Jim Henson: The Biography

by Brian Jay Jones

  As the song continued, a stunned Kermit tried gamely to keep singing, even as Yorick—in a wonderfully creepy performance by Jane—meticulously made his way toward Kermit, determined now to devour him. As Kermit scooted away and slapped frantically at Yorick, the purple skull continued to nibble at Kermit’s arms and legs, before finally dragging a flailing Kermit offstage. The audience roared its approval. The Muppets were a hit.

  Despite the growing success of the Muppets, back in D.C. an antsy WRC was still shuffling its afternoon lineup. After several weeks of jumbling, Sam and Friends was integrated into the final ten minutes of each evening’s newscast, airing nightly at 6:50. It was a plum position in the lineup—and, given Jim and Jane’s successful appearance on the Tonight show, a well-deserved one. Before the end of 1956, they would make several other national appearances, including a performance on The Arthur Godfrey Show. It had been a good year—and things would get even better in 1957.

  Beginning in January 1957, Jim was given his old 11:25 P.M. time slot, just after the late evening news and before the Tonight show, which was trying to find its way following the recent departure of host Steve Allen. Jim now had the 6:50 P.M. slot after the early news, and the 11:25 P.M. spot following the late news, making him responsible for ten shows a week. Add to that the increasing number of guest spots on countless other variety shows and the requisite public appearances, and Jim’s schedule quickly became grueling. “There were times that I had three shows a day,” Jim said later. “So it kept me busy.”

  So busy, in fact, that in February 1957, Jim decided to withdraw, at least briefly, from the University of Maryland. Schoolwork itself was really no problem for Jim; as a mostly A or B student, he excelled in courses in puppetry, design, stagecraft, art history, illustration, and even a year in ROTC. His only low grades were in typewriting, economics, and physical education. The decision to withdraw, then, was not to be made lightly. But Jim was perhaps astute enough to recognize that he had been given an enormous opportunity: he had not one, but two daily shows, over which he had almost complete creative control. For an aspiring artist, it was a unique chance to learn by doing—and all things being equal, Jim had perhaps decided his best classroom was not up the road at the university, but down the hill at WRC studios. Jim already had a full-time job lined up at WRC working in the studio’s scenic art department, designing and building sets. Through this job and his nightly work on Sam and Friends, Jim was determined to learn all he could about what went on both in front of and behind the camera. He would become a student of television.

  That didn’t make his schedule less hectic—in many ways, it was even crazier. There was his full-time job in WRC’s art department, but even on the days he wasn’t working, Jim was taking his Sam and Friends routines more seriously now, spending the mornings sorting through and listening to records, hoping for the spark of an idea for a Muppet performance—it was his intention, he said, not to repeat a song for at least two months. Once inspired, he would write brief routines, sometimes scratching them out like cartoons on a yellow pad, though Jim would often write on any piece of paper he could find. Meanwhile, Jane would rise early to attend morning classes at Catholic University, then make the six-mile drive to Jim’s family home in University Park. Over a late lunch, the two of them would review Jim’s routines, select the music, discuss any sets that might need to be built, and toss around other ideas. Then it was time to head into the District to WRC studios to rehearse the Sam and Friends segment for the evening newscast, which would be performed live at 6:50.

  After the early evening performance, Jane would return to her place in Northeast Washington to do homework, while Jim went back to University Park to have dinner, build and paint sets, or touch up and repair any Muppets showing signs of wear. At 10:30, he and Jane would meet back at WRC for an hour of rehearsal before going live at 11:25 with the five-minute installment of Sam and Friends. Even after they’d finished filming for the evening, Jim would sometimes stay for hours afterward, talking with cameramen and technicians. “In his spare time he’d be in the control room, trying to understand what was going on,” Jane recalled. “And the technicians loved teaching him because he really learned his lessons well. He couldn’t wait to try out the things he was learning on Sam and Friends.”

