It's time to play the music and light the lights for an in-depth look at Jim Henson's beloved creations.
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00:00The Muppets has been a beloved institution for decades, but how much do you really know
00:05about those fuzzy puppets? It's time to play the music and light the lights for an in-depth
00:10look at Jim Henson's beloved creations.
00:14Jim Henson and his Muppets started appearing on TV in the very early years of the medium
00:18itself. In 1955, Henson was hired by a Washington, D.C. TV station to make Sam & Friends, a five-minute
00:26series that aired locally just before The Tonight Show. It ran for six years and centered
00:31on a simple, humanoid puppet named Sam, along with other characters including a vaguely
00:36lizard-like character named Kermit, who was not yet a frog.
00:40Henson, who started working on the series when he was just 18 years old, performed almost
00:45all the characters, although he was assisted by Jerry Jewell and Jay Neville. Jewell would
00:50go on to be a major puppeteer for the Muppets for decades.
00:54Neville and Henson married in 1959, staying together until his passing in 1990. Sam & Friends
01:00led to many offers to make commercials, which funded the Hensons' increasingly sophisticated
01:05puppeteering operations.
01:07In 1963, the first major Muppet — the word is a portmanteau of marionette and puppet
01:13— got the Hensons their first national attention, Ralph the Dog. Operated and voiced by Jim
01:19Henson, he was the breakout star of The Jimmy Dean Show, a primetime variety series hosted
01:25by the country music singer and sausage pitchman. From then on, Henson's Muppets were a fixture
01:30of TV variety and talk shows.
01:34Contrary to popular belief, those big whites of a Muppet's eyes are not halved table tennis
01:39balls. Back in the 70s, they were made out of the cut-up parts of a spherical, nesting,
01:44doll-like toy called Wacky Stacks. Henson and his cohorts discovered that they were
01:49the ideal Muppet eye base, so much so that when the company that made Wacky Stacks pulled
01:54the toy off the market for lack of sales, Henson reportedly bought out their entire
01:59unsold stock.
02:01Another unusual physical feature of Muppets is that they are almost all left-handed. That's
02:05because most puppeteers are right-handed, and they use that dominant right hand to control
02:10the expressive Muppet areas of the head and the mouth. The left hand is thus utilized
02:15to control the less-used and less-important Muppet arms. One notable exception? Veteran
02:20Muppeteer Louise Gold. She's left-handed, so all of her Muppets have been designed to
02:25have a head and mouth controlled by her left hand, and arms controlled by her right.
02:31In 1969, Henson wrote a proposal for a weekly Muppet series, sensibly titled The Muppet
02:37Show. It took five years before ABC agreed to tape a pilot and air it as a special called
02:43The Muppets Valentine Show. Critics loved it, but ABC didn't pick it up. Undaunted,
02:49Henson pitched another version of the show the following year, introducing new characters
02:53like Sam the Eagle, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, and the Swedish Chef. Reilly retitled
02:59The Muppet Show, Sex and Violence. The special was a hit in 1975, but not a big enough hit
03:07for ABC to order more episodes.
03:10Following yet another pitch by Henson, CBS almost ordered The Muppet Show later that
03:15year, but again the network ultimately passed. It wasn't until 1976 that The Muppet Show
03:21finally made it to television, British television. Lord Lou Grade, head of the ATV network, agreed
03:28to take on The Muppet Show, syndicating it to local stations across the U.S. for five
03:33seasons.
03:34A year before The Muppet Show debuted in syndication, Henson finally had some luck getting The Muppets
03:39on network TV through a brand new offbeat variety show called NBC Saturday Night, now
03:46known as Saturday Night Live. For SNL, Henson's team created brand new monstrous creatures
03:52for a weekly segment called The Land of Gorch, but almost nobody involved with The Land of
03:57Gorch enjoyed it. Actors resented losing precious airtime to puppets, while writers' guild rules
04:03prevented Henson's team from scripting the segment, meaning that it lacked that special
04:07Muppet magic. After just one season, The Land of Gorch was mercifully gone.
04:12Are you talking about making love to me? You guys are just puppets, right? I mean, you
04:18don't even exist below the waist."
