storyteller (UK). Encouraged by a daughter who had recently studied folklore, Henson aimed to cut through 19th‐century bowdlerizations and try to recapture not only the essential meaning, but also the original mode of delivery, of some seminal tales. The focus was to be on a storyteller, with a dog as audience, seated by the fire in a large hall. Parts of each story would be dramatized, but the storyteller's spoken words would begin it, end it, and hold it all together.

Commissioned to write scripts for this blend of telling and showing, Anthony Minghella sifted stories from across Europe, comparing each version with others, homing in on the essence. In this he was helped by Stith Thompson's standard reference work, which groups together folk and fairy tales, with the same basic theme and structure, from all over the world. In particular, Minghella noted differing transition points within a grouping; for example, in a princess's search for her alienated husband (‘Hans My Hedgehog’), the number of pairs of shoes she wears out varies from version to version, as do what they were made of, and how long it was before she finds him.

Minghella selected nine basic narratives which dealt with strong themes such as he and Henson wanted—promises kept, promises broken, lust for power, parental rejection of children, the fear of incest, oneness with nature—and set about developing them into vehicles for television storytelling. Except for ‘The Soldier and Death’, which is derived from an Arthur Ransome translation of a Russian tale, they are each credited on screen as coming from ‘an early German folk tale’. However, Minghella's method was more ambitious than that phrase implies: he mixed and matched freely, added and subtracted with no heed for academic niggles, allowed the storyteller and the dog to comment on the characters and their actions. The result is a fresh re‐creation of the tales, rather than a straightforward adaptation of Grimm or any other pre‐existing texts.

Each programme is introduced by the storyteller's voice invoking a time when stories were used to keep the past alive, explain the present, and foretell the future. The language he uses to tell the tale—which never begins with the phrase ‘Once Upon a Time’—is full of devices designed to make it, for teller and listener, memorable and thrilling. Among them are alliteration (a journey takes in ‘cliff and cavern, crevasse and chasm, cave and canyon’); imagery (a princess who falls for her gardener ‘felt little fish swim up and down her back’); repetition (about a boy who is tempted to tell someone's secret, the storyteller says, ‘but he can't, so he musn't, so he won't’); and new‐minted words (a woman who at long last got the baby boy she had pined for ‘snoodled him to bits’). There is back‐and‐forth interplay between the storyteller and the listening dog, who follows false trails (‘I thought the babies had been killed’), insists that the teller has got a story wrong, or points out that a character has broken her vow of silence before the expiry of the time‐limit (‘Yes, clever‐clogs, the princess spoke three minutes too soon’). Teller and dog alike are visually linked to the dramatized segments in a continuing variety of ways: artefacts pass between storyteller and character, a king sheds a tear which falls on the dog's head.

One example of the nine tales presented in this style is ‘Sapsorrow’, which combines aspects of the Cinderella story with a different one, variously called ‘Rushie Coat’ and ‘All Kinds of Fur’, about a girl who escapes human society by turning herself into an animal. As Henson and Minghella present it, a widower king has three daughters, of whom two are bad, one good. Fearing to be lonely when his daughters leave him, the king proclaims he will wed the woman whose finger fits the late queen's ring. Nobody's does except that of the good daughter, Sapsorrow, who only tries it on by accident. Both of them shrink from such a union, but the law insists. Stalling, Sapsorrow insists on three dresses being made—one the colour of the moon, one that of the stars, one that of the sun—but when the wedding day dawns, she is gone. Three years later, now covered in filthy fur and known as Straggletag, she is in another country, scrubbing pots in a king's kitchen. Upstairs, at a grand ball, the prince will dance with no one until a beautiful woman in a moon‐coloured dress turns up; at the next ball she is in silver, then gold. A golden slipper is the only clue to her identity. The bad sisters turn up to try it on, and from them Straggletag learns that her father has died. She slips her foot into the shoe and secures the prince's promise that he will marry her as Straggletag, before revealing that she is also the princess he loves.

Since Henson's untimely death, the Creature Shop that he founded has remained pre‐eminent in the world of animatronics. The 1990s, however, have seen these skills being put to work primarily in the service of other people's films; as a result bears, mice, a gorilla, and an Oscar‐winning pig—all as zoologically accurate as possible—have ousted hedgehog princes and heartless giants.

Bibliography

Bacon, Matt, No Strings Attached: The Inside Story of Jim Henson's Creature Shop (1997).
Minghella, Anthony, Jim Henson's ‘The Storyteller’ (1988).
Ransome, Arthur, The War of the Birds and the Beasts (1984).
Thompson, Stith, Motif Index of Folk Literature (6 vols., 1932–6; 1955).
Zipes, Jack, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry (1997).

— Terry Staples

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Jim Henson

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The Cast of the Muppets

Puppeteer Jim Henson, the creator of Kermit the Frog, Bert and Ernie, Miss Piggy and a stable of Muppets, was born on this date in 1936. Though the Muppets had begun to appear in TV shows in the 1950s, they got their big break in 1969 when they were invited to be on Sesame Street. They then got their own show, The Muppet Show, and made several movies. Henson also created the TV show Fraggle Rock and made the movies The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. Jim Henson died suddenly in 1990 of bacterial pneumonia. Steve Whitmire, the new voice of Kermit and Ernie, was born on this date in 1959.

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Columbia Encyclopedia:

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Henson, Jim (James Maury Henson), 1936-90, American puppeteer, creator of the Muppets, b. Greenville, Miss., grad. Univ. of Maryland (A.B., 1960). In 1954 he got his first job as a local television puppeteer, soon created (1955) his alter ego, the debonair Kermit the Frog, and subsequently introduced several early Muppets (a cross between hand puppets and marionettes, with mobile, expressive faces and gesturing hands). Henson, associate Frank Oz, and the numerous Muppets went on to star (beginning in 1969) in public television's Sesame Street, which became an international hit. The Muppet Show, a television variety series (1976-80), was also a success, and Henson developed many other television projects. In addition to Kermit, Henson's dramatis personae include the flamboyant Miss Piggy, the insatiable Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, Bert and Ernie, the nonpuppet Big Bird, and a host of others. Henson's Muppets began their film career in The Muppet Movie (1979), later appearing in The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984) and a number of other films. Henson died of pneumonia in 1990, and in 2000 his company was sold to a German firm. His family purchased the company back in 2003, and originates and runs a variety of mainly Muppet-related projects.

Bibliography

See G. Woods, Jim Henson (1987).

Quotes By:

Jim Henson

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Quotes:

"Nobody creates a fad. It just happens. People love going along with the idea of a beautiful pig. It's like a conspiracy."

AMG AllMovie Guide:

Jim Henson

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Biography

For as long as he could remember, Mississippi born Jim Henson was a devoted fan of puppeteers and ventriloquists; his idols included Edgar Bergen, Burr Tillstrom and Bil and Cora Baird. While attending high school in Maryland (where his meteorologist father had been relocated), Henson was hired for the staff of the Washington, D.C. kiddy show Sam and His Friends. By the time he was a freshman at the University of Maryland, the lanky, goateed Henson was in charge of the TV show's puppets, with his future wife Jane Nebel as his assistant.

