As a result, when Jim arrived back in London that May, The Muppet Show was already being watched weekly by 15 million faithful Britons. Fan mail poured into the Muppet Suite at Elstree, burying Jim’s desk until his return. The Muppet Show Album, scarcely a month old, was speeding up British music charts, and would knock The Beatles Live at the Hollywood Bowl from the number one spot by summer (meanwhile, back in the United States, the album would never even crack the Top 100, reaching only 153). And like the Beatles whom he had displaced on the music charts, Jim suddenly found himself—and the Muppets—in the middle of a fan and media frenzy that surprised even him. “It’s like they’re creating this ‘Muppetmania’ thing,” Jim said with just a hint of exasperation. But what did he expect? “The show was a big smash hit,” said Jerry Nelson plainly. The first week back at Elstree, the shuttle bus Jim used to ferry the Muppet team around the area—emblazoned with The Muppet Show logo on the sides—was mobbed by fans at a traffic light. In Parliament, several members of the House of Commons would “rendezvous secretly” each Monday morning “to discuss the weekend show.” It was even reported in the Daily Express that the entire staff of the Russian embassy in London would gather around the embassy’s lone TV to watch the show, peering in on Kermit and the Muppets at a time when most Western television shows were prohibited in the Soviet Union.
“It’s fantastic the way the Muppets have really taken off,” Jim told the Daily Mirror—but British journalists were just as interested in the Muppet performers, profiling Jim and “the Muppet Men” as if they were pop stars. Jim was demure about his own celebrity. “I don’t think or talk about superstars,” he told one journalist. “A lot of the credit for the Muppets must go to Lew Grade for putting money and faith in us.” But once the subject of money had been broached, Jim was typically reluctant to discuss numbers, and parried efforts to speculate on how much he and the Muppets might be worth. “Really, money doesn’t concern me at all. I’m only worried about getting each show right.”
Regardless of Jim’s deflection on the matter, it wasn’t just the show that was successful; Muppet-related merchandise was booming in the U.K. as well—during the first four years of the show, British merchandising alone would take in more than $25 million. As was his habit with any Muppet-related Sesame Street merchandise, Jim took it upon himself to act as his own quality control, personally authorizing the licenses for any Muppet products himself, signing off on puzzles, jack-in-the-boxes, and T-shirts, but rejecting other products with artwork or materials he considered “shabby.” “I feel I owe it to the many people who think of the Muppets as personal friends to keep the standards high,” Jim explained. “The most common comment people make [is] that Kermit … and all the other Muppets seem to be real people. That is very gratifying to me, but it also means I have a big responsibility.… After all, they’ve become real people to me, too, and I like them too much to let anyone take advantage of them.”
The huge success of the show also made the job of landing guest stars that much easier. By the second season, said Jerry Juhl, “there were times when the stars would call us. It was the thing to do.” Letters from agents and publicists flooded into Lazer’s suite at Elstree or Brillstein’s office in California, every one offering their client as an ideal guest, and assuring Jim that their client “adored” the Muppets. Some of these appeals were successful; Brillstein booked Kenny Rogers as a guest during The Muppet Show’s fourth season after receiving an imploring telegram. There were also intriguing offers from nontraditional entertainers like the opera singer Régine Crespin, who wanted to be on the program (“I love that show!” she gushed) and the humor writer Erma Bombeck. And each week, Jim and Lazer would make lengthy—and expensive—long-distance phone calls to Brillstein to gauge the agent’s reaction to the countless letters and telegrams and postcards. “Bernie was a rock, an anchor for show business for us,” said Lazer. “He kept us real. We were in London and he would [tell us] what’s entertaining now, what the networks want.”
