Jim Henson: The Biography

by Brian Jay Jones

  Jim was spending so much time at his California production company, in fact, that he had decided to purchase the Malibu house he had been renting for the past year. He now had homes in Malibu, Florida, New York, Connecticut, and London—“one home per child,” he joked. The place in Malibu was particularly good for Jim—tucked up on the bluffs near Nicholas Canyon Beach, far removed from the bustle of Burbank, with no other homes around, it seemed, at times, to be in the middle of nowhere. He had recently taken up yoga, and in the mornings he would set up his yoga mat on the rear deck and go through his sun salutation poses as he looked out over the Pacific Ocean. “It just made him so happy,” said Cheryl. Other times, he would simply sit quietly as he watched the ocean stretch out toward the horizon—“just a few minutes in meditation and prayer each morning,” he said. “I find that this really helps me to start the day with a good frame of reference. As part of my prayers, I thank whoever is helping me—I’m sure somebody or something is—I express gratitude for all my blessings and I try to forgive the people that I’m feeling negative toward. I try hard not to judge anyone, and I try to bless everyone who is part of my life, particularly anyone with whom I am having any problems.”

  That spring, Jim made the short flight from Burbank up to Sacramento, then drove up the coastline to visit Jerry Juhl at his home a hundred miles north of San Francisco. The two walked and talked among the giant redwoods for a while, then returned to Juhl’s home office to discuss The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made, which Jim was still determined to make once the Disney deal was complete. It was a project the two of them loved to talk about—and Jim would spread the storyboards out on the floor of Juhl’s office where, in no time, the two of them would be giggling uncontrollably as they tossed around one idea after another. “I thought he was more relaxed and happier, sort of more content with what was happening than I’d seen him in a long time,” said Juhl. “Really happy.”

  Lazer thought so, too. In April, he briefly joined Jim down at Disney-MGM, where Jim excitedly described a new attraction he wanted to build: a fully operational television studio in which park visitors could watch the Muppet performers at work on whatever production happened to be under way at the time. As he showed Lazer around the rest of the Muppet area—making big sweeping motions with his hands as he pointed out where the Great Muppet Ride would be or where he wanted to set up the Great Gonzo’s Pandemonium Pizza Parlor—Lazer thought that “Jim was never happier in his life.… Anything he wanted to do, he could do,” said Lazer. “I never saw this friend of mine so happy.”

  By the end of April, then, Jim was determined to get the Disney deal done. There was still the major issue of the status of the Muppet performers to resolve—the big question was whether Disney would buy out any performers it didn’t put on its own payroll—but Jim was getting tired of the haggling. “Disney focused on everything,” said one Henson insider. “You’d have to call Michael Eisner and say, ‘This is where it’s gone with your zealous robots.’ Every single issue was pushed as a deal point by Disney. As opposed to focusing on the big points, they focused on everything.” It was a war of attrition, and no detail was too minute. Even the small service elevator at One Seventeen had drawn fire from the Disney lawyers, who pounded away at Jim’s legal team for weeks, arguing over elevator permits and inspection records. Henson Associates attorney Peter Schube still grimaced at the negotiations even twenty years later. “[Henson Associates] was extremely solid,” said Schube. “We had been well served by the very best outside lawyers, particularly in the field of copyright and trademark, for as long as there had been a company. But we were a closely held, nonpublic company, operating out of a brownstone. There’s always something that can be ginned up if an army of Disney lawyers is charged with finding things.” As one Muppet writer put it, “Disney is a corporate entity and Jim and the Muppets have a very fuzzy, Grateful Dead kind of sensibility.” It was that underlying difference in corporate personalities, said Schube, “that drew the process out, and created frustration on both sides. They had a way of doing things that were meaningful to them. Jim had a goal that was meaningful to him—but Disney’s way of doing things sort of pushed that goal further and further out.”

