Jim Henson: The Biography

by Brian Jay Jones

  Back in New York, however, Jim had successfully sealed the deal on a new headquarters for Henson Associates, a beautiful 1929 double townhouse at 117 East 69th Street in Manhattan. Jim had purchased the five-story building for $600,000 in November 1978, but zoning issues had slowed the renovation of the space for several months. For one thing, Jim wanted to substantially reconfigure the basement and first floor to create a spacious, bi-level Muppet workshop, with several skylights letting natural light into what would normally have been an underground area. “I want to have a place for a creative nucleus,” wrote Jim—and once the zoning issues for such an ambitious remodeling were cleared, no detail was too small for Jim to lavish with care and attention. Colorful photo murals were installed in waiting areas and on landings. The Henson Associates logo—a large, lowercase HA, with an exclamation point at the end—was inlaid in brass into the marble floor of the main hall. Furniture was handcrafted, drapes were made from tie-dyed canvas or Chinese silks, and walls were painted in bright reds or warm beiges, with gold-toned trim and molding. It was a place as sprawling as Jim, as quirky as his sense of humor, and as colorful as one of his printed shirts. “I didn’t want a pretentious space or one with a feeling of opulence,” said Jim. “Instead, I wanted a happy, functioning space with character and warmth.”

  For many, though, the most memorable feature was the gleaming spiral staircase that ran up through the center of the townhouse, circling toward a large stained-glass skylight dubbed “The View from the Lily Pad,” meant to reflect what Kermit might see peering up through the trees from the swamp. The staircase was both the spine and the heart of the organization—all offices and conference rooms on each floor radiated off the stairs, and Jim came to regard the open stairwell as a kind of vertical telephone, leaning over the railing from his third-floor office to call to staff on the floors above or below. The staircase, he thought, broke down the “stratification” of being located on different floors—and more often than not, Jim would hold his meetings while standing on the stairs, leaning against the curved railing with his arms folded, nodding and listening.

  Formally opening the new Muppet headquarters—or One Seventeen, as it would be casually called, in deference to its street address—was only one part of a busy spring. Jim was in full publicity mode, trying to generate a buzz of anticipation for The Muppet Movie, scheduled for release in the coming summer. He had quickly put into production a variety show called The Muppets Go Hollywood—essentially an hour-long promotion for the upcoming movie—which had taken all of four weeks to write, rehearse, and tape. In April, the Muppets hosted The Tonight Show, and Jim had even arranged for Kermit to make a brief appearance at the end of a Cheerios commercial to remind viewers of the film. That particular bit of self-promotion had raised the hackles of Joan Cooney, who warned Jim—in a scolding reminiscent of the one administered by TV critic Jack Gould regarding Kermit’s appearance as a pitchman during Hey Cinderella!—that using Kermit in television advertising “could cause us embarrassment [at CTW].” Jim assured Cooney that Kermit’s appearance was related solely to the promotion of The Muppet Movie and could not in any way be construed as Sesame Street–related advertising. Cooney seemed less than convinced, but let the matter drop.

  Jim returned to London in late April to begin work on season four of The Muppet Show. Mindful that much of his time in the coming year would be occupied with promoting The Muppet Movie, Jim worked at a breakneck pace, taping six episodes in less than a month. Some days, he got no sleep at all—and yet, to the amazement of those around him, never seemed to lose his ability to focus intently on a task or keep a level head. While crew members and production assistants were “running around screaming” and wondering how all the work could possibly get done, Jim was “wandering around in the middle of it all, perfectly calm, perfectly content,” said Juhl. “If The Muppet Show had a basketball team, the score would always be Frog 99, Chaos 98.”