04:21The beloved Miss Piggy has only been around since 1974, just two years before the debut
04:26of The Muppet Show. She was the creation of a Muppet maker named Bonnie Erickson, who
04:31also built Muppet Show hecklers Statler and Waldorf, as well as Zoot, the blue saxophone
04:37player in The Electric Mayhem. Her inspiration for Miss Piggy? Popular 1940s and 50s jazz
04:43singer Peggy Lee, probably best known for the sultry song, Fever, who was often billed
04:48as Miss Peggy Lee. Erickson told Smithsonian,
04:51"...my mother used to live in North Dakota, where Peggy Lee sang on the local radio station
04:56before she became a famous jazz singer. Peggy Lee was a very independent woman, and Piggy
05:01certainly is the same."
05:03Longtime Miss Piggy operator and voice performer Frank Oz came up with a backstory for the
05:08character. In a 1979 interview with The New York Times, Oz revealed,
05:13"...she grew up in a small town in Iowa. Her father died when she was young and her mother
05:17wasn't that nice to her. She had to enter beauty contests to survive, as many single
05:22women do. She has a lot of vulnerability which she has to hide, because of her need to be
05:27a superstar."
05:29Jim Henson was a man of many talents. Not only did he create many different Muppets,
05:34particularly Kermit the Frog and Ernie from Sesame Street, but he operated them and provided
05:39their voices, too, including their singing voices. In fact, two of the most famous Muppet-performed
05:45songs, both sung by Henson, even hit the pop chart in the 1970s.
05:50In September 1970, Rubber Duckie, credited to Ernie, Jim Henson, peaked at number 16
05:56on the Billboard Hot 100. And in November 1979, the powerful Rainbow Connection, which
06:02opened the Muppet movie, hit number 25. That song has since become a modern classic, covered
06:08by artists as disparate as Sarah McLachlan, Willie Nelson, Kenny Loggins, and Weezer.
06:14Yet it somehow lost the Oscar for Best Original Song to It Goes Like It Goes, a tune from
06:20the Sally Field drama Norma Rae.
06:23Apart from The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, the most successful Muppet-oriented TV show
06:28is Muppet Babies, the puppet-free Saturday morning cartoon that ran on CBS from 1984
06:34to 1991. Jim Henson had long wanted to explore a show or movie based on the Muppets as babies
06:40or children, but it took a sequence in The Muppets Take Manhattan for it to happen. Toy
06:45companies lined up for the rights to sell Muppet Baby merchandise. It was clear the
06:50demand was there, and in the fall of 1984, the cartoon debuted. It was a smash hit,
06:55and throughout its run it was often the highest-rated Saturday morning cartoon on TV. Muppet Babies
07:01had its detractors, however, primarily Frank Oz, who felt it diminished the characters.
07:06And a 1985 spinoff cartoon called Little Muppet Monsters disappeared after just three episodes,
07:13showing there's a limit to how much cuteness one fanbase can handle.
07:18Prior to the release of the 1996 film Muppet Treasure Island, The Muppets were served with
07:23a lawsuit by Hormel, the company that makes Spam. Why? Well, it had nothing to do with
07:28Miss Piggy, but rather with the film's new warthog character, who was named Spah-Am.
07:35Hormel claimed the character could damage sales of their infamous canned meat product.
07:40Judges ultimately sided with Henson, arguing that Spam had been a punchline for a long
07:44time with no harm done, with countless comedians and writers questioning the content of the
07:49product.
07:50Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam!
07:56The ruling read in part,
07:58"...one might think Hormel would welcome the association with a genuine source of pork."
08:03That wasn't the only Muppet-based lawsuit, though, and the next one was much messier
08:07as it included Muppet-on-Muppet violence.
08:10In 2018, Jim Henson's son Brian Henson came out with a film called The Happytime Murders,
08:16a R-rated comedy about Muppet crime that co-starred Melissa McCarthy. The film's marketing included
08:22the tagline,
08:23"...no sesame, all street."