Jim also wrote down his own list of dream guests—and urged the Muppet writers and performers to do the same—filling pages and pages of his yellow notepads with columns of names. On one page, Jim put together a list of puppeteers and personal influences he wanted on the show, including two—Señor Wences and Edgar Bergen—that he eventually got, as well as some tantalizing possibilities in those he didn’t, such as Bil Baird, Shari Lewis, Burr Tillstrom, and Stan Freberg. On another sheet, Jim took great care to note potential female guest stars, drawing up a long and somewhat quirky list that included Mae West, Mia Farrow, Princess Anne, Kim Novak, and Katharine Hepburn. At the bottom of the page, written in giggling afterthought, Jim had added Liberace’s name to the list. As it turns out, it was one of the few names on this particular wish list he actually booked, with the pianist appearing during The Muppet Show’s third season. “Everybody had only the nicest things to say about him,” Jim wrote of Liberace in his diary, though he confessed he was shocked to learn what a “surprisingly bad pianist” he was.
The dream lineup assembled by the Muppet performers and writing staff was no less quirky, though slightly hipper than Jim’s somewhat stodgy list. The performers asked for interesting, slightly dangerous actors, artists, and musicians to work with, putting Dustin Hoffman, David Bowie, Salvador Dalí, Michael Caine, and Robert DeNiro near the top of their list. The writers, meanwhile, aimed even more adventurously, proposing Frank Zappa, Meryl Streep, the entire Monty Python troupe, and staggeringly, a reunited Beatles. Lazer, in fact, was convinced the Beatles could be persuaded if their schedules could be accommodated—and with Jim’s encouragement, he made a serious though unsuccessful run at each member of the Fab Four, nearly securing Ringo Starr and getting at least a passing interest from Paul McCartney, who was, his representatives promised Lazer, “a great fan of the show.”
Still, there were more than enough big names moving through Elstree during The Muppet Show’s five-year run; the second season alone featured Zero Mostel, Milton Berle, Steve Martin, John Cleese, Peter Sellers, and—in one of the most anticipated shows of the season—ballet virtuoso Rudolf Nureyev, who gamely danced with a gigantic pig in a Muppet production of “Swine Lake.” “As the show kept gaining in popularity, we had a waiting list,” said Brillstein. “Jim was the king of London.… It was a great time.”
That summer, too, Jim moved into a flat on the serendipitously named Frognal Gardens, a shady, bending street lined with quaint Georgian row houses in London’s Camden district, just south of Hampstead Heath. It was an area Jim came to love, strolling the steep streets, and walking or flying kites in the enormous, rambling, grassy Hampstead Heath, which came to be a special retreat for him. Some nights, if he wasn’t working too late, he would put on a tuxedo and spend the evening at one of the exclusive clubs to which he belonged, often taking Lazer or any interested Muppet Show guest with him to have dinner and play craps or blackjack until late into the night. “He loved all that James Bond kinda stuff,” recalled Cheryl Henson.
While Jim wasn’t normally a high-stakes gambler, he could be a gutsy player—and one evening, during a hot streak playing craps, he chose to let his money ride for much of the night and ended up winning $10,000. For Jim, though, the gambling experience itself—putting on a tuxedo, walking into a smoky club, and sidling up to the craps table—was more exciting than the outcome; losing didn’t matter, and any winnings were cheerfully regarded as a kind of unearned income. “It’s a kind of equanimity that he really cultivated,” said Lisa Henson, “so that if he lost money, it would mean nothing.” Still, watching Jim build a big pot could be nerve-racking. Lisa recalled another evening when Jim spent most of the night at the blackjack table, building a sizable pile of chips—“and I just took the chips off the table,” she said, “and he was like, ‘Oh, come on!’ and I said, ‘All right, you can keep gambling with what you have, but I’ll be taking this for later!’ ” Rather than pocket the money for himself, then, gambling winnings were usually
reserved for upscale staff retreats or entertainment for the Muppet crew—in the case of his $10,000 gambling windfall, Jim banked the money until Christmas, using it to pay for a lavish Christmas party for Henson Associates.
Jim also loved the restaurants in the Hampstead area. He wasn’t much of a cook—peanut butter sandwiches and tomato soup were the extent of his culinary skills—so he ate out nearly every evening. Eventually, said Lisa, he knew “every single restaurant in Hampstead,” and could steer visitors to the best restaurant, pub, or bakery for anything from crepes and pastries to French or Italian food. And there was always dessert; Jim loved dessert, and would end every meal by asking the waiter to bring over the dessert tray, where he would waggle his long fingers at every item. “What’s that thingy?” he would ask playfully.