It was during the Washington years that Henson hit upon the concept of the Muppet: part marionette, part puppet. His most popular character was Kermit the Frog, whom Henson fashioned out of his mom's overcoat in 1959. TV commercial appearances by the Muppets led to guest stints on The Jack Paar Show, The Today Show, The Tonight Show, and The Jimmy Dean Show. While Henson and his partner Frank Oz handled the voices for most of the characters, the ever-expanding Muppet cast required a retinue of willing (and quick-witted) assistants. Henson's first taste of movie-making was the Oscar-nominated 1965 short Timepiece, but at the time he preferred television to films. In 1969, the Muppets became a regular feature on the spectacularly popular PBS daily Sesame Street, which turned out to be both a blessing and a curse for Henson: his characters were now highly marketable, but he was being perceived as exclusively a "children's entertainer." As such, he lost a lot of adult-oriented assignments. This "kiddy" onus prevented ABC from picking up Henson's half-hour The Muppet Show in 1975, whereupon Henson offered the program to syndication. As a result, The Muppet Show became one of the biggest non-network hits in TV history, as well as a great international success. Capitalizing on the popularity of "star" muppets Kermit and Miss Piggy, Henson and his staff concocted the 1979 all-star feature film The Muppet Movie, which made scads of money. With 1981's The Great Muppet Caper, Henson made his feature film directorial debut; he would later direct Labyrinth (1986), and with Frank Oz, co-direct The Dark Crystal (1982). After many years of avoiding Saturday morning network TV, Henson collaborated with Marvel Studios on the weekly cartoon series Muppet Babies (1984), which added more Emmy awards to his already top-heavy trophy shelf; less successful was the 1986 animated version of Henson's HBO series Fraggle Rock. During the late '80s, Henson expanded his activities to designing "creatures" for other producer's projects, notably the 1990 movie blockbuster Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In May of 1990, Henson was poised to sell his Muppet empire to Disney Studios. Suddenly stricken with streptococcus pneumonia, Jim Henson checked himself into New York Hospital, where he died a few days later at the age of 53. The Muppet operation was taken over by Jim Henson's son Brian Henson. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Filmography:

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AMG AllMusic Guide to Classical Music:

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Biography

As virtually anyone remotely familiar with American television knows, Jim Henson was the most popular children's entertainer of the 20th century, a gentle genius and master puppeteer who pulled off the rare feat of appealing to both children and adults with his combination of innocence and sly wit. Led by Kermit the Frog (one of his earliest characters), Henson's beloved creations, the Muppets, populated two smash-hit television programs -- the educational children's show Sesame Street (1970-present) and the syndicated variety show The Muppet Show (1976-1981) -- as well as a number of feature films, TV specials, and spin-off recordings. Henson's shockingly sudden death at age 53 robbed the world of a great creative spirit whose childlike enthusiasm for life served as perhaps his greatest legacy. James Maury Henson was born September 24, 1936, in Greenville, MS, and raised in nearby Leland, where his father worked for the Department of Agriculture. When young Jim was in fifth grade, the family was reassigned to the D.C. suburb of Hyattsville, MD; this allowed Henson to spend more time with his maternal grandmother, who was responsible not only for teaching him needlework and sculpture -- skills that would later prove crucial -- but also for encouraging his budding imagination. While in high school, Henson became fascinated with television, theater, and puppetry, and in one class demonstrated that by focusing only on a puppet's upper half, television cameras could allow much greater freedom of movement than the traditional stage provided. During his senior year in 1954, Henson and his brother, Paul, performed as puppeteers on a Saturday morning children's television show on local station WTOP, marking the public debut of the Muppets. Later that fall, Henson enrolled at the University of Maryland where he began taking studio art classes in hopes of becoming a commercial artist. His puppetry class would prove more important, however; not only was he back on local television in a matter of months, but he also met performing partner Jane Nebel, who would become his wife in 1959. Henson was given his own five-minute show on the local NBC affiliate WRC; Sam and Friends aired live twice a day, and in 1955 saw the first televised appearance of Kermit the Frog. Not only would Kermit grow to become Henson's flagship character, but his design was revolutionary for the time: his face was built of softer material than most puppets, allowing for greater expressiveness and nuance, and his limbs were moved with rods instead of marionette strings, which increased the range and precision of the puppet's gestures. All of this worked very smoothly with the new medium of television and its close-up views, and by the time Henson graduated from college in 1960, his characters were appearing on nationally televised variety shows (Steve Allen, Jack Paar, etc.) and the Today show, as well as in advertisements for a variety of clients. In 1961, Henson's company hired writer/puppeteer Jerry Juhl, who would collaborate with Henson for decades, and ceased production of Sam and Friends. Henson realized he had something potentially big on his hands and relocated to the media capital of New York City in 1963. There, he hired two future mainstays, puppet builder Don Sahlin and puppeteer/voice talent Frank Oznowicz, who became better-known as Frank Oz. The new location allowed Henson to begin making weekly appearances on Today, and his company was contacted by singer and Western star Jimmy Dean, who wanted to add a Henson character to his own series. Thus it was not Kermit the Frog, but the Henson/Sahlin/Oz creation Rowlf -- the brown, floppy-eared, piano-playing, gravel-voiced dog -- who became the first Muppet to achieve national fame, appearing on The Jimmy Dean Show from 1963-1966. Henson's company was doing quite well financially, which allowed him the freedom to experiment in the area of filmmaking. During the '60s, he made several experimental short films which helped increase his technical abilities; the first, 1964's Timepiece, was even nominated for an Academy Award. His biggest break, however, came in 1969, when he was contacted by public TV producer Joan Ganz Cooney of the Children's Television Workshop, regarding a new educational series she was creating called Sesame Street. Cooney invited Henson to create a cast of Muppet characters who would appeal to very young children and provide the show's main focus, while interacting with a supporting human cast. Henson creations like Oscar the Grouch, Bert and Ernie, Grover and Cookie Monster (two of the show's many lovable monsters), the Count, and of course the show's unofficial mascot, Big Bird, debuted in 1970; they became not just an Emmy-winning worldwide success, but pop-cultural icons, and perhaps the most consistently effective argument in favor of the whole concept of public television. Riding high on his success, Henson produced two feature-length, prime-time TV specials involving the Muppets: a 1971 retelling of The Frog Prince and 1972's The Muppet Musicians of Bremen. However, despite Henson's proven appeal, as well as ratings evidence that the specials' audiences were mostly adult, U.S. network executives continually refused Henson's idea for a Muppet-driven variety show that would appeal to all ages but be geared toward adults. For three years, it looked as though Henson's fears of being pigeonholed over Sesame Street were justified. Finally, though, in 1975 -- shortly after an aborted first-season collaboration with Saturday Night Live -- London producer Lord Lew Grade took a chance on Henson's concept and The Muppet Show was born. Debuting in syndication in 1976, The Muppet Show wasn't an immediate hit, but once word of the show's witty sketches and its array of guest stars got around, it ended up becoming the most watched comedy show in the world, airing in over 100 countries. Another challenge awaited Henson: the big screen. Once again, the same doubts about his characters' adaptability to a new format surfaced, and once again, Henson proved himself unequivocally. The Muppet Movie, released in 1979, became a smash hit among audiences of all ages and earned Academy Award nominations for Best Score and Best Song ("The Rainbow Connection") With the Muppets now having conquered the whole of the entertainment world, Henson retired The Muppet Show in 1981 to concentrate on new projects. A sequel to The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, was released, this time with Henson in the director's chair. However, his consuming passion was for a darker, more serious fantasy film being produced in collaboration with artist Brian Froud. Released in 1982, The Dark Crystal introduced dazzling new effects and advances in the field of animatronic puppetry, serving notice that Henson's Creature Shop studio was on the cutting edge of those fields (it had already designed the Frank Oz-voiced Yoda for The Empire Strikes Back). However, it was not a hit with moviegoers, who hadn't expected this sort of a detour from the man behind the Muppets. Undaunted, Henson created another children's series, this one for pay-cable channel HBO; Fraggle Rock debuted in 1983, the year before the third and final Muppet film to be completed in Henson's lifetime, The Muppets Take Manhattan. Also in 1984, the Saturday morning cartoon Jim Henson's Muppet Babies debuted and in 1986, Henson embarked on another film collaboration with Brian Froud, Labyrinth, which starred David Bowie. From 1987 to 1989, Henson produced the TV series Jim Henson's Storytellers, which combined classic folk tales with technical effects from the Creature Shop. All of that is to say that the '80s were an extraordinarily busy decade for Henson. His myriad projects and passion for technical and design advances left him unable to spend as much time as he would have liked with his five children, but they also took their toll on his health. In May 1990, Henson contracted what he assumed was a case of the flu; however, when he began having trouble breathing, his wife convinced him to go to the hospital. Henson's illness was not the flu, but an extremely rare -- and aggressive -- strain of bacterial pneumonia. Antibiotic treatment failed, and on May 16, less than 24 hours after entering the hospital, Jim Henson was dead. A shocked nation mourned the loss of one of its best-loved entertainers, but Henson's spirit lives on in his creations and characters, the products of one of the most fertile imaginations of the 20th century. ~ Steve Huey, Rovi

Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Jim Henson

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For the company founded by Henson, see The Jim Henson Company. For individuals named James Hanson, see James Hanson (disambiguation).

Jim Henson
Henson at the 1989 Emmy Awards
Born	James Maury Henson September 24, 1936(1936-09-24) Greenville, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	May 16, 1990(1990-05-16) (aged 53) New York City, New York, U.S.
Cause of death	Organ failure
Nationality	American
Education	Northwestern High School
Alma mater	University of Maryland, College Park
Occupation	Puppeteer Film director Television producer
Years active	1954–90
Known for	Creator of The Muppets
Home town	Leland, Mississippi
Board member of	Jim Henson Foundation The Jim Henson Company Jim Henson's Creature Shop
Spouse	Jane Nebel (1959–86; separated)
Children	Lisa Henson Cheryl Henson Brian Henson John Henson Heather Henson
Parents	Paul Ransom Henson Betty Marcella (née Brown)
Awards	Courage Conscience Award Disney Legend Award Emmy Award

James Maury "Jim" Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer, best known as the creator of The Muppets. As a puppeteer, Henson performed in various television programs, such as Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, films such as The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper, and created advanced puppets for projects like Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth. He was also an Oscar-nominated film director, Emmy Award-winning television producer, and the founder of The Jim Henson Company, the Jim Henson Foundation, and Jim Henson's Creature Shop. He died on May 16, 1990 of organ failure resulting from a Group A streptococcal infection caused by Streptococcus pyogenes.

Henson, who was born in Greenville, Mississippi and educated at University of Maryland, College Park, is one of the most widely known puppeteers ever.^[1] He created Sam and Friends as a freshman in College Park. After suffering struggles with programs that he created, he eventually was selected to participate in Sesame Street. During this time, he also contributed to Saturday Night Live. The success of Sesame Street spawned The Muppet Show, which featured Muppets created by Henson. He also co-created with Michael Jacobs the television show Dinosaurs during his final years. On June 16, 2011, he posthumously received the Disney Legends Award.

Contents

1 Early life
2 Projects in the 1960s
3 Sesame Street
4 Expansion of audience
5 Transition to the big screen
6 Later career
- 6.1 Natural History Project and Dinosaurs
7 Illness and death
8 Legacy
9 Tributes
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links

Early life

Jim Henson was born in Greenville, Mississippi, the younger of two boys. His parents were Betty Marcella (née Brown) and Paul Ransom Henson, an agronomist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.^[2] He was raised as a Christian Scientist and spent his early childhood in Leland, Mississippi, moving with his family to Hyattsville, Maryland, near Washington, DC, in the late 1940s.^[3] He later remembered the arrival of the family's first television as "the biggest event of his adolescence,"^[4] having been heavily influenced by radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and the early television puppets of Burr Tillstrom (on Kukla, Fran, and Ollie) and Bil and Cora Baird.^[4]

In 1954 while attending Northwestern High School, he began working for WTOP-TV, creating puppets for a Saturday morning children's show called The Junior Morning Show. After graduating from high school, Henson enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, as a studio arts major, thinking he might become a commercial artist.^[5] A puppetry class offered in the applied arts department introduced him to the craft and textiles courses in the College of Home Economics, and he graduated in 1960 with a B.S. in home economics. As a freshman, he had been asked to create Sam and Friends, a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV. The characters on Sam and Friends were forerunners of Muppets, and the show included a prototype of Henson's most famous character: Kermit the Frog.^[6]Henson would remain at WRC for seven years from 1954 to 1961. "Among the first of his assignments at WRC was Afternoon, a magazine show aimed at housewives. This marked his first collaboration with Jane Nebel—the woman who later became his wife"^[7]

In the show he began experimenting with techniques that would change the way puppetry had been used on television, including using the frame defined by the camera shot to allow the puppeteer to work from off-camera. Believing that television puppets needed to have "life and sensitivity,"^[8] Henson began making characters from flexible, fabric-covered foam rubber, allowing them to express a wider array of emotions at a time when many puppets were made of carved wood.^[2] A marionette's arms are manipulated by strings, but Henson used rods to move his Muppets' arms, allowing greater control of expression. Additionally, Henson wanted the Muppet characters to "speak" more creatively than was possible for previous puppets—which had seemed to have random mouth movements—so he used precise mouth movements to match the dialogue.

When Henson began work on Sam and Friends, he asked fellow University of Maryland freshman Jane Nebel to assist him. The show was a financial success, but after graduating from college, Jim began to have doubts about going into a career as a puppeteer. He wandered off to Europe for several months, where he was inspired by European puppeteers who look on their work as an art form.^[9] Upon Henson's return to the United States, he and Jane began dating. They were married in 1959 and had five children, Lisa (b. 1960), Cheryl (b. 1961), Brian (b. 1962), John (b. 1965), and Heather (b. 1970).

Projects in the 1960s

Despite the success of Sam and Friends, which ran for six years, Henson spent much of the next two decades working in commercials, talk shows, and children's projects before being able to realize his dream of the Muppets as "entertainment for everybody".^[4] The popularity of his work on Sam and Friends in the late fifties led to a series of guest appearances on network talk and variety shows. Henson himself appeared as a guest on many shows, including The Ed Sullivan Show (although on his appearance on the Sept. 11, 1966 episode of the show—released to DVD on 2011 as part of a collection of episodes featuring the Rolling Stones—Sullivan mis-introduces Henson as "Jim Newsom and his Puppets"). This greatly increased exposure led to hundreds of commercial appearances by Henson characters throughout the sixties.