  As always, even with the hectic pace, Jim thrived on the work. “I love my work and because I enjoy it, it doesn’t really feel like work,” he said. “Thus I spend most of my time working.” His ethic was contagious—“You had to try to keep up with the guy—it seemed only fair,” remarked Jerry Juhl—but many of the longest-serving Muppet performers also came to understand that Jim’s devotion to his work came at a personal cost. “For such a giving, generous, nonstop creative person, Jim really didn’t have any friends,” said Richard Hunt. “He was friends with the guys he worked with.… But I think he was so much involved in his work that it didn’t help [or] allow him the time or the luxury of developing true, deep friendships.”

  Juhl thought he understood. “It isn’t that Jim didn’t have friends,” he said, “it was just that … there was no separation of life and work for Jim.… He knew very few people who weren’t involved in his projects or involved in his business. And usually what socializing he did almost inevitably he did with people who he was working on projects with.” Hunt, who had spent as much time as anyone socializing with Jim outside work, admitted that some of the most meaningful and memorable times spent with Jim were those private moments on the set. Jim and Hunt would often spend hours crammed shoulder to shoulder in a tiny space as they performed Statler and Waldorf heckling from their box seats—“and that’s when we would have these talks,” said Hunt. As the rest of the crew worked on the stage floor below, Jim and Hunt were in near isolation “in this little enclosed thing with curtains shut, and in a little booth together. We would talk about our families, and our hopes and desires and politics.” “[Jim] was very close to us all,” said Juhl. “He just conducted his life in a different way than most people did. He just couldn’t understand about this whole thing called work, and why people didn’t like it, and why people thought there was something wrong with working.”

  In the spring of 1979, Jane Henson—who had long accepted that work was Jim’s first priority—joined Jim in London, moving into a large, white-fronted Georgian-style townhouse they had recently purchased together on Downshire Hill, just a short walk from Hampstead Heath. It was “a great house,” said Jane fondly, with a formal music room and plenty of space for gatherings, though its backyard looked into the offices and down onto the impound lot of a police station. She and Cheryl, John, and Heather would live with Jim in London for a year—Lisa and Brian would stay in the United States to attend school—and while Cheryl worked in the Muppet workshop, John and Heather were enrolled in the American Community School in London, allowing Jim to punctuate his busy workweek with family walks on Hampstead Heath and side trips to the countryside. As Jim and Jane wrapped up the paperwork to purchase the Downshire Hill house, Jim also closed the deal on a former postage sorting facility just across the street at 1B, intending to use it as a workshop for the more realistic puppets and scenery needed for The Crystal, which was still in the planning stages.

  On May 31, 1979, The Muppet Movie made its world premiere at the Leicester Square Theatre in London, at a glittering event attended by British pop stars and Princess Anne. Jim showed up with Jane and John, along with his stepmother, Bobby, all grinning broadly as flashbulbs crackled around them. “Great evening,” Jim remarked in his journal with typical understatement. As the movie’s opening scene played in the darkened theater, with the camera gliding down through the clouds to find Kermit playing banjo in the swamp, fourteen-year-old John Henson burst into tears. “I cried in the opening,” said John later. “I still do.… [It was] just so powerful.”

  Between the new house in Hampstead, the hardworking Muppet workshop at Elstree and now The Muppet Movie making its premiere in a London theater, many of the employees in the New York office of Henson Associates were beginning to wonder whether Jim’s priorities had shifted to the upstart London division. In truth, they probably had. With The Muppet Show still based at Elstree and the newly purchased Downshire Hill workshop gearing up to take on work for The Crystal, London had become home for Jim’s television and film production—and “everything
follows production,” said Lazer. Meanwhile, the New York office had evolved into the de facto business arm of the organization. Gone were the days when Jim could make almost every major decision personally. “He’d been used to running a very small company where that was part of his job,” said Al Gottesman, “but he soon came to realize that he had to trust other people with some of those decisions.” Long used to Jim’s direct input on almost every major decision, the New York staff was now trying to adjust to its new long-distance relationship.