Despite being an ocean away from his family, Jim was an intensely devoted father—and every night, almost without fail, he would call Bedford at 6:00 P.M. New York time, so he could speak to each of the Henson children before he went to bed at midnight. “There was no question that he was totally part of our lives and our scene,” said Jane, “even though he wasn’t physically there.” During summer breaks or school holidays, Jim would almost always have one or more of the children stay with him in London, taking them to the studio during the day and out to dinner meetings with him in the evening. Whichever child happened to be in London with him, said Lazer, “was his absolute favorite at that moment. [He had] total focus and concentration on that child.”
“We all enjoyed being around him, and one of the best ways for us to be around him was to work with him,” said Cheryl Henson, who spent several summers working in the ATV workshop, “because when he was working, he was always at his peak.” For Jim, having his children with him was never an inconvenience. “That’s great fun for me,” he wrote, and he would eagerly jump into projects and other schemes with them, even committing to “go vegetarian”—at least for a while—at the encouragement of Cheryl, who had been impressed by vegetarian Bernadette Peters during her August 1977 appearance on The Muppet Show.
Jim returned to New York in early September 1977, just in time to spend several days taping inserts for Sesame Street—as he had assured Cooney and the media, the show would always be a priority—before dashing off to Los Angeles to attend the Emmy Awards. In its first season, The Muppet Show had been nominated in three categories—including Outstanding Comedy-Variety Series—and won one, earning Rita Moreno an Emmy for her guest appearance. Not a bad showing for a show in its first season, but privately Jim was a bit disappointed. “Up for 3,” he wrote in his journal, “—only Rita won—sigh.”
Regardless of the Emmy Award losses, The Muppet Show had grown steadily in popularity in the United States during the five months Jim had been in London, continually picking up viewers and winning over critics. Jim, too, was becoming nearly as well known as his creations. After making appearances to promote the Muppets on The Tonight Show or Merv Griffin, Jim suddenly found himself being stopped by fans as he walked in Central Park or ate in restaurants near the Muppet workshop—and had to admit he liked it. “If some people recognize me, that’s enough to flatter my ego,” he said sheepishly.
Suddenly, the Muppets were everywhere—in every newspaper, on every television, in every city, in every market. By Lazer’s account, the Muppets were already being seen by 125 million viewers in 103 countries—and it was only their second season. Whatever channel they were on, in whatever market, they were unbeatable. When channel 11 in Chicago tried to launch a new local children’s music show and put it up against the powerhouse Muppet Show, the reviewer at the Chicago Sun-Times snickered, “Dumb, dumb, dumb.”
And it wasn’t just children who were fans. The American Guild of Variety Artists gave the Muppets their “Entertainer of the Year” award—where they were lauded by Edgar Bergen as “the most elegant and sophisticated creation of the puppeteer’s art”—while the National Association for Better Broadcasting hailed The Muppet Show as the year’s “most creative, entertaining and refreshing new program.” American soldiers and their English counterparts adopted Muppets as their mascots, flying banners emblazoned with Kermit or Miss Piggy. People magazine and Good Morning America sent reporters to shadow Jim in the workshop, dazzled by the relatively small crew that built and performed the magical Muppets.
Lazer could barely contain his glee. “[Critics] didn’t feel this show could bridge the gap between kids and adults. But we knew it could. We knew it.” Brillstein, too, was nearly vibrating with excitement, and wrote Jim a heartfelt note to let him know how pleased he was for him. “I guess the reason for this letter is simply to tell you that I love you,” wrote the agent, “and I’m very proud of what you’ve accomplished … you’re terrific and I am proud to be part of the amazing success you’re having.”
Jim, too, was pleased, but circumspect. Since the early 1960s, he had been drafting, drawing, writing, and pitching various iterations of The Muppet Show, from the rough sketches of Zoocus in his notebooks and the unrealized pitch for Johnny Carson and the Muppet Machine to the proposals and outlines that eventually became the The Muppets Valentine Show and Sex and Violence. Now that he finally had The Muppet Show, he was ready to move on.