Among the most popular of Henson's commercials was a series for the local Wilkins Coffee company in Washington, D.C.,^[10] in which his Muppets were able to get away with a greater level of slapstick violence than might have been acceptable with human actors and would later find its way into many acts on The Muppet Show. In the first Wilkins ad, a Muppet named Wilkins is poised behind a cannon seen in profile. Another Muppet named Wontkins (with Rowlf's voice) is in front of its barrel. Wilkins asks, "What do you think of Wilkins Coffee?" and Wontkins responds gruffly, "Never tasted it!" Wilkins fires the cannon and blows Wontkins away, then turns the cannon directly toward the viewer and ends the ad with, "Now, what do you think of Wilkins?" Henson later explained, "Till then, [advertising] agencies believed that the hard sell was the only way to get their message over on television. We took a very different approach. We tried to sell things by making people laugh."^[11] The first seven-second commercial for Wilkins was an immediate hit and was syndicated and re-shot by Henson for local coffee companies across the United States;^[10] he ultimately produced more than 300 coffee ads.^[11] The same setup was used to pitch Kraml Milk in the Chicago, Il., area and Red Diamond coffee.

In 1963 Henson and his wife moved to New York City, where the newly formed Muppets, Inc., would reside for some time. Jane quit muppeteering to raise their children. Henson hired writer Jerry Juhl in 1961 and puppeteer Frank Oz in 1963 to replace her.^[12] Henson later credited both writers with developing much of the humor and character of his Muppets.^[13] Henson and Oz developed a close friendship and a performing partnership that lasted 27 years; their teamwork is particularly evident in their portrayals of the characters of Bert and Ernie and Kermit and Fozzie Bear.^[14]

Henson's sixties' talk show appearances culminated when he devised Rowlf, a piano-playing anthropomorphic dog. Rowlf became the first Muppet to make regular appearances on a network show, The Jimmy Dean Show. Henson was so grateful for this break that he offered Jimmy Dean a 40% interest in his production company, but Dean declined stating that Henson deserved all the rewards for his own work, a decision of conscience Dean never regretted.^[15] From 1963 to 1966, Henson began exploring film-making and produced a series of experimental films.^[16] His nine-minute Time Piece was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an Oscar for Short Film in 1966. The year 1969 saw the production of the NBC-TV movie The Cube—another Henson-produced experimental film.

Also around this time, the first drafts of a live-action experimental film script were written with Jerry Juhl, which would eventually become Henson's last unproduced full-length screenplay, Tale of Sand. The script remained in the Henson Company archives until the screenplay was adapted in the 2012 graphic novel, Jim Henson's Tale of Sand.

Sesame Street

Main article: Sesame Street

In 1969, Joan Ganz Cooney and the team at the Children's Television Workshop asked Henson to work on Sesame Street, a visionary children's program for public television. Part of the show was set aside for a series of funny, colorful puppet characters living on the titular street. These included Oscar the Grouch, Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster and Big Bird. Henson performed the characters of Ernie, game-show host Guy Smiley, and Kermit, who appeared as a roving television news reporter. It was around this time that a frill was added around Kermit's neck to make him more frog-like. The collar was functional as well: it covered the joint where the Muppet's neck and body met.

At first Henson's Muppets appeared separately from the realistic segments on the Street, but after a poor test-screening in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the show was revamped to integrate the two, placing much greater emphasis on Henson's work. Though Henson would often downplay his role in Sesame Street's success, Cooney frequently praised Jim's work and, in 1990, the Public Broadcasting Service called him "the spark that ignited our fledgling broadcast service."^[4] The success of Sesame Street also allowed Henson to stop producing commercials. He later remembered that "it was a pleasure to get out of that world".^[10]

In addition to creating and performing Muppet characters, Henson was involved in producing various film and animation insets during the first two seasons. During the first, Henson produced a series of counting films for the numbers 1 through 10, which always ended with a baker (voiced by Henson) falling down the stairs while carrying the featured number of desserts. For seasons two to seven, Henson worked on a variety of inserts for the numbers 2 through 12, in a number of different styles—including film ("Dollhouse", "Number Three Ball Film"), stop-motion ("King of Eight", "Queen of Six"), cut-out animation ("Eleven Cheer"), and computer animation ("Nobody Counts To 10").

Concurrently with the first years of Sesame Street, Henson directed Tales from Muppetland, a short series of TV movie specials—in the form of comedic tellings of classic fairy tales—aimed at a young audience and hosted by Kermit the Frog. The series included Hey, Cinderella!, The Frog Prince, and The Muppet Musicians of Bremen.

Expansion of audience

Concerned that the company was becoming typecast as a purveyor of solely children's entertainment, Henson, Frank Oz, and his team targeted an adult audience with a series of sketches on the first season of the groundbreaking comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL). Eleven "Dregs and Vestiges" sketches, set mostly in the Land of Gorch, aired between October 1975 and January 1976, with four additional appearances in March, April, May, and September. Henson recalled that "I saw what [creator Lorne Michaels] was going for and I really liked it and wanted to be a part of it, but somehow what we were trying to do and what his writers could write for it never gelled."^[10] The SNL writers never got comfortable writing for the characters, and frequently disparaged Henson's creations; one, Michael O'Donoghue, memorably quipped, "I won't write for felt."^[17]

Around the time of Henson's characters' final appearances on SNL, he began developing two projects featuring the Muppets: a Broadway show and a weekly television series.^[10] In 1976 the series was initially rejected by the American networks who believed that Muppets would appeal to only a child audience. Henson was finally able to convince British impresario Lew Grade to finance the show, which would be shot in the United Kingdom and syndicated worldwide.^[9] That same year, he abandoned work on his Broadway show and moved his creative team to England, where The Muppet Show began filming. The Muppet Show featured Kermit as host, and a variety of other memorable characters, notably Miss Piggy, Gonzo the Great, and Fozzie Bear. Kermit's role on The Muppet Show was often compared by his co-workers to Henson's role in Muppet Productions: a shy, gentle boss with "a whim of steel"^[14] who "[ran] things as firmly as it is possible to run an explosion in a mattress factory."^[18] Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, remembered that Henson "would never say he didn't like something. He would just go 'Hmm.' That was famous. And if he liked it, he would say, 'Lovely!' "^[3]Henson himself recognized Kermit as an alter-ego, though he thought that Kermit was bolder than his creator; he once said of Kermit, "He can say things I hold back."^[19]

Jim Henson was the performer for several well known characters, including Kermit the Frog, Rowlf the Dog, Dr. Teeth, the Swedish Chef, Waldorf, Link Hogthrob, and the Muppet Newsman.

Transition to the big screen

Three years after the start of The Muppet Show, the Muppets appeared in their first theatrical feature film, 1979's The Muppet Movie. The film was both a critical and financial success;^[20] it made US$65.2 million domestically and (at the time) was the 61st highest-grossing film ever made.^[21]

A song from the film, "The Rainbow Connection", sung by Henson as Kermit, hit No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1981, a Henson-directed sequel, The Great Muppet Caper, followed, and Henson decided to end the still-popular Muppet Show to concentrate on making films.^[2] From time to time, the Muppet characters continued to appear in made-for-TV-movies and television specials.