  Lazer was still arguing that, even at $150 million, Disney was getting Jim too cheaply. Some even thought that Jim was willing to let an unfavorable deal move forward simply so he could place the Muppets safely in the hands of Disney—and then, once his fifteen-year exclusive obligation expired, he would leave the Muppets behind and move on to something completely different. “Of all the people in the world, Jim could actually probably do that,” said Larry Mirkin, “because he would just say, ‘You know, let’s do something new.’ ”

  “That goddamned deal!” Jim was now calling it, using an expletive so rare, said Michael Frith, that “I’ll never forget my surprise and, frankly, shock when he said it.… It came from a place of deep hurt and frustration.” It saddened Jim, recalled Jane, when “things just didn’t work out between people or projects … he never really knew how to deal with [that disappointment] because, in some ways, he didn’t allow himself not to be an optimist.” But Jim had given Eisner his word—and he was confident he and Eisner could work things out.

  “Don’t worry,” he told Brillstein, reminding the agent that there was still something bigger than merely legal negotiations holding the deal together: “My handshake.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  JUST ONE PERSON

  1990

  (photo credit 16.1)

  ON FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 1990—A LONG DAY THAT BEGAN WITH A 5:30 A.M. taping of the Today show—Jim left for Orlando to spend several days filming Disney commercials with the Muppet team. Negotiations between Disney and Henson Associates continued even as Jim worked, and on May 1 he met with Lazer, Martin Baker, and planning director Charles Rivkin over dinner at the Grand Floridian—a meeting serious enough that they resumed it over breakfast the next morning. Jim would be leaving Orlando for Los Angeles later that afternoon—but when he returned to New York in a week, he wanted to get everything in order to close the deal. “He was ready,” said Brillstein. In fact, Jim had already called the agent and told him he wanted to plan on setting aside a few days to go on a yacht trip “with the boys.” “We’re gonna celebrate the Disney deal,” he told Brillstein excitedly. “Pick people who are fun!”

  Late in the afternoon of Friday, May 4, Jim met Kevin Clash and Arthur Novell at Paramount Studios in Hollywood to tape an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show. Jim wasn’t feeling well; somewhere along the way, he had picked up what he thought was a trace of a cold, perhaps even a mild case of strep throat, admitting to Novell that he was tired and his throat was slightly sore. “He insisted it would go away,” said Novell—as Clash remembered, he said “it wasn’t anything extreme”—and Jim ambled out onstage that evening in gray slacks and a colorful sweater, his hair newly trimmed, grinning happily. But things were clearly off. Placing Kermit on his arm, he bantered with Hall about the Kermit–Miss Piggy relationship, struggling at times to come up with a clever retort. With his voice somewhat thicker than normal, Jim so noticeably stumbled over his own ad-libbed punch lines that even Hall joked about Kermit’s faltering speech. “I would’ve said I had a frog in my throat,” Kermit responded a bit lamely, “but I won’t say that.” Following a commercial break, Clash came on to perform his hip Muppet musician Clifford, sparring nimbly with Hall for the final five minutes. Jim sank back into the couch, legs crossed, quietly stroking his beard.

  At dinner afterward, Jim thanked Clash for helping make the appearance a success. “It was funny how much he was disappointed by his performance,” said Clash. “He loved what I did with Clifford but he wasn’t happy with what he did—and I think that had to do with him not feeling really good.” Later that evening, Jim was scheduled to sit for an interview with Tom Snyder for ABC Radio. Novell, concerned about Jim’s sore throat, offered to bring some antibiotics he had in a suitcase in the back of their town ca
r. “No, leave it,” Jim told Novell. “I’ll be okay.”

  Contrary to rumors that persisted long after Jim’s death, Jim’s Christian Science upbringing had not given him a lifelong aversion to doctors or medication. Although Jim always respected the Christian Science point of view, he had long abandoned its practices as a way of life. “I think it’s not particularly necessary to lead a religious life,” he once wrote. “People progress just as well in music, or art, or math or science or gardening or whatever. It all seems to work as well and the process is good.” While Jim rarely took anything stronger than aspirin or Advil, the truth was that he rarely went to doctors—or rarely took medication—because Jim rarely got sick. “Jim was very stubborn about sickness,” said Alex Rockwell. “He basically didn’t tolerate it.” And, said Rockwell sincerely, “his schedule didn’t allow for it.”