  Early on, Jim learned simple camera tricks that could enhance their performance. “At that time, all those television cameras were equipped with turrets [of lenses] and we would ask for the widest angle lens and experiment with moving in and out of the camera,” said Jim. “You could do really interesting things in terms of depth.” He discovered, for instance, that by holding the character back only a few feet, then moving forward, a wide-angle lens made the Muppet appear to rush the camera, covering a seemingly huge distance in a flash. It was unsophisticated but effective, and Jim encouraged the floor crew to freely offer suggestions on other technical tricks that might punch up their performance. “The atmosphere in the studio was very relaxed because in the beginning, we were lip-synching to records,” said Jane. “There was no live sound … so there was no need to be completely quiet. We could talk as we worked, and if something went especially well, the crew would applaud. If something went wrong, we’d laugh anyway!”

  The majority of their performances still involved lip-synching and pantomiming to novelty records—which, fortunately, Stan Freberg and others were continuing to produce regularly. “We’d use a lot of records,” Jane remarked later. “If it didn’t go well, we wouldn’t use it again, but if it did go well, we’d save it and use it again.” In the free-for-all atmosphere of early television, there was never any thought given to clearing the records for usage, which likely would have involved paying royalties. “I think we were working with something that was setting a precedent,” Jane offered later, coyly suggesting that their use of the records may have fallen under the same “fair use” rules of live radio. “The whole business was much more cottage industry—it wasn’t the way it is now.”

  In fact, remembered Jane, some of the artists whose records had been used on Sam and Friends grumbled at first, noting the lack of royalties or the use of an otherwise serious performance for a laugh and a punch line. When any wounded artists brought their concerns to Jim’s attention, however, it was always easier to ask forgiveness than permission—and most crumpled in the face of Jim’s charm. Stan Freberg, in fact, admitted he had been irritated when he learned his records were being used without attribution or recompense, and went storming down to WRC in April 1957 to issue a personal cease and desist. Once he had the opportunity to actually see Jim and Jane perform, however, Freberg melted—and shortly thereafter sent the two an enthusiastic telegram with his blessings. “I take it all back,” gushed Freberg. “This is one of the greatest acts I have ever seen [and I] am honored to let you use my records for ever and longer.”

  Jim reenrolled at the University of Maryland in the fall of 1957, following a brief summer vacation in Mexico. The break, if you could call it that, had done him good. He introduced a new character, the cigar-shaped, brush-mustached Professor Madcliffe, “who has a knack,” Jim explained, “for not being able to repair things he’s helped put out of order.” He would also be the first Muppet Jim would perform in his own voice—mostly interacting with Paul Arnold as he introduced segments—instead of lip-synching to records.

  Creatively, Jim’s sketches for Sam and Friends were growing more and more outlandish, juxtaposing bizarre behavior—in which his Muppets usually pummeled, blew up, or devoured each other—with earnest, sappy songs. Jim relished every moment. “In the early days of the Muppets, we had two endings,” Jim said. “Either one creature ate the other, or both of them blew up.… I’ve always been particular to things eating other things!” It was a sense of humor you either got, or you didn’t; it was as simple as that, and Jim wasn’t about to tone down his act. “We’d try some really way-out things,” Jim said later. “I remember one strange thing we had on the show—a puppet made from the skull
of a squirrel. We used to take this slightly macabre thing and make it talk, and also we used it to lip-synch to this terrible song called ‘There’s a New Sound’ … it has only one chord and it would drive people crazy.… I was convinced no one else at the station ever watched the show because there was never a complaint or any attempt at censorship of any kind.”

  And still WRC couldn’t seem to leave well enough alone. In September 1957, the network scratched Sam and Friends from its 6:50 P.M. spot, and cleared out its evening programming as the network struggled with lackluster ratings from the Tonight show. As they had in 1955, Sam’s fans responded angrily. “We have so few local shows that are worthwhile that when we do get something good, let’s fight to keep it on and going strong,” declared one letter to the Star. “Sam, Yorick and Kermit are a lot more entertaining than Death Valley Days and Last of the Mohicans.” “This is one case where I’m certain that WRC regretted cancellation of the show,” agreed the Star’s editors. Responding to the uproar, Sam was quietly returned to its regular spots in the WRC lineup.