In addition to his own puppetry projects, Henson also aided others in their work. In 1979, he was asked by the producers of the Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back to aid make-up artist Stuart Freeborn in the creation and articulation of enigmatic Jedi Master Yoda. Henson suggested to Star Wars creator George Lucas that he use Frank Oz as the puppeteer and voice of Yoda. Oz voiced Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back and each of the four subsequent Star Wars films, and the naturalistic, lifelike Yoda became one of the most popular characters of the Star Wars franchise. Lucas even lobbied unsuccessfully to have Oz nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award.^[22]

In 1982, Henson founded the Jim Henson Foundation to promote and develop the art of puppetry in the United States. Around that time, he also began creating darker and more realistic fantasy films that did not feature the Muppets and displayed "a growing, brooding interest in mortality."^[14] With 1982's The Dark Crystal, which he co-directed with Frank Oz and also co-wrote, Henson said he was "trying to go toward a sense of realism—toward a reality of creatures that are actually alive [where] it's not so much a symbol of the thing, but you're trying to [present] the thing itself."^[10] To provide a visual style distinct from the Muppets, the puppets in The Dark Crystal were based on conceptual artwork by Brian Froud.

The Dark Crystal was a financial and critical success, and, a year later, the Muppet-starring The Muppets Take Manhattan (directed by Frank Oz) did fair box-office business, grossing $25.5 million domestically and ranking as one of the top 40 films of 1984.^[23] However, 1986's Labyrinth, a Crystal-like fantasy that Henson directed by himself, was considered (in part due to its cost) a commercial disappointment. Despite some positive reviews (The New York Times called it "a fabulous film"),^[24] the commercial failure of Labyrinth demoralized Henson to the point that son Brian Henson remembered the time of its release as being "the closest I've seen him to turning in on himself and getting quite depressed."^[14] The film later became a cult classic.^[25] Henson and his wife also separated the same year, although they remained close for the rest of his life.^[3] Jane later said that Jim was so involved with his work that he had very little time to spend with her or their children.^[3] All five of his children began working with Muppets at an early age, partly because, as Cheryl Henson remembered, "one of the best ways of being around him was to work with him".^[8]

Later career

Henson on the set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990).

Though he was still engaged in creating children's television, such as the successful eighties shows Fraggle Rock and the animated Muppet Babies, Henson continued to explore darker, mature themes with the folk tale and mythology-oriented show The Storyteller (1988). The Storyteller won an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program. The next year, Henson returned to television with The Jim Henson Hour, which mixed lighthearted Muppet fare with riskier material. The show was critically well received and won Henson another Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Variety or Music Program, but was canceled after 13 episodes due to low ratings. Henson blamed its failure on NBC's constant rescheduling.^[26]

In late 1989, Henson entered into negotiations to sell his company to The Walt Disney Company for almost $150 million, hoping that, with Disney handling business matters, he would "be able to spend a lot more of my time on the creative side of things."^[26] By 1990, he had completed production on a television special, The Muppets at Walt Disney World, and a Disney World (Later Disney California Adventure Park as well) attraction, Jim Henson's Muppet*Vision 3D, and was developing film ideas and a television series titled Muppet High.^[3]

Natural History Project and Dinosaurs

In the late 1980s, Henson worked with illustrator/designer William Stout on a feature film starring animatronic dinosaurs with the working title of The Natural History Project. In 1991, news stories written around the premiere of The Jim Henson Company-produced Dinosaurs sitcom highlighted the show's connection to Henson. "Jim Henson dreamed up the show's basic concept about three years ago," said a New York Times article in April 1991. "'He wanted it to be a sitcom with a pretty standard structure, with the biggest differences being that it's a family of dinosaurs and their society has this strange toxic life style,' said [his son] Brian Henson. But until The Simpsons took off, said Alex Rockwell, a vice president of the Henson organization, 'people thought it was a crazy idea.'"^[27] A New Yorker article said that Henson continued to work on a dinosaur project (presumably the Dinosaurs concept) until the "last months of his life."^[28]

Illness and death

During production of his later projects, Henson began to experience flu-like symptoms.^[3] On May 4, 1990, Henson made an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show, one of his last television appearances. At the time, he mentioned to his publicist that he was tired and had a sore throat, but felt that it would go away.^[3]

On May 12, 1990, Henson traveled to Ahoskie, North Carolina, with his daughter Cheryl to visit his father and stepmother. The next day, feeling tired and ill, he consulted a physician in North Carolina, who could find no evidence of pneumonia by physical examination and prescribed no treatment except aspirin.^[29] Henson returned to New York on an earlier flight and cancelled a Muppet recording session scheduled for May 14.^[3]

Henson's wife Jane, from whom he was separated, came to visit and sat with him talking throughout the evening. At 2 am on May 15, Henson was having trouble breathing and began coughing up blood. He suggested to his wife that he might be dying, but did not want to bother going to the hospital which would have gone against his religion. She later told People Magazine that it was likely due to his desire not to be a bother to people.^[3]

Two hours later, Henson finally agreed to go to New York Hospital. By the time he was admitted at 4:58 am, he could no longer breathe on his own and had abscesses in his lungs. He was placed on a mechanical ventilator to help him breathe, but his condition deteriorated rapidly into septic shock, despite aggressive treatment with multiple antibiotics. After two cardiac arrests over 20 hours after he was admitted, Jim Henson died on the morning of May 16, 1990, at the age of 53.

The official cause of death was first reported as Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterial infection.^[4] Bacterial pneumonia is usually caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae, an alpha-hemolytic species of Streptococcus. Henson's cause of death, however, was organ failure resulting from Streptococcus pyogenes, a severe Group A streptococcal infection.^[30] S. pyogenes is the bacterial species that causes strep throat, scarlet fever, and rheumatic fever. It can also cause other infections.

On May 21, a public memorial service was held in New York City at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Another one was held on July 2 at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. As per Henson's wishes, no one in attendance wore black, and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band finished the service by performing "When the Saints Go Marching In". Harry Belafonte sang "Turn the World Around," a song he had debuted on The Muppet Show, as each member of the congregation waved, with a puppeteer's rod, an individual, brightly colored foam butterfly.^[31]^[32] Later, Big Bird (performed by Caroll Spinney) walked out onto the stage and sang Kermit the Frog's signature song, "Bein' Green".^[33] Henson was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery. His ashes were scattered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at his ranch.^[34]

In the final minutes of the two-and-a-half hour service, six of the core Muppet performers sang, in their characters' voices, a medley of Jim Henson's favorite songs, culminating in a performance of "Just One Person" that began with Richard Hunt singing alone, as Scooter.^[35] "As each verse progressed," Henson employee Chris Barry recalled, "each Muppeteer joined in with their own Muppets until the stage was filled with all the Muppet performers and their beloved characters."^[33] The funeral was later described by LIFE as "an epic and almost unbearably moving event." The image of a growing number of performers singing "Just One Person" was recreated for the 1990 television special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson and inspired screenwriter Richard Curtis, who attended the London service, to write the growing-orchestra wedding scene of his 2003 film Love Actually.^[36]

Henson's sudden death resulted in an outpouring of public and professional affection. There have since been numerous tributes and dedications in his memory. Henson’s companies, which are now run by his children, continue to produce films and television shows.

