The Muppet Show 1.15: ‘Candice Bergen’...
With Candice Bergen, The Muppet Show had a perfect opportunity to concoct a classic episode. After all, it was rare for them to find a guest so comfortable with puppets. In fact, she had likely spent most of her younger years surrounded by them, given that her father was the great Edgar Bergen, one of America’s foremost puppeteers...
The Muppet Show 1.14: “Sandy Duncan”...
After at least a handful of uneven episodes–sometimes due to not utilizing a great guest star to their best advantage and other times due to a middling performance by a guest star dragging the proceedings down a bit–The Muppet Show finally finds its footing again with the Sandy Duncan episode, which benefits from a delightful...
The Muppet Show 1.13: “Bruce Forsyth”...
With the Bruce Forsyth episode, we have yet another mostly lackluster celebrity appearance. This isn’t helped by the fact that, despite Kermit extolling his virtues and calling him a “one-man variety show,” his singing, dancing, and comedic stylings fail to impress–or at least fail to impress a modern eye. I...
The Muppet Show 1.12: “Peter Ustinov”...
The Peter Ustinov episode of The Muppet Show is a perfect example of how, no matter how iconic and storied the guest star, whenever the Muppets failed to incorporate them into any musical numbers, the show usually suffered, particularly in the first season, when the writers made up for non-singing guests’ lack of singing by featuring...
The Muppet Show 1.11: “Lena Horne”...
Growing up, my only real point of reference for Lena Horne was that she was a celebrity who appeared on Sesame Street, but in her relatively brief scenes, she exuded a warm, gentle glow that, even at a young age, made me sense that she was one of those people who really got the Muppets. She and they seemed to fit together so naturally that I...
The Muppet Show 1.09: ‘Charles Aznavour̵...
In previous posts, I spoke of how, in the first season, before The Muppet Show became a massive hit and celebrity guest stars were banging down the doors to appear, the show paid host to a number of lower-tier stars who were friends of the producers, doing them favors. Well, given that the singer, Charles Aznavour, who Kermit calls an...
The Muppet Show 1.08: “Paul Williams”...
Remarkably, the Paul Williams episode of The Muppet Show received an Emmy nomination for Best Writing on a Variety Show. Unfortunately, the reason I find it remarkable is that it is easily the most poorly written episode up to this point with a higher-than-usual number of jokes that completely fail to land–for example, the Newsman...
Tales of the Tinkerdee Pilot
Kermit the Minstrel
Ever since I decided to undertake this rather massive undertaking, one of the pieces of Henson history I was most excited to see was the Tales of the Tinkerdee pilot. I’d seen brief clips of it at the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens a few years ago and had wished to see all of it. Now I finally had a chance, and it did not disappoint. In many ways, it was practically designed for me. I’ve always been fascinated by fairy tales and folklore, as was Jim Henson, evidenced in his 1980s fantasy films, The Storyteller, Fraggle Rock, and the Tales from Muppetland specials–Hey, Cinderella; The Frog Prince; and The Muppet Musicians of Bremen.
Read MoreShort Projects
Jim animating “Drums West”.
Today, before proceeding with Jim Henson’s next large project, the Tales of the Tinkerdee pilot, I thought I would briefly cover a number of shorter creative endeavors Jim pursued, some of which overlap with the Sam and Friends time frame. I also hadn’t touched on some of the things going on in Jim’s personal life at the time, and this post will cover some of that, as well.
So, to rewind a bit, in 1960, Jim graduated from the University of Maryland and Jane gave birth to their first child, Lisa Marie Henson. That same year, Jim attended the Puppeteers of America convention, where he met Don Sahlin, a brilliant puppet builder who would come to work/collaborate with him for many years. Around this time,
Read MoreThe Muppets 1.02: “Hostile Makeover”
Romance for Piggy and Groban.
The Muppets‘ second outing, “Hostile Makeover,” is possibly even funnier than its first, and that’s saying something, as I found the premiere one of the most laugh-out-loud, jam-packed-with-hilarity Muppet productions in years, with more great jokes per minute than some entire post-Jim projects. Co-creators Bill Prady and Bob Kushell, along with their team, really understand writing economy, taking full advantage of every single millisecond of screentime they have so that even though, thanks to commercial break inflation, they have fewer minutes per episode than The Muppet Show had, they manage to make the Muppet world and stories they conjure up feel every bit as fleshed-out and lived-in as the classic from which this show sprung. This episode has two subplots going besides its main story–none of which feels like it gets short shrift–and still has time to weave in
Read MoreMore Sam and Friends
And now we continue our journey through Jim Henson’s first Muppet show, Sam and Friends, with the remaining episodes I was able to gain access to.
“C’est Si Bon”
“C’est Si Bon”
Another lip-synced song sketch, this time with a lead singer–a crazy-haired Muppet dubbed Moldy Hay–singing a French call-and-response song, with him taking the main parts,
Read MoreSam and Friends
Jim and Jane and Sam and Friends
For those of you who might not have heard of Sam and Friends, Jim Henson’s very first Muppet TV show, I gave a bit of background for it the other day on my post on Jim’s early years, but, to recap, it was an enormously popular local Maryland show that originally ran daily on weeknights for 5 minutes between the 11 PM evening news and The Tonight Show.
The length of the show, as well as the time slot, changed over the course of its 6 years but it remains fascinating today not only because the relatively few remaining fragments of footage we have allow us a glimpse at the early years of the Muppets as well as their evolution, but also because, as old and crackly as that footage may
Read MoreCat and Mouse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTjsl_qnIsQ
Some time around 1960, shortly after marrying Jane, Jim Henson got a Bolex 16 mm movie camera, which had a side release button and allowed him to immerse himself in artistic pursuits other than puppetry, including the short animated film above, which he referred to as an “animated painting”.
Read MoreWilkins and Wontkins Ads
Wilkins and Wontkins
In 1957, as I explained yesterday, Jim and his partner, Jane, were approached by the Wilkins Coffee Co., a local brand in Maryland, to produce humorous commercials for them, and Jim responded with a series of ads that is pretty jaw-dropping even today. For the ads, Jim created two new Muppets: the skinny, tall, cheerful Wilkins, and the squat, short, perpetually unpleasant Wontkins, the basic gist being that Wilkins loves Wilkins coffee–he WILL drink it!–and Wontkins doesn’t–he WON’T drink it–but Wilkins won’t let that slide and so instead inflicts numerous, increasingly imaginative tortures on Wontkins for daring to refuse a cup of the precious caffeinated liquid gold.
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