  The Tonight Show, too, would right itself shortly thereafter, determining at last that it would officially be called The Tonight Show and installing Jack Paar as host. In fact, as the lead-in to the newly energized Tonight Show, Sam and Friends had become a local late night powerhouse. But it was a final bit of tinkering in the WRC schedule—this time courtesy of parent company NBC—that would give Jim not just one, but two of the most desirable time slots in television.

  Initially, WRC execs had likely hoped that Jim’s 6:50 performance of Sam and Friends would lure in and keep viewers tuned to NBC for the next hour, gently persuading them to sit through Superman or Nat King Cole, until the 7:45 broadcast of a new fifteen-minute, national nightly news show NBC was working hard to promote: The Huntley-Brinkley Report. The Huntley-Brinkley Report had been inserted into the NBC lineup on October 29, 1956, to replace John Cameron Swayze’s flailing Camel News Caravan, which had sunk slowly beneath CBS in the ratings. For its new newscast, NBC had gambled on a unique two-man format, with Chet Huntley broadcasting from New York City and David Brinkley from the WRC studios at Wardman Park in Washington—but the wager was proving slow to pay off.

  However, in September 1957—as part of the strategy that would eventually make Huntley-Brinkley the nation’s most respected and critically acclaimed news broadcast—NBC had decided to move Huntley-Brinkley out of its relatively late 7:45 P.M. slot and start the show an hour earlier, having it come on right after most local newscasts so viewers wouldn’t have to wait an hour between local and national news. WRC obligingly shortened its own 6:30 newscast to fifteen minutes, and gave Jim—and Sam and Friends—the final five minutes before WRC cut away to the national feed of Huntley-Brinkley at 6:45.

  It was an unbelievable break, and nearly fifty years later, Jane was still shaking her head in amazement at their luck. “We got the Huntley-Brinkley audience, and the [Tonight Show] audience!” Jane laughed. “I mean, what could be better?… You’d have national news, international news, weather, sports … and Kermit!” As David Brinkley began his broadcasts each evening at 6:45 at Wardman Park, Jim and Jane were several doors down, packing up their Muppets and preparing to return to the studio in five hours for the 11:25 broadcast. WRC anchorman Bryson Rash, who had the opportunity to watch Sam and Friends in the studio as he wrapped up the evening news, never ceased to be amazed by Jim’s performance. Jim was “very shy, a retiring sort of person,” recalled Rash. “But he was vigorous and he had a great imagination, of course, and he did a wonderful show.”

  Even as the Muppets grew in popularity, so, too, did their performers. The Washington Post, for example, was happy to let its readers know that Jane designed most of her own clothes, studied German three nights a week in an adult education course (“because it’s free,” she explained), and lived with a roommate in an apartment with no television. Jim appreciated such press, and teased Jane about the countless photographs that seemed to appear of her with the Muppets. “Why are you having your picture taken with all my puppets?” Jim would ask in mock annoyance. Likely it was because Jane was the more press-savvy of the two of them; when faced with an interviewer, Jim would usually slouch way down on a chair, his arms folded and long legs crossed in front of him, content to let Jane do the talking. Indeed, of the two of them, Jane was the more bohemian and worldly, the one who lived in an apartment in the District, making pottery, chatting with artists, and cooking for herself, very much grown up and on her own. Jim, meanwhile, still lived rent-free with his parents in the house on suburban Beechwood Road, still sleeping in the same bedroom he had shared with Paul.