  “Al [Gottesman] was in New York running the … licensing, publishing and administration and everything,” said Lazer; meanwhile, the London crew was working directly with Jim on television and film projects, building props and performing puppets. While there was still plenty of creative work to be done in licensing and publishing in New York—led largely by the versatile Michael Frith—many felt that if there was any real fun to be had in the organization, it was going to be had in London with Jim. “There was no one here [in New York] to say ‘you did a good job’ … to praise them and to make them feel part of the whole—part of Jim,” said Lazer. “Because they all wanted to be part of Jim’s work and needed Jim’s attaboys.”

  Wherever Jim was, then, tended to feel special and needed, while wherever he wasn’t tended to feel neglected—and more often than not, where he wasn’t was New York. Frank Oz, who had seen Jim’s frustration with the New York–London dynamic, only had so much patience with that kind of neediness. “Sure, the more Jim was in New York, the nicer it was for them,” said Oz with a hint of annoyance. “But he had overhead. He had to work. And that meant he had to be in London.”

  Jim tried his best to soothe any bruised feelings—in his view, everyone at Henson Associates, whether they were puppeteers or accountants, was creative and valuable. “We are primarily a company of creative people, whose art we are helping to bring to the world,” he explained—and while art may have been the heart of the organization, it was money and merchandising that kept the blood pumping. “We recognize that business enables art ‘to happen,’ and that business plays an essential role in communicating art to a broad audience,” he said. “As both artists and businesspersons, we understand the value of both worlds, and so we bring them together in a way that facilitates the realization of our artistic vision.”

  Compounding the problem—if you could call it that—was that as the company became more successful, it required even more employees in New York, working in more divisions—personnel, finance, office management—to keep things running. “It seems that I’m bigger now than I thought I would be,” Jim told a reporter from The New York Times, estimating that his staff numbered “between 40 and 50.” Actually, by the summer of 1979, he had seventy-one employees, including eleven puppeteers and thirty designers and builders—and the more employees there were, the less time and attention Jim could bestow on each one. Yet, each “wanted to be part of the family, part of the team,” said Lazer. “People needed his approval. Even I did.” Consequently, anyone who had spoken personally with Jim—who had gotten a moment of the one-on-one interaction so many of them craved—tended to lord it over other staffers. That could make things touchy for Gottesman as he tried to manage the New York office in Jim’s own low-key style. “Jim was not preoccupied by office organization charts, so he would call and speak to whomever he wished,” said Gottesman. “So there was a little of that tension … the person at a meeting who had the most clout at that moment would be the person who said, ‘I just spoke to Jim.’ ”

  Whether he liked it or not, with his sweet, soft-spoken demeanor and casual dress, Jim was regarded by his employees as something more than just the boss; they saw him as a friend or even as a father figure. “He could not handle it,” Lazer said. “That was a heavy responsibility, because he wasn’t a daddy.” Yet while Jim may not have wanted to be a father figure, he still couldn’t help but feel a sense of paternal obligation to his employees and performers—some of whom, like Hunt and Whitmire, had joined the organization while still in their teens. “I think Jim felt … that we have a responsibility to each other,” said Richard Hunt. “He took it very seriously, his responsibilities toward his employees. When he couldn’t help them and he had to let people go, it was devastating.” Lazer told Jim he had to change the way he viewed his employees. “Stop calling this company a family,” Lazer said. “Call it a team, because you can fire team members. You can’t fire family.” That was still easier said than done, especially when it came to employees who really did feel like family—like Richard Hunt.

  One evening, while attending a dinner party in London, Hunt had openly bad-mouthed a Muppet Show guest star, which caught the ear of a journalist who promptly splattered Hunt’s remarks all over London. Lazer was incensed. “It was a major thing … Jim was furious,” said Lazer, “[because] all of the [goodwill] we had built up all this time with our image and our stars … could be lost.” While responsibility for firing or discipline generally fell to Lazer, playing bad cop to Jim’s good cop, for serious offenses like this—where Jim’s own reputation was at stake—Lazer felt Jim was obligated to get involved. In this case, Lazer planned to call Hunt into his office in the Muppet Suite where he intended to bawl out the puppeteer, then turn him over to Jim in the adjoining office for a formal reprimand. With Jim listening from just behind his office door, “I got Richard in,” said Lazer, “and I wiped him out.” Hunt began sobbing uncontrollably. “I’m sorry, Richard,” Lazer said sternly, “but you have to face Jim now.” Hunt had barely pushed open the door to Jim’s office when Jim rushed over and wrapped him up in a bear hug. “He just couldn’t do it,” said Lazer. “He couldn’t handle confrontations at all.”