Legacy

The Jim Henson Company and the Jim Henson Foundation continued after his death, producing new series and specials. Jim Henson's Creature Shop, founded by Henson, also continues to build creatures for a large number of other films and series (e.g. the science-fiction production Farscape, the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the movie MirrorMask) and is considered one of the most advanced and well respected creators of film creatures. His son Brian and daughter Lisa are currently the co-chairs and co-CEOs of the company; his daughter Cheryl is the president of the foundation. Steve Whitmire, a veteran member of the Muppet puppeteering crew, has assumed the roles of Kermit the Frog and Ernie, the most famous characters formerly played by Jim Henson.^[37]

On February 17, 2004, it was announced that the Muppets (excluding the Sesame Street characters, which are separately owned by Sesame Workshop) and the Bear in the Big Blue House properties had been sold by Henson's heirs to The Walt Disney Company. However, as a result, Sesame Workshop (formerly the Children's Television Workshop), also lost the rights to Kermit the Frog, and he could no longer appear on any new material on Sesame Street, although Kermit did later appear on the premiere of the show's 40th season on November 10, 2009.

One of Henson's last projects is a show attraction in Walt Disney World and Disneyland featuring the Muppets, called Muppet*Vision 3D, which opened in 1991, shortly after his death.

The Jim Henson Company retains the Creature Shop, as well as the rest of its film and television library including Fraggle Rock, Farscape, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth.^[38]

In 2010 it was announced that the first major biography of Henson, sanctioned by the family and the Jim Henson Legacy, was under way.^[39]

Tributes

Disney artists Joe Lanzisero and Tim Kirk drew this tribute of Mickey Mouse consoling Kermit the Frog, which appeared in the Summer 1990 issue of WD Eye, Walt Disney Imagineering’s employee magazine.

Henson is honored both as himself and as Kermit the Frog on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Only two other people have received this honor: Mel Blanc, the voice actor of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck; and Walt Disney, the voice actor of Mickey Mouse.
The theater at his alma mater, Northwestern High School, in Hyattsville, MD, is named in his honor.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze and The Muppet Christmas Carol are both dedicated to him.
Stephen Lynch produced a song titled "Jim Henson's Dead", in which he pays homage to many of the characters from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street.
Henson featured in The American Adventure in Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort.
Philip Roth often quotes Jim Henson in his Sabbath's Theater as the "great regret" for Mickey Sabbath.
The Jim Henson Museum, located in his hometown of Leland, Mississippi, features an assortment of original Muppet characters, official certificates from the Mississippi Legislature honoring Henson and his characters, and a statue of Kermit in the middle of the stream behind the museum.
The 1990 television special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson allowed the Muppets themselves to pay tribute to Henson. The special featured interviews with Steven Spielberg and others.
Celtic singer, musician, and songwriter Heather Alexander wrote a song titled "Storyteller" in 1990 as a tribute to Jim Henson which harkens to his "Storyteller" series as well as his role as a modern storyteller.
Tom Smith's Henson tribute song, "A Boy and His Frog", won the Pegasus Award for Best Folk Song in 1991.
Henson was featured in Boyz II Men's 1991 video, "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday".
Episode 2880 of Sesame Street (which aired on November 15, 1991) was dedicated in his memory, with a memorial card following the closing credits.
The classes of 1994, 1998, and 1999 at the University of Maryland, College Park, Henson's alma mater, commissioned a life-size statue of Henson and Kermit the Frog, which was dedicated on September 24, 2003, Henson's 67th birthday. The statue cost $217,000, and is displayed outside Maryland's student union.^[40] In 2006, Maryland introduced 50 statues of their school mascot, Testudo the Terrapin, with various designs chosen by different sponsoring groups. Among them was Kertle, a statue by Washington DC artist Elizabeth Baldwin designed to look like Kermit the Frog.
On the evening of October 25, 2000, Comedy Central had a banner sign that said: Jim Henson [1936–1990].
In 2003, Jim Henson was honored at the annual Norsk Høstfest in Minot, North Dakota.^[41]
Oury Atlan, Thibaut Berland, and Damien Ferri wrote, directed, and animated a 3D tribute to Henson entitled Over Time that was shown as part of the 2005 Electronic Theater at SIGGRAPH.
The Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Georgia, has acquired more than 700 puppets created by Henson and his studio, including some of the earliest Muppets. Many of these are displayed in the museum exhibit Jim Henson: Puppeteer. In September 2008, the Center opened Jim Henson: Wonders From His Workshop, highlighting creations from Fraggle Rock, Labyrinth, and other later works.
On September 24, 2011, Henson's hometown of Leland renamed one of their bridges "The Rainbow Connection" to honor Henson and his work.^[42] He was also honored with a Google doodle on his 75th birthday; the Google logo had six Muppets that were clickable using the “hand” buttons.^[43]