  Despite their obvious personal chemistry, Jim and Jane’s relationship remained collegial and strictly professional, likely to the confusion of friends who wondered how two people could work together so intimately, arms often tangled together overhead as they worked from their knees, and yet remain merely co-workers. In fact, both Jim and Jane were involved with other people, with Jane engaged to Bill Schmittmann, a student from American University she had been dating since 1955, and Jim seeing Anne Marie Hood, a vivacious teaching student, three years younger—a “cheerleader type,” said Jane flatly, “but a nice girl”—to whom he would be engaged later that year. For the moment, then, the only relationship Jim and Jane were interested in having with each other was a professional one—and they made it official in 1957, agreeing to become business partners and sealing their deal with a handshake.

  Almost immediately, the new partners would have a remarkable opportunity. That summer, the Ver Standig advertising agency of Washington, D.C., had been approached by one of its clients, the John H. Wilkins Company, about producing a series of catchy ten-second spots for their coffee. The company wanted something innovative, memorable, and, if possible, funny. Helen Ver Standig, a fan of Sam and Friends, thought she knew exactly whom to call.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MUPPETS, INC.

  1957–1962

  Wilkins (right) and Wontkins. (photo credit 4.1)

  THE JOHN H. WILKINS COMPANY WAS ONE OF WASHINGTON’S SCRAPPIER and more successful local businesses. John H. Wilkins, Sr., had started the firm in 1900 as a tiny specialty coffee shop in the downtown area, where one of his regulars had been the respected politician William Jennings Bryan, who was not only fond of the coffee, but was also known to scarf down any food left sitting out on open trays or half-empty plates. In 1917, Wilkins had gone into the coffee wholesale business, joined in 1921 by his son, John H. Wilkins, Jr. The younger Wilkins had taken over the company with the passing of his father in 1947, and by the 1950s, the firm was one of the most successful businesses in the area, selling 11 million pounds of coffee annually, supplying two thirds of the coffee used in area hotels and restaurants, and over a quarter of that used in D.C. area homes—including the White House. “Use Wilkins coffee,” was Wilkins Jr.’s personal sales pitch and mantra, “it’s a wonderful way to start the day.”

  Helen Ver Standig approached Jim to discuss a new advertising campaign for Wilkins, which would involve filming fifteen ten-second coffee commercials, with an option to create more, based on demand. Jim would have only about eight seconds for each ad—the last two seconds were needed to show the product itself—so the ad would have to make the point quickly and effectively. There had been some skepticism about using puppets to sell coffee, but for Ver Standig, Jim was more than just Muppets. While she conceded that she thought the humor on Sam and Friends was “really pretty corny,” she still felt there was something there, an edgy sensibility that she thought would make the Wilkins campaign memorable.

  It was a challenge, but it didn’t take Jim long to accept the offer—and he already had an idea of how he would handle the project. “We took a very different approach,” he explained. “We tried to sell things by making people laugh.” Unlike most commercials at the time, which simply showed a product and described it in voice-over, Jim wanted to make fun of advertising itself, using an over-th
e-top, mock-heavy-handed approach. For his commercials, then, Jim would take John Wilkins’s mantra and give it a Muppet twist. No longer would Wilkins coffee be merely a wonderful way to start the day; it would be, “Use Wilkins coffee … or else!”

  In that “or else!” clause lay Jim’s particular expertise.

  Jim set to work drawing out his ideas for the Wilkins project, storyboarding his spots in pencil on lined yellow paper. For the commercials, Jim created two new characters, the skinny, rounded, excitable Wilkins, who will drink Wilkins coffee, and the squatty, triangular, grumpy Wontkins, who won’t. It was the same Laurel and Hardy study in contrasting characters that Jim got such a kick out of—only this time, that conflicting dynamic was the defining premise of the commercials, all of which worked in the same way: Wilkins asks Wontkins to try Wilkins coffee, Wontkins refuses, so

  Wilkins lets Wontkins have it. But it was the increasingly absurd and sometimes shocking forms of punishment that Wilkins would dish out that would make Jim’s Wilkins spots some of the most memorable, and successful, commercials of the era, with the skeptical Wontkins being clubbed, shot, egged, blown up, run over, stomped on, or decapitated for his refusal to sample Wilkins coffee.