  “He was always quite robust and healthy,” said Brian Henson, a contention supported by nearly everyone who worked closely with him. “He just wasn’t an unhealthy guy,” said Steve Whitmire. “He was happy and he was healthy.” So healthy, in fact, that anytime Jim came down with anything—especially if it was serious enough to disrupt his work schedule—he made a note of it in his private journal, writing “I get the flu,” over five days in February 1985 or, more seriously, “Went to Washington for holiday; Got pneumonia upon return,” in early 1968. But illness for Jim was atypical—and when he did get sick, he preferred to simply weather the storm, recovering quietly at home, without a fuss, and dosing himself with aspirin and his favorite comfort foods, usually tomato soup and peanut butter sandwiches. There was nothing unusual or sinister, then, in his refusal of Novell’s offer of antibiotics. “Typical Jim,” said Novell with a sigh two decades later. “Very much so.”

  Jim remained in California for several more days, staying at the house in Malibu, before finally heading back to New York on Tuesday, May 8. He was feeling better—and on his way to the Los Angeles airport, he stopped in to see Bernie Brillstein, whose father had passed away a week earlier. Jim hadn’t been able to attend the funeral, and wanted to offer his condolences. Jim wrapped Brillstein in one of his big hugs. “I love you,” he told the agent. “I’ll see you when I get back.” He was going to North Carolina to visit his dad and Bobby, he said—he was especially determined to see his father, who was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease—but then he was returning to Los Angeles to see Eisner and sign the deal. “I don’t give a shit what happens,” Jim laughed, using another rare epithet. “We’ll sell it!” On his way out the door, Jim casually asked Brillstein’s receptionist out for a date. Then, with a wave goodbye, he was gone.

  May 9 was always an important date for Jim. In 1955, it had been the day Sam and Friends had debuted in Washington—and since then, it had served as a kind of unofficial birthday for both Kermit the Frog and the Muppets. More important, however, it was also Lisa Henson’s birthday—and today, as she turned thirty, Warner Brothers announced that she had been promoted to executive vice president. Jim was so proud. He sent flowers.

  On the morning of Saturday, May 12, after two days of seemingly nonstop meetings at One Seventeen, Jim and Cheryl boarded a USAir flight at LaGuardia Airport, and touched down in Norfolk, Virginia, a little after 10:00 A.M. Jim wasn’t feeling well again; while he didn’t have a fever, his throat was still sore, his nose was running, and he had picked up a slight cough. “It seemed like a cold or flu,” said Cheryl. But he felt well enough to carry his own bags and drove their rental car the seventy miles south from Norfolk to rural Ahoskie, North Carolina, where they checked into a motel near Paul and Bobby’s home.

  Jim and Cheryl spent the rest of Saturday with Paul and Bobby, playing croquet on the lawn, sipping tea with lots of ice, and chatting casually in the kitchen. “This was a place where Jim was always at home, embraced with love and easy companionship,” said Cheryl. After dinner, Jim—along with an assortment of cousins and extended family—retired to the Hensons’ screened-in “secret porch,” watching the sun go down as they swapped stories and swayed silently in gliders or creaked in rocking chairs. “We just laughed and had a wonderful time,” said Bobby. Jim was “a little sniffily,” she recalled, but would never say he was sick. Rather, he said he “just didn’t feel good”—which was more than anyone had ever heard him complain about his health.

  Sunday morning, however, Jim said he felt worse, and went back to bed in his motel room, sleeping in until nearly lunchtime. Around noon, his cousin Stan Jenkins came to pick up Jim and Cheryl to drive them back out to Paul and Bobby’s for lunch. Jim mentioned during the short car ride that he still wasn’t feeling well and had taken Advil—and Stan, a physician, advised Jim to see a doctor the moment he was back in New York (it would later be incorrectly and unfairly reported that Stan had examined Jim and missed the warning signs of pneumonia, an accusation that haunted Stan for years). Jim tried to eat, but had little appetite. His cough had worsened, sometimes rasping so violently that he coughed blood—something he disclosed to no one at the time, preferring not to worry his family. By late afternoon, Jim shakily mentioned that he might try to catch an earlier flight back to New York. There were other factors to consider, too; beginning at ten the next morning he was scheduled to spend all day in a recording session for a Disney show, and wanted to make sure he, and his voice, were rested enough. Bobby, who thought Jim “looked kind of bad,” told him to go. “Nobody knew that Jim was that ill,” Bobby said. “I knew he’d been tired. I chalked it up to that.”