References

^ "HowStuffWorks.com". Videos.howstuffworks.com. December 18, 2007. http://videos.howstuffworks.com/howstuffworks/487-how-puppets-work-jim-hensons-legacy-video.htm. Retrieved September 24, 2011.
^ ^a ^b ^c Padgett, John B.. "Jim Henson". The Mississippi Writers Page. University of Mississippi Department of English. February 17, 1999. http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/dir/henson_jim/index.html. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Schindehette, Susan; J.D. Podolsky (June 18, 1990). "Legacy of a Gentle Genius" (reprint). People (Time): pp. 88–96. http://www.muppetcentral.com/articles/tributes/henson/hensonarticle5.shtml. Retrieved February 24, 2012.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Blau, Eleanor (May 17, 1990). "Jim Henson, Puppeteer, Dies; The Muppets’ Creator Was 53". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE5DF163BF934A25756C0A966958260. Retrieved May 1, 2007.
^ Finch (1993). p. 9.
^ Finch (1993). p. 102.
^ Finch, Jim Henson – The Works (1993). p. 15.
^ ^a ^b Collins, James (June 8, 1998). "Time 100: Jim Henson". TIME. Archived from the original on April 28, 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070428125811/http://www.time.com/time/time100/artists/profile/henson.html. Retrieved May 1, 2007.
^ ^a ^b "The Man Behind the Frog". TIME. December 25, 1978. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,948401,00.html. Retrieved May 1, 2007.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Harris, Judy (September 21, 1998). "Muppet Master: An Interview with Jim Henson". Muppet Central. http://www.muppetcentral.com/articles/interviews/jim1.shtml. Retrieved May 5, 2007.
^ ^a ^b Finch (1993). p. 22.
^ Plume, Kenneth. "Interview with Frank Oz". IGN FilmForce. IGN, February 10, 2000. http://movies.ign.com/articles/035/035842p1.html. Retrieved May 6, 2007.
^ Freeman, Don (1979). "Muppets On His Hands". The Saturday Evening Post 251.8. pp. 50–53, 126.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Harrigan, Stephen (July 1990). "It’s Not Easy Being Blue" (reprint). LIFE. http://www.muppetcentral.com/articles/tributes/henson/hensonarticle6.shtml. Retrieved May 6, 2007.
^ "A Hell Of A Man Himself". The Bluegrass Special.com. http://thebluegrassspecial.com/archive/2010/july10/jimmy-dean-news-notes.php. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
^ "Jim Henson’s Experimental Period". zenbullets.com. http://zenbullets.com/blog/?p=110. Retrieved January 7, 2010.
^ Shales, Tom; Miller, James Andrew (2002). Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. pp. 79–80. ISBN 0-316-78146-0.
^ Skow, John (December 25, 1978). "Those Marvelous Muppets". TIME. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,948400,00.html. Retrieved May 1, 2007.
^ Seligmann, J.; Leonard, E. (May 28, 1990). "Jim Henson: 1936–1990". Newsweek.
^ Finch (1993). p. 128.
^ "The Muppet Movie", Box Office Mojo. Retrieved July 11, 2007.
^ Finch (1993). p. 176.
^ "1984 Yearly Box Office Results", Box Office Mojo. Retrieved July 11, 2007.
^ Darnton, Nina (June 27, 1986). "Jim Henson's "Labyrinth"". The New York Times. http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?res=9A0DE5DC1139F934A15755C0A960948260. Retrieved May 6, 2007. ^{[dead link]}
^ Sparrow, A.E.. "Return to Labyrinth Vol. 1 Review". IGN.com. http://comics.ign.com/articles/732/732053p1.html. September 11, 2006. Retrieved July 10, 2007.
^ ^a ^b "Dialogue on Film: Jim Henson". American Film (American Film Institute): pp. 18–21. November 1989.
^ Kahn, Eve M. "All in the Modern Stone Age Family", The New York Times (Apr. 14, 1991). Accessed Feb 20, 2009.
^ Owen, David. "Looking Out for Kermit", The New Yorker (Aug. 16, 1993.)
^ Angier, Natalie (May 17, 1990). "An Aggressive Infection, Abrupt and Overwhelming". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CEFD6113BF934A25756C0A966958260. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
^ Altman, Lawrence (May 29, 1990). "The Doctor's World; Henson Death Shows Danger of Pneumonia". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE7D6133BF93AA15756C0A966958260&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
^ Blau, Eleanor (May 22, 1990). "Henson Is Remembered as a Man With Artistry, Humanity and Fun". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE2DF143CF931A15756C0A966958260. Retrieved May 14, 2007.
^ Jim Henson Memorial 'Turn The World Around' Sung by Harry Belafonte. May 22, 1990. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9Em3vVwsm0. Retrieved December 21, 2009.
^ ^a ^b Barry, Chris. "Saying "Goodbye" to Jim". JimHillMedia.com. http://jimhillmedia.com/blogs/chris_barry/archive/2005/09/08/1722.aspx. September 8, 2005. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
^ "Findagrave.com". Findagrave.com. January 1, 2001. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=2210&FLid=16911114&FLgrid=2210&. Retrieved September 24, 2011.
^ NPR Fresh Air
^ Curtis, Richard (screenwriter). Love Actually audio commentary (DVD). April 24, 2004.
^ Plume, Kenneth (July 19, 1999). "Ratting Out: An Interview with Muppeteer Steve Whitmire". Muppet Central. http://www.muppetcentral.com/articles/interviews/whitmire3.shtml. Retrieved July 11, 2007.
^ Meier, Barry (February 18, 2004). "Kermit and Miss Piggy Join Stable of Walt Disney Stars". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9905EFDE123DF93BA25751C0A9629C8B63. Retrieved April 8, 2008.
^ "Jim Henson Biography Acquired by Ballantine". http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/jim-henson-biography-acquired-by-ballantine_b12261.
^ "Jim Henson Statue & Memorial FAQ". UMD Newsdesk. University of Maryland. July 28, 2004. http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/images/Henson/Articles/FAQ.html. Retrieved June 19, 2007.
^ "''Jim Henson.10/8/2003'' (Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame)". Hostfest.com. October 8, 2003. http://hostfest.com/halloffame/view.asp?ID=107. Retrieved September 24, 2011.
^ Victoria Advocate, BC/Louisiana/Mississippi Digest, 6/27/11^{[dead link]}
^ Cavna, Michael. "JIM HENSON’s MUPPETS: New Google Doodle celebrates late creator’s 75th birthday". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/jim-hensons-muppets-new-google-doodle-celebrates-late-creators-75th-birthday/2011/09/23/gIQAefxbrK_blog.html. Retrieved September 24, 2011.

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Media related to Jim Henson at Wikimedia Commons

The Jim Henson Legacy
Jim Henson at the Internet Movie Database
Art Directors Club biography and portrait
Jim Henson at Find A Grave
Jim Henson on Muppet Wiki, an external wiki
The Jim Henson Works at the University of Maryland: 70+ digital videos available to students, scholars and visitors at the University of Maryland (College Park, MD)
Early Jim Henson films in the AT&T Archives: "Robot" and "Charlie Magnetico," two films that Henson created for the Bell Data Communications Seminar in the early 1960s

The Jim Henson Company

People

Jim Henson · Brian Henson · Jane Henson · Lisa Henson

Major works

The Muppets † Sesame Street (Muppet characters only) Fraggle Rock

Television series	Fraggle Rock: The Animated Series (1987) The Storyteller (1988–91) The Ghost of Faffner Hall (1989) Mother Goose Stories (1990) Dinosaurs (1991–94) Dog City (1992–93) CityKids (1993–94) Secret Life of Toys (1994) Animal Show (1994–97) Big Bag (1996–98) Aliens in the Family (1996) The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss (1996–97) Brats of the Lost Nebula (1998–99) Construction Site (1999) Farscape (1999–2003) Mopatop's Shop (1999–2003) Telling Stories with Tomie dePaola (2001) The Hoobs (2000–02) Animal Jam (2003) Pajanimals (2008–present) Sid the Science Kid (2008–present) Dinosaur Train (2009–present) Me and My Monsters (2010–11)

Television specials	The Great Santa Claus Switch (1970) Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1977) The Song of the Cloud Forest (1989)

Movies and Miniseries	The Dark Crystal Labyrinth The Witches Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story

Henson Alternative	Puppet Up! (2006–present) Late Night Buffet with Augie and Del (2006) Tinseltown (2007) Alt/Reality (2008) Late Night Liars (2010) Simian Undercover Detective Squad (2011)

Divisions

† Sold to The Walt Disney Company in 2004

v t e Films directed by Jim Henson

1960s	Hey, Cinderella! (1969)

1970s	The Frog Prince (1971) The Muppet Musicians of Bremen (1972) Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1977)

1980s	The Great Muppet Caper (1981) The Dark Crystal (1982) The Tale of the Bunny Picnic (1986) Labyrinth (1986)

1990s	MuppetVision 3D* (1991)

The Muppets

Characters

Muppet performers

Television series

Sam and Friends (1955–61)
The Mike Douglas Show (Muppet segments, 1966–79)
The Ed Sullivan Show (Muppet segments, 1966–70)
Our Place (1967)
Sesame Street (1969–present)
Saturday Night Live (The Land of Gorch segments, 1975)
The Muppet Show (1976–81)
Fraggle Rock (1983–87)
Muppet Babies (1984–91)
Little Muppet Monsters (1985)
The Jim Henson Hour (1989)
Muppets Tonight (1996–98)
Bear in the Big Blue House (1997–2006)

