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- For the same named company; see The Jim Henson Company
Jim Henson was an American puppeteer and cartoonist, famous for his best-known creation of The Muppets.
James Maury Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990), commonly known as Jim Henson, was one of the most important puppeteers in modern American television history. He was also a filmmaker, cartoon artist, and television producer.
Creator of The Muppets, and the leading force behind their long creative run, Henson brought an engaging cast of characters, innovative ideas, and a sense of timing and humor to millions of people. He is also widely acknowledged for the ongoing vision of faith, friendship, magic, and love which was infused in nearly all of his work.
Early work
Born in Greenville, Mississippi in 1936, Henson moved with his family to Hyattsville, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. in the late 1940s. In 1954, while still in high school, he began working for WTOP-TV creating puppets for a Saturday morning children's show. The next year he created Sam and Friends, a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV, while attending the University of Maryland. Sam and Friends were already recognizably muppets, and the show included a primitive version of what would become Henson's signature character, Kermit the Frog. Already he was experimenting with the techniques that would change the way puppetry was used on television, notably using the frame defined by the camera shot to allow the puppeteer to work from off-camera.
Kermit the Frog, stood by Jim Henson as his signature character for decades.
Success
The success of Sam and Friends led to a series of guest appearances on network talk and variety shows. To this day, Muppets appear as "guests" on shows such as The Tonight Show and Hollywood Squares, with particularly memorable appearances by Kermit and Miss Piggy on 60 Minutes and Cookie Monster on Martha Stewart Living. Henson himself appeared as a guest on many shows, including the Ed Sullivan Show. The greatly increased exposure led to hundreds of commercial appearances (mostly for Wilkins Coffee) by Henson characters through the 1960s.
In 1963 Henson and his wife Jane, also a puppeteer, moved to New York City, where the newly formed Muppets, Inc. would reside for some time. Henson devised Rowlf, a piano-playing anthropomorphic dog, the first Muppet to make a regular appearance on a network show (The Jimmy Dean Show). At that time Henson's long-time partner Frank Oz also came on board with the new company.
From 1964 to 1968, Henson began exploring film-making, and produced a series of experimental films. His nine-minute experimental film Time Piece was nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for an Academy Award for Live Action Short Film in 1966. The NBC TV movie The Cube from 1969 is another experimental film that Jim Henson had produced.
In 1968, Joan Ganz Cooney and the team at the Children's Television Workshop began 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, Ernie and Bert, Cookie Monster, and Big Bird. Kermit was also included as a roving Television News Reporter; a frill was added around his neck, to make him a frog. At first the puppetry was separated from the realistic segments on the street, but after a poor screen test in Philadelphia, the show was revamped to integrate the two and place much greater emphasis on Henson's work.
Sesame Street was a notable success, giving Henson enough popularity in the television industry to create The Muppet Show. Created initially for British television after American networks showed no interest, the show featured Kermit as host, and a variety of other memorable characters including Miss Piggy, Gonzo the Great, and Fozzie Bear. A vaudeville-style variety show aimed at a family audience, the show was a sensation in the United Kingdom and soon elsewhere in the world.
His puppets have been especially beloved by children, but a good deal of adult interest lay behind the comedy. Even in the pre-school aimed Sesame Street, there were often references aimed at adults. Squabbling best pals Ernie and Bert recalled for adults the squabbling friends Ernie the taxidriver and Bert the cop in Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life, although the official line is that Jim Henson hadn't seen the movie before naming the puppets. The detective "Sherlock Hemlock" (a play on the poison hemlock) made gentle fun of Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective Sherlock Holmes.
Contributions to film
The Muppet Show ended after a few seasons, but the characters have appeared in a long series of movies beginning with 1979's The Muppet Movie and continuing with:
The Muppets' first made-for-TV movie, It's A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, premiered on NBC in November 2002. A second, The Muppets' Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is scheduled to air on ABC in early 2005.
Henson was also responsible for two non-Muppet Show-related movies, 1982's high fantasy The Dark Crystal and the 1986 Labyrinth, co-produced by George Lucas. To provide a visual style distinct from the Muppets, the puppets in these two movies were based on designs by Brian Froud. Henson's production company also worked with Lucas to create the character Yoda in the Star Wars saga, voiced by Frank Oz.
Henson also continued creating children's programs - Fraggle Rock and the animated Muppet Babies - and new prime-time ventures such as the mythology-oriented The Storyteller. The Jim Henson company continues to produce new series and specials for PBS and market television. Henson also founded Jim Henson's Creature Shop to build many creatures for outside productions.
Jim Henson's Muppets also appeared in Weezer's music video for "Keep Fishing" in 2002.
Death
Jim Henson died unexpectably of bacterial pneumonia in May 16, 1990. A memorial service for him aired on PBS and drew millions of viewers and dozens of celebrities in reverence for his life and work.
The Jim Henson Company has continued on after his death. His son; Brian and daughter; Lisa, are currently the co-chairs and co-CEOs of the Company. Steve Whitmire, A veteran member of the muppet puppeteering crew, has assumed the roles of the two most famous characters played by Jim Henson himself, Kermit the Frog and Ernie. On February 17, 2004, it was announced that the Muppets (excluding the Sesame Street characters, which are separately owned by Sesame Workshop) and Bear in the Big Blue House properties had been sold by Henson to The Walt Disney Company.
Jim Henson's Creature Shop is a company also founded by Jim Henson, A large creature-building workshop and movie studio that creates special creatures and characters for a large number of other films and series (most recently the science fiction production Farscape), and is considered one of the most advanced and well respected creators of film creatures.
The Jim Henson Company retains Creature Shop, as well as the rest of its film and television library including Fraggle Rock, Farscape, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth.
Tributes
- On September 24, 2003, University of Maryland, College Park honored Jim Henson by holding a dedication ceremony. The ceremony dedicated a life-sized statue of University of Maryland alumnus Jim Henson, conversing with one of his favorite creations, Kermit the Frog, in front of the Adele Stamp Student Union on the College Park campus.
Further reading
- Finch, Christopher, Charles S. Finch and Jim Henson. Jim Henson: The Works: The Art, the Magic, the Imagination. David McKay, 1993, hardcover, 251 pages, ISBN 0679412034.
External links
de:Jim Henson
la:Jim Henson
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