  The New York office would feel a little less neglected in June, when Jim returned to the city, partly to oversee the opening of an exhibit called The Art of the Muppets at the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, but mostly so he and Oz could promote The Muppet Movie. Lord Grade was marketing the film aggressively, pumping $6 million into publicity—if the film bombed, joked Jim, “we’ll all lose our shirts”—and Jim and Oz were ferried from one interview to another with Kermit and Miss Piggy on their arms, gamely bantering with reporters. Most questions now were directed at Miss Piggy, who had clearly surpassed Kermit in popularity. Though Oz would usually deftly turn the discussion back to Jim and Kermit, it had become clear, even to Jim, that the Pig had taken on a life of her own. “Piggy’s become a phenomenon in the last few years and I think when we introduced her we had no idea she’d take off like she has,” said Jim. “It’s a personality that Frank Oz has created that people somehow identify with and either love or hate.”

  The Muppet Movie opened in the United States on June 22, 1979—but Jim was already back in production on The Muppet Show in London and thus attended neither the New York nor the Los Angeles premieres, simply noting in his journal that the reception was “Great!” The critics loved it—typical was the review from the eminent film critic Vincent Canby, writing in The New York Times, who hailed Jim for successfully blending “unbridled amiability … [with] intelligence and wit.” Meanwhile, audiences made it one of the most profitable films of the decade, grossing over $65 million in its initial release—not a bad return on Grade’s initial $8 million investment.

  Its success wasn’t surprising; as Canby had noted, the film had both heart and brains—and like The Muppet Show, its appeal cut across age groups. The Muppet Movie was an affectionate nod to old Hollywood, with running gags and barroom brawls, dance numbers and slow-motion romantic montages, as well as mad scientists, thrown pies, and characters who winked knowingly at the camera. At its center, it was also a buddy movie, a tip of the hat to the Bob Hope–Bing Crosby Road pictures, with Kermit and Fozzie encountering each Muppet character—and adding them to their growing entourage—as they drove across the country to Hollywood. Along the way, Kermit dodges Doc Hopper and his plans for turning Kermit into a frog legs pitchman, before finally landing a Hollywood con
tract—a moment, said director Frawley proudly, “that brings tears to your eyes.”

  In a way, The Muppet Movie was also Jim’s story—for Juhl had cleverly embedded elements of Jim’s own life and personality into the plot. “I guess you could say that mine has been somewhat of a fairytale story,” admitted Jim. “It’s been a long career with a steady and slow increase in fame and prosperity. It has really been very gratifying with no real surprises.” Like Kermit, Jim had left the swamps of Mississippi for the glitter of television and film, had put together his own “clan of whackos” to work with, and had struggled to break away from the clutches of the advertising business, which didn’t want to see him leave. Kermit’s motivation in heading for Hollywood wasn’t so far removed from Jim’s own outlook, either—rather than solely seeking fame and fortune, Kermit sees it as an opportunity to entertain and “make millions of people happy.” Finally, in the film’s climactic scene—a High Noon–type showdown between Kermit and Doc Hopper—Kermit delivers a defiant monologue that so clearly defined Jim’s own personal code that Juhl could have lifted it verbatim from any of his countless conversations with Jim over the last two decades:

  Yeah, well, I’ve got a dream, too. But it’s about singing and dancing and making people happy. That’s the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. And, well … I’ve found a whole bunch of friends who have the same dream. And it kind of makes us like a family.