  What no one suspected was that Jim was in the early stages of pneumonia brought on by a rare group A streptococcal bacterial infection—an infection that may possibly have invaded Jim’s system as he struggled with the mild case of strep throat during his Arsenio Hall appearance in early May. The question of how and why such a rare and terrible infection should strike an otherwise healthy, robust person remains one of the great, unjust mysteries of Jim Henson’s life. All that is known for certain is that as he left Paul and Bobby’s that afternoon, the streptococcal bacteria were already slowly spreading through Jim’s lungs and organs.

  Jim and Cheryl drove back to Norfolk, where they were able to swap their 9:45 P.M. flight for an earlier one, and arrived back at LaGuardia early Sunday evening. “He was really tired,” said Cheryl. As they walked through the airport, Jim cleared his throat and tested his voice in anticipation of the recording session the next morning, repeating, “Hi, ho, Kermit the Frog here!” several times, trying to shake the same thickness that had fogged his voice on Arsenio Hall a week earlier. A car service drove both Jim and Cheryl home, dropping Jim off at the Sherry-Netherland first. As Jim climbed out of the car, he told Cheryl he was going straight to bed.

  Only he didn’t. John had been staying with him at the Sherry-Netherland for some time—it was John, in fact, who was helping Jim train Disney performers to play the role of Sweetums for the Muppet*Vision 3D show—and when Jim came in the door, John was racing around the apartment, experimenting with a small Steadycam. Always the gadget junkie, Jim couldn’t resist taking the camera, and went whizzing around the apartment with it until his knees suddenly buckled. John took the camera away and led his father to the bedroom. “Dad, you’re sick,” John said. “Sick people lie in bed. They don’t run around trying Steadycams. Go lie in bed.” Jim finally crawled into bed, and John sat down next to him, rubbing his back, until Jim fell asleep.

  Jim awoke on Monday morning “feel[ing] lousy”; his voice was wrecked, and he was starting to have trouble catching his breath, both symptoms of the bacterial pneumonia that was now rapidly eating away at his lungs. Jim called his assistant, Anne Kinney, and asked her to cancel not only his 8:30 breakfast meeting, but also the all-day recording session for the Muppets on Location that was starting at ten. “This was big news,” said Kinney; Jim had never missed a recording session before, much less canceled one. Jim may have had a whim of steel, but to the Muppet performers, he was also their iron man, never absent. “No one could reme
mber Jim ever calling in sick,” said Dave Goelz. Kinney stopped in later that morning to check on Jim and deliver some soup; at the same time, Jane called the apartment and spoke briefly with him. She had been upset with Jim about something the night before, and had called Cheryl, looking for him so they could discuss it—but Cheryl had informed her that Jim was sick in his apartment, trying to sleep, and advised her to wait until morning to call him. Now, as she spoke on the phone with Jim, Jane became concerned. “He said he’d had a very rough night,” recalled Jane.

  Late in the afternoon, Jane dropped by Jim’s apartment to check on him, bringing along a pot of chicken soup. Jim had just gotten out of a warm bath and was getting ready to go back to bed—anything, he told Jane, to stop his heart from beating so fast. “I probably should have realized how serious that was, and he should have, too,” said Jane—but Jim insisted he merely needed to sleep. “Do you want me to stay?” Jane asked quietly. Jim nodded. “I wish that you would.”

  Jane firmly shooed John out of the apartment—“she basically kicked me out”—and put Jim to bed. But he couldn’t sleep; in addition to his rapid heartbeat, he was coughing violently and having difficulty catching his breath. Jane sat with him, speaking to him quietly and trying to get him to relax. Toward evening, Cheryl stopped in with more soup (“Everyone was coming in trying to give him chicken soup,” said Jane). Cheryl thought her father looked terrible, and considered staying the night—but Jane had already sent John away, and was insisting that she “did not want anyone else around.” Cheryl lingered for a while, but eventually complied with Jane’s wishes and went back to her apartment, where she called Lisa in California. “I’m really worried,” she told her older sister.