Sesame Street Pitch Reel

Posted on Oct 30, 2015 in Henson, Pilots, Sesame Street, Shows

Rowlf explains the show to Kermit.

“I think there was a kind of collective genius about the core group that created Sesame Street, but there was only one real genius in our midst, and that was Jim.”–Joan Ganz Cooney, co-founder of Children’s Television Workshop

And now, we finally come to the origins of one of the most seminal programs not only in Jim Henson’s career but television history, period: Sesame Street, a show that debuted near the end of 1969 and to this very day continues to educate pre-school children, while entertaining both them and their parents with warmth and intelligent humor, managing to make learning feel not didactic but fun and endlessly imaginative.

NBC White Paper Credits

Posted on Oct 30, 2015 in Henson, Short Films/Footage, Television

A little later today, we are finally going to explore the origins of one of Jim’s most famous, enduring projects, Sesame Street, but firstly, a brief bit of non-Muppets footage. Earlier in 1968, NBC had been extremely impressed with Jim’s Youth 68 documentary and so hired him to create a credits sequence for a three-part documentary series called Ordeal of the American City, which was itself part of an NBC news series called NBC White Paper. And here is the footage, which follows Jim’s penchant for juxtaposing quick shots to create an overlapping collage effect. Here, the images are all urban in nature, the images being used to underline the fraught tensions underlying city life:

Hey Cinderella!

Posted on Oct 29, 2015 in Henson, Specials, Television

The Fairy Godmother and Kermit

Hey Cinderella! is an hour-long fractured fairy tale that was the Muppets’ first network television special and the first entry in a thematic trilogy dubbed Tales from Muppetland. Although it didn’t air until April 1970, about 5 months after Sesame Street‘s first season debuted, it was actually filmed in 1968 in Toronto, and its history reaches back further than that.

In 1965, TV writers Jon Stone (who we saw in Ripples) and Tom Whedon (father of Joss Whedon) wrote a pilot script for CBS for a show that was meant to be centered on Snow White, co-starring the Muppets. CBS passed on the script before a pilot was even shot, but ABC thought the idea had potential, as long as it was about a different fairy tale, for

The Muppets 1.05: “Walk the Swine”

Posted on Oct 27, 2015 in Henson, Shows, Television, The Muppets

Reese Witherspoon visits Piggy on “Up Late”.

I had been eagerly anticipating Reese Witherspoon’s visit to The Muppets for quite a while. As a small, plucky, determined, blonde Hollywood star with an unexpected edge (and documented diva behavior, at times), she seemed the perfect foe for Piggy, and while it would be nice to eventually see Piggy cross paths with another female star who she doesn’t harbor jealousy or resentment towards, Piggy never has been the plays-well-with-others-who-seem-like-they-might-try-to-hog-her-spotlight type.

Particularly in this case, for, as we learn in this episode, Piggy was also up for the role of June Carter Cash in Walk the Line but lost out to Reese who–to add insult to injury–then had the gall to win an Oscar for it. Kermit

The Muppets on Puppets

Posted on Oct 27, 2015 in Henson, Specials, Television

Rowlf and Jim

In June 1968, Henson Associates filmed a special for public television (which at the time was called National Education Television) at Hershey, Pennsylvania’s WITF-TV, making it the first-ever Muppet special to air, although unlike most of the others, it wasn’t a narrative but rather a behind-the-scenes look at the Muppets, hosted by Jim, called The Muppets on Puppets–a rarely seen program today that won the NET Award for Best Educational Television Show of 1968, and which, thankfully, Disney included as a bonus feature on the third season of The Muppet Show DVD set. And for a Muppet and Henson devotee, it is a treasure trove.

For one, after watching so much of Jim’s creative output but with he

The Musical Monsters of Turkey Hollow

Posted on Oct 26, 2015 in Henson, Specials, Television, Unproduced

“The Musical Monsters of Turkey Hollow”

In 1968, Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl began collaborating on another project that was not meant to be but, if it had been filmed, would have been the first full-length Muppet special, as well as the first time a full Muppet production would be shot on location rather than in a studio. It was meant to be a Thanksgiving show with a cast made up of humans and Muppets. And Jim and Jerry got fairly far into the process. Jim and Don Sahlin built the puppets and even took photographs of them outside in the trees by Jim’s house in Connecticut, to see how they’d look in natural, outdoor lighting, right where he had shot Run, Run with his daughters.

And he enlisted his daughters here again to stand in for the child actors

Our Place, Ads, & More

Posted on Oct 23, 2015 in Ads, Docs/Interviews, Guest Appearances, Henson, Television

Rowlf on “Our Place”

In the summer of 1967, Rowlf was enlisted by Ed Sullivan (again underlining in what high esteem Sullivan held Jim and the Muppets) for yet his next big assignment, as the emcee to a new variety show produced by Sullivan’s production company to air just that one summer–from July 2nd till September 3rd–while most of the rest of TV was on hiatus/in reruns. Along with Rowlf, Our Place also featured an adorably square musical group, The Doodletown Pipers–who would sing overly earnest covers of pop hits–along with the comedy team of Burns and Schreiber, namely Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber, the first of whom would go on to be the head writer on the first season of The Muppet Show, and the second of whom would appear in an episode that first year.