Web series

Statler and Waldorf: From the Balcony (2005–06)
The Muppets Kitchen with Cat Cora (2010)

Feature films

The Muppet Movie (1979)
The Great Muppet Caper (1981)
The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
Sesame Street presents – Follow That Bird (1985)
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Muppet Treasure Island (1996)
Muppets from Space (1999)
The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (1999)
The Muppets (2011)

Television specials

Hey, Cinderella! (1969)
The Muppets on Puppets (1970)
The Frog Prince (1972)
The Muppet Musicians of Bremen (1972)
Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1977)
John Denver & the Muppets (1979)
The Muppets Go Hollywood (1979)
The Muppets Go to the Movies (1981)
The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show (1982)
Rocky Mountain Holiday (1983)
The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years (1985)
The Tale of the Bunny Picnic (1986)
The Christmas Toy (1986)
A Muppet Family Christmas (1987)
Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue (1990)
The Muppets at Walt Disney World (1990)
The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson (1990)
Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree (1995)
It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002)
The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (2005)
Studio DC: Almost Live (2008)
A Muppets Christmas: Letters to Santa (2008)

Direct-to-video

Wow, You're a Cartoonist! (1988)
Muppet Classic Theater (1994)
Kermit's Swamp Years (2002)

Video games

Muppet Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival (1989)
Muppet RaceMania (2000)
Muppet Monster Adventure (2000)
Muppets Party Cruise (2003)
Disney Universe (2011)

Discography

Albums	The Muppet Show (1977) Muppet Beach Party (1993) Kermit Unpigged (1994) The Muppet Show: Music, Mayhem, and More (2002) The Muppets: A Green and Red Christmas (2006) Muppets: The Green Album (2011) The Muppets: Original Soundtrack (2011)

Songs	"The Muppet Show Theme" "Rainbow Connection" "Bein' Green" "Mahna Mahna" "I Hope That Somethin' Better Comes Along" "I'm Going To Go Back There Someday" "Bohemian Rhapsody" "Man or Muppet"

Other media

Muppet Meeting Films (1975–93)
Muppet*Vision 3D (1991–present)
Muppet Mobile Lab (2007–present)
The Muppet Show Comics
Before You Leap

Portal:Muppets

v t e Sesame Street

General	Sesame Workshop • History • Format • Educational goals • Influence • Characters (Muppet • Human • Animated) • Media

People	Joan Ganz Cooney • Lloyd Morrisett • Gerald S. Lesser • Jon Stone • Jim Henson • Joe Raposo • Kevin Clash • Kermit Love • List of animators • List of crew

Production	Research • International co-productions (Characters) • Music

Films	Follow That Bird • The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland

Specials	Don't Eat the Pictures • Big Bird in China • Big Bird in Japan • Sesame Street Stays Up Late! • Elmo Saves Christmas • Elmopalooza • CinderElmo • Elmo's Christmas Countdown • Abby in Wonderland

International Sesame Street Spin-offs	Alam Simsim • Barrio Sésamo • Batibot • Iftah Ya Simsim • Plaza Sésamo • Rechov SumSum • Sesam Stasjon • Sesame Park • Sesame Tree • Sesamstraat • Sesamstraße • Shalom Sesame • Susam Sokağı • Takalani Sesame • Ulica Sezamkowa • Ulitsa Sezam • Vila Sésamo • Zhima Jie • Sesame Street in the U.K

Literature	Children and Television: Lessons from Sesame Street • The World According to Sesame Street • Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street

Related	The Muppets • Big Bag • Sesame Beginnings • Panwapa

v t e Saturday Night Live

History	1975–1980 1980–1985 1985–1990 1990–1995 1995–2000 2000–2005 2005–2010 2010–present

Seasons	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Announcers	Don Pardo (1975–1981, 1982–present) Bill Hanrahan (1981) Mel Brandt (1981–1982)

Directors	Dave Wilson (1975–1986, 1989–1995) Paul Miller (1986–1989) Beth McCarthy-Miller (1995–2006) Don Roy King (2006–present)

Producers	Lorne Michaels (1975–1980, 1985–present) Jean Doumanian (1980–1981) Dick Ebersol (1981–1985) James Signorelli (1976–present)

Related lists	Episodes Compilation albums and videos Commercials Cast members Writers Hosts (Five-Timers) Guests Simultaneous host/performer guests Awards DVD releases

Recurring characters and sketches	Alphabetical Chronological By cast member Musical sketches TV show sketches Weekend Update characters TV Funhouse segments

Characters and sketches	The Ambiguously Gay Duo Anthony Crispino The Barry Gibb Talk Show Bill Brasky Bill Swerski's Superfans The Bloder Brothers The Blues Brothers The Boston Teens Canteen Boy Celebrity Jeopardy! The Chris Farley Show The Church Lady Coffee Talk The Coneheads The Continental Debbie Downer Ed Grimley Emily Litella Father Guido Sarducci Gerald "T-Bones" Tibbons Gilly Goth Talk Hanukkah Harry Hans and Franz Happy Fun Ball Hollywood Minute Iraq 2003 Irving Cohen Jarret's Room The Kitchen Boys The Land of Gorch Land Shark Larry the Lobster The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise The Lovers MacGruber Mango Mary Katherine Gallagher Master Thespian Matt Foley Merv the Perv More cowbell The Nerds Nick The Lounge Singer Olympia Cafe Pat Roseanne Roseannadanna Samurai Futaba Sarah Palin Skeeter The Spartan Cheerleaders Sprockets Stefon Stuart Smalley Theodoric of York, Medieval Barber Tiny Elvis Toonces the Driving Cat TV Funhouse Two A-Holes Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer Velvet Jones Wayne's World Weekend Update What Up with That The Whiners The X-Presidents

Digital Shorts	SNL Digital Shorts Boombox Dick in a Box I Just Had Sex I'm on a Boat Jizz in My Pants Lazy Sunday Like a Boss On the Ground

Films based on sketches	Mr. Mike's Mondo Video (1979) The Blues Brothers (1980) Mr. Bill's Real Life Adventures (1986) Bob Roberts (1992) Mr. Saturday Night (1992) Wayne's World (1992) Wayne's World 2 (1993) Coneheads (1993) It's Pat (1994) Stuart Saves His Family (1995) A Night at the Roxbury (1998) Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) Superstar (1999) The Ladies Man (2000) MacGruber (2010)

Related topics	Broadway Video Frank Oz "Generalíssimo Francisco Franco is still dead" Jim Henson "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" The Lonely Island discography Saturday Night Live Band Saturday Night Live in the 2000s Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday SNL Studios Strategery

Persondata
Name	Henson, James Maury
Alternative names	Henson, Jim
Short description	American puppeteer
Date of birth	September 24, 1936
Place of birth	Greenville, Mississippi, United States
Date of death	May 16, 1990
Place of death	New York City, New York, United States

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Jim Henson

Jim Henson

Jim Henson

Jim Henson

Jim Henson

Jim Henson

Jim Henson

Jim Henson

Biography

Jim Henson

Jim Henson

Biography

Jim Henson

Early life

Projects in the 1960s

Sesame Street

Expansion of audience

Transition to the big screen

Later career

Natural History Project and Dinosaurs

Illness and death

Legacy

Tributes

References

Further reading

External links