Como and Carson

Posted on Oct 12, 2015 in Guest Appearances, Henson, Television

The Reindeer sing for snow.

I’ve been mentioning the Muppets’ many, many variety show appearances ever since my third post here, and I’m happy to report that we’ve finally come to an era for which I was finally able to get some footage to watch (other than the “Glow Worm” sketch and the stuff from The Jimmy Dean Show, the latter of which feels a bit different, given Rowlf was a weekly fixture)! Both of these first two bits were filmed in December of 1965, and both are awesome, rare finds for Henson fans.

The first is from the 20th and was a sketch filmed for Perry Como’s Kraft Music Hall and is easily one of my favorite things I’ve seen so far in this blogging journey. You can watch it here. In

More Short Films

Posted on Oct 12, 2015 in Film, Henson, Short Films/Footage

Today, we’re starting off with two more short film projects that, remarkably–given how much work Time Piece was–Jim also did in 1965! The first is called Run, Run, which he shot outside his home in Greenwich, CT. It mainly depicts Jim’s two young daughters running around the fallen-leaf-strewn woods in October and ends with them running into their mom, Jane’s, open arms. I don’t have a great deal to say about it, but it’s a charming little piece, thanks to the score by Joe Raposo, who would later write the songs and music for Sesame Street, and like much of Jim’s short film work, it has a similar feel to the short pieces he’d shoot for Sesame Street of children playing and the like, with similarly gentle, lovely music. It also demonstrates some quietly inventive camera work, with the camera at first following the girls from a distance but eventually capturing their POV, bouncing up and down to recreate what they’re seeing as they dash along:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeyyOQJKay0

Time Piece

Posted on Oct 9, 2015 in Film, Henson, Short Films/Footage

Time Piece

Starting in mid-1964, Jim Henson began work on a side passion project that again speaks to the fact that puppetry not only wasn’t his only form of artistic expression but perhaps wasn’t even his favorite. And if that’s not necessarily the case, it at least underlines his lifelong desire to pursue other forms of storytelling and film-making. At this point, puppetry paid the bills, and he certainly enjoyed it, but he wanted more. He considered himself more of a visual artist and designer than a puppeteer (and interestingly, his later Muppet departures such as The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth would wed his love for complex worldbuilding through scenic design and art with the most advanced puppetry the world had ever seen), and in this 8-minute-long short film, which he originally called Time to Go before finally settling on Time Piece, he was able to fully indulge that part of himself.

Even More Ads!

Posted on Oct 8, 2015 in Ads, Henson, Television

Today we have even more Muppet commercials! If you think this seems like a lot, I’ve only been able to scratch the surface due to their sheer volume and the fact that most aren’t available online. Firstly, we have a Cloverland dairy products ad featuring a rather jovial red cow singing a jingle while sometimes clapping her hooves together in excitement. What might be most interesting about her is how positively primitive in design she looks compared to later Muppet cows, such as Gladys from Sesame Street:

The Muppets 1.03: “Bear Left Then Bear Write”

Posted on Oct 6, 2015 in Henson, Shows, Television, The Muppets

Kermit and Fozzie drink at Rowlf’s bar.

The Muppets‘ third episode, “Bear Left Then Bear Write,” is the first one of the new series that left me feeling a bit conflicted. Overall, it was a collection of some wonderful moments, many of which made me laugh out loud, but it also featured at least one significant disappointment.

As much as I enjoyed the first two installments, there was one major Muppet who was curiously missing, and that is Rowlf. As I covered in a post here only yesterday, Rowlf was once the superstar of the Muppets, before Kermit ascended to the central position, and although from The Muppet Show onwards, he wasn’t on the same level as Kermit, Piggy, Fozzie, or Gonzo, he was still considered one

More Ads & Tinkerdee

Posted on Oct 6, 2015 in Ads, Docs/Interviews, Guest Appearances, Henson, Pilots, Short Films/Footage, Television

Before we reach the next major milestone in Jim Henson’s career there are again a bunch of smaller projects to cover. The first one is actually one of the most interesting we’ve seen yet, featuring the robot puppet with moving gears and smoke that we first caught a fuzzy, black-and-white glimpse of in the Food Fair footage from Hamburg, Germany, although in color and with full detail visible, it looks a bit less steampunk than I had first thought.

Anyway, what’s fascinating about this is that AT&T–which was then the Bell Company–actually hired Jim in 1963 to make the following short film as part of a presentation to air at a seminar for business owners on the new subject of Data Communications, the point of the film being to comment on the continual evolution of the relationship between man and machine, and as you can see below, Jim captured the subject with a wicked sense of humor:

The Birth of Rowlf

Posted on Oct 5, 2015 in Ads, Guest Appearances, Henson, Television

Rowlf

Later in June of 1962, at the age of 25, the same month that Jim filmed the Tales of the Tinkerdee pilot, he was named the youngest-ever president of the Puppeteers of America, an amazing indication of how much respect he had already begun to gain for his puppeteering, which was only gaining more and more visibility in the public eye. Over the course of the rest of the year, the Muppets were booked as regular guests on a variety show called Mad, Mad World that unfortunately never made it past a pilot, as well as on NBC’s Today Show. 

And then in late 1962, Muppets, Inc. was hired by Purina Dog Chow to make commercials for them, and in response, Jim