Jon Stone, who was still working with Jim on Sesame Street, thought he understood Jim’s creative wanderlust. “He was restless,” said Stone. “And Jim would’ve been restless if he’d lived to a hundred and nine.… He would never be satisfied to stay where he was. He was always pushing the limits.” Added Lazer, “He’d want to move on to another phase.… That’s what kept him doing this.… If he didn’t have that other thing, he would be bored. But he never stopped thinking or going beyond.”
To Jim, then, the next step was obvious. He had conquered television; now he was going to make a movie.
CHAPTER TEN
LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE
1977–1979
Frank Oz, Jim, Dave Goelz, and Jerry Nelson perform on their backs in the baking sun for 1979’s The Muppet Movie. Jim was delighted by its success. (photo credit 10.1)
ON A BRISK NOVEMBER MORNING IN 1977—THE TUESDAY JUST BEFORE Thanksgiving—Jim left his flat in Frognal Gardens and slid into the backseat of a hired car for the twenty-minute ride to Elstree. He and the Muppet crew were in the middle of a hectic week; on Monday evening, they had made a triumphant appearance at the prestigious Royal Variety Performance (“Last night,” Jim had written with near audible glee in his private diary, “I met the Queen of England—ta dah!”). Now they would spend the next three days packing in tapings for two episodes of The Muppet Show before taking a short break for Thanksgiving—and on Thanksgiving Day, a gigantic Kermit the Frog balloon would glide over the crowd during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. As the car moved north through London, Jim’s driver asked, “Did you ever, in your wildest dreams, think you would have success like this?”
Jim had no doubt about his answer. “The honest answer to this,” he explained later, “which I do occasionally admit, is that yes, I’ve always known that I would be very successful in anything I decided to do—and it turned out to be puppetry. And not only am I not surprised, but I’m disappointed that it’s taken this long, and I haven’t begun to be as successful as I will be.”
That response would have been no surprise to Jane, who had been impressed by Jim’s quiet resolve and self-confidence since the very beginning. “Jim’s way of operating and his way of thinking was extraordinary,” said Jane. “I met him when he was eighteen and it was already in place.… And even by eighteen he was convinced he was going to be successful.” And yet, “his dilemma,” said Jane, “was, ‘Why is it taking so long to be successful?’ ”
Like his protagonist in Time Piece, Jim still felt he was racing against a ticking clock to get everything done. As Jon Stone had said, Jim would have been restless if he’d lived to be 109—and one had only to look at Jim’s schedule that winter to see a man trying to do it all. During eight weeks in London
, Jim had wrapped up work on eleven episodes of The Muppet Show, participated in the Royal Variety Performance, and taped new television specials with Julie Andrews and Bob Hope. On December 16, he flew back to New York long enough to host two Christmas parties, went skiing for five days, then spent ten days in early 1978 working on inserts for Sesame Street. “Jim was the hardest working man I have ever met,” said Muppet performer Caroll Spinney, who was also astounded at how little sleep Jim seemed to need. Spinney recalled once leaving a party with Jim in the wee hours of the morning, and asking whether he was at all concerned about getting up in time to make a 9:00 A.M. taping. Jim laughed; he’d be ready, he told Spinney, because he had a breakfast meeting to attend first. “He loved what he did so much, I don’t think he thought of it as work,” said Spinney. “It was the way he lived.… He was like a juggler who could keep twenty things in the air at the same time.”
By late 1977, one of those things was a movie—and not just “The Muppet Show on film,” as Jim put it, but rather “the flip side of The Muppet Show.” Instead of bringing a live guest into the world of the Muppets, Jim explained, “we are taking the Muppets out into the real world.” It was an ambitious idea. Puppets had played supporting roles on the big screen before—puppeteer Lou Bunin had provided the puppetry and stop motion effects for a 1950 version of Alice in Wonderland, while Bil Baird had performed the memorable marionette sequence in The Sound of Music. But no one had ever filmed a full-length movie with puppets as the main characters, interacting with real people in the real world. “Jim was a dreamer,” said Jerry Juhl, and yet “he was pragmatic enough to make the dream happen.”
Jim Henson: The Biography Page 32