08:26That in turn drew the ire of the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit Muppet division that creates
08:30Sesame Street. They sued, claiming that the tagline
08:34"...deliberately confuses consumers into mistakenly believing that Sesame is associated with,
08:39has allowed, or has even endorsed or produced the movie, and tarnishes Sesame's brand."
08:45Sesame Workshop lost the case when a judge ruled that the company couldn't prove that
08:49its reputation had been damaged by The Happytime Murders, a movie which ultimately bombed at
08:54the box office.
08:57The Muppets returned to the big screen for the first time in more than a decade with
09:002011's The Muppets. The script was co-written by its human star, Muppets superfan Jason
09:07Siegel, best known for Freaks & Geeks and How I Met Your Mother. Siegel took a suggestion
09:12from Freaks & Geeks producer Judd Apatow to get more acting work by writing his own material,
09:18so he wrote the screenplay for the 2008 film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which included
09:23a puppet musical version of Dracula.
09:25To make The Puppets, Siegel and his collaborators sought out the Jim Henson Company. At an early
09:30meeting, everyone in attendance got a puppet to goof around with, but according to Forgetting
09:35Sarah Marshall director Nicholas Stahler,
09:37"[Jason was playing with the puppet the whole time during this business meeting. It was
09:42looking at people, looking at him as he was talking."
09:45Siegel's enthusiasm so impressed Henson executives that they got him a meeting with The Muppets'
09:50corporate parent, Disney, where he straight-up pitched a brand new Muppet movie. The rest
09:55was box office history.
09:58Steve Whitmire joined The Muppets in the 70s, operating puppets in The Muppet Movie and
10:02on The Muppet Show, and finding his signature character during the 80s in Rizzo the Rat.
10:08Whitmire took over Kermit the Frog after the death of Jim Henson in 1990, and continued
10:12with the character until he was suddenly fired in 2016. According to a statement from Muppet
10:18Studio, Whitmire's firing wasn't that sudden, though, instead being the result of what they
10:23called, quote,
10:24"...Steve's repeated, unacceptable business conduct over a period of many years."
10:29Brian Henson elaborated, saying that among other things, Whitmire would, quote,
10:33"...send emails and letters attacking everyone, attacking the writing and attacking the director."
10:39Whitmire told The Hollywood Reporter that he simply felt he knew Kermit's character
10:43better than just about anybody, and that he argued passionately against things he felt
10:47were out of character, like a plot point on the short-lived 2015 series The Muppets in
10:52which Kermit lied to his nephew, Robin.
10:55It was totally an idea of trying to do what was best for the Muppets."
11:00While there have been dozens of Muppet-based shows and films, there are nearly as many
11:05proposed projects that never saw the light of day going as far back as the 1960s, when
11:10they pitched a show called The Adventures of Ralph in Outer Space, in which Ralph visits
11:15other planets via his homemade spaceship. Other shows that failed to launch included
11:20Muppet High, which would have centered on the Muppets as high school students in the
11:231950s. America's Next Muppet, a parody of the reality show America's Next Top Model,
11:30where Kermit and Piggy would judge aspirants who wanted to become the next star Muppet.
11:34And Muppets Live Another Day, which was going to be a 1980s-set, six-part scripted series
11:39that took place after the events of the 1984 movie The Muppets Take Manhattan. Disney announced
11:45Muppets Live Another Day at their D23 convention in 2019 to much fanfare.
11:51The plot
11:52Kermit gets the Muppets together to locate a vanished Ralph. Broadway star, Frozen voice
11:57actor Josh Gad, signed up to write the show with Once Upon a Time heads Adam Horowitz
12:02and Edward Kitsis.
12:03Why are you wearing Muppet pants?"
12:06Just a couple of weeks later, though, Gad announced that after more than a year of work
12:10on Muppets Live Another Day, the series had exploded like one of Crazy Harry's devices.
12:15He tweeted,
12:16Sadly, Eddie Kitsis, Adam Horowitz, and I have decided to step away from Muppets Live
12:21Another Day. Sometimes, creative differences are just that.
12:25Instead, Disney pivoted to Muppets Now, which debuted on the Disney Plus streaming service
12:30in 2020. Just what comes next for the Muppets is anyone's guess.