Just wanted to use my very first post here to point out that today’s the birthday of this very sadly missed genius! I dedicated my storytimes today to Sesame Street/Muppet stories. And two days ago I bought two new Muppet Show DVDs (Harry Belafonte/Linda Ronstadt/John Denver and Peter Sellers/John Cleese/Dudley Moore).
One thing I love about Jim’s work is his kind of humor. It was playful, not above making fun of things, but never bitter or mean-spirited. Even when he was parodying things, it was an affectionate type of parody.
Affection…that’s the other thing that characterizes Jim’s work. His love for his work and his craft shows up in everything he does, and most importantly, his love for his audience. Whenever I watch classic Sesame Street, the Muppet show, or the Muppet movies he had a hand in (literally), I feel like a friend, not a demographic or target market. (That moment at the end of The Muppet Movie, where the Muppets sing “Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers, and YOU!”…they’re addressing and thanking us.)
And thirdly, he never just considered himself to be making kids’ entertainment…he made good entertainment that just happened to appeal to kids as well as adults. That’s a lesson that Walt Disney knew, and Pixar knows today, and that I wish the Disney company of today would take to heart more. (Though Lilo and Stitch shows that there’s hope still).
So happy birthday, Jim, and I hope that Fred Rogers and Walt Disney are throwing you a party as I type this.
(Side note: Rick and Amber, if you’re reading this, can you guess who I am under the user name?)
In honor of him, his (and my) alma mater put up a statue today in front of the Student Union. They’re also showcasing some of his artwork in one of our libraries. You can read about it (and see pictures) here, though this page is shamefully disorganized.
I remember the day he died, clearly. I was so horrified and stunned. I always wanted to meet him.
My fourth-grade teacher (yes, this is relevant) was probably the best teacher I ever had…she really motivated the kids in our class to learn and have fun. She dressed up like Miss Piggy for Halloween and was a really big Muppet fan…we bonded over that, since I’d been one for ages too.
And then she died, during the school year, and it was one of the most awful times in my life. But her funeral was one of the most uplifting. The whole class was there, and people just kept talking about how wonderful she was, and what she wanted.
We finished off the service by singing The Rainbow Connection and letting a bunch of balloons loose into the sky. Ever since, that song doesn’t fail to tear me up.
Mr. Henson, I wish I’d gotten the chance to meet you face to face, but I’ll never forget you for all my life. I dearly hope that you’re happy wherever you are now, and that your birthday is very happy indeed.
The most unsettling thing I remember about Jim Hensons death is the episode of The Muppet Show that TBS or TNT showed the Monday following his death. It featured a muppet in a lab (voiced by Jim Henson), singing Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle. I’ve no idea if that was the episode they scheduled to run prior to his death or if it was one they dug out because of it. Watching that segment reduced me to tears.
(BTW, for the old geezers like myself who were wee ones when Sesame Street debuted, Henson was a heroin addict when he was doing the show. Which means that Kermit was on smack! :eek: )
Plastic Ninja, that’s a lovely story. I hope your teacher got invited to the party Fred Rogers and Walt Disney threw for Jim.
As for news on the Henson company, you can’t do better for learning about that than www.muppetcentral.com. There’s an awesome message board there, too!
And this about Jim being on heroin…that’s news to me, too. Hope that’s just a rumor!
My BF at the time was a HUGE Henson fan, and I was so busy comforting him through the whole thing that I don’t think the enormity of Henson’s death really sank in until a couple of days later, when there was an editorial cartoon in the paper that made me burst into tears. It was set in front of a sunset over an ocean, with Mickey Mouse sitting on a log with his arm around Kermit’s back.
I had that hanging on my college dorm room door for years before someone stole it. I’d love to have another copy.
Hermione, glad to know there are other Muppet Central readers around! I don’t go there often, but when I’m looking for Henson discussion, that’s my first stop.
And I’m still waiting for that cite, Tuckerfan. As a major Jim enson fan, I’ve collected a couple of biographies and, many newspaper articles from the time of his death (some of which didn’t hesitate to bring up Henson’s weaknesses), this is the first time I’ve ever heard this even hinted at.
Henson and company were (and some still are) hippies, without a doubt, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there was some drug use, but Henson a heroin addict? I definitely want a cite on that.
It was in an interview with Henson that appeared in People magazine ages ago. Time frame for when the article appeared would have been the late 1980s. I realize that People is merely the National Enquirer printed on slicker paper, but it was an interview with Henson and I’ve seen it mentioned somewhere else, but I forget where.
Also, on an episode of Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me, the actor who voices Big Bird admitted that they were all pretty much on drugs in the beginning years. (I don’t remember the airdate, but the archives for the show are here and someone with a better connection than mine could probably find it quickly. I know that it aired within the past 6 months.)
He was one of my favorite people growing up, his work so inspired, so real, so touching. I cried when I learned of his death, how senseless it was. If he had ONLY gone to the doctor’s sooner, we might still have him around today.
I was at physical therapy last week and a soap opera was on their TV, and they were doing a romantic scene, and there was this lovely music playing in the background of it.
Took me a moment to recognize it was Rainbow Connection.
Jim Henson was my friend. He was everyone’s friend. The characters he created are as real, or moreso, than many people I know. And I’ll never forget once when my daughter was young and we were watching Jim Henson in an interview, and she turned to me and said, “Mom, that man really sounds like Kermit the Frog!”
Happy birthday, Jim. I’ll watch a Muppet Show tonight in your memory.
Thanks for the cites, Tuckerfan. The Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me appearance was from May 17 of this year, but the server that holds the audio seems to be down at the moment.
As for the People Magazine article, I’m going to try to track that down. I’ll post a quote if I can find it. I’ll be interested to see what the quote is.
I’m still amazed. Even among Henson detractors, I’ve never heard this mentioned.
Carroll Spinney saying “we were all on drugs” in the early 70s is still quite a long march from the claim “Jim Henson was a heroin addict” and without a better cite than that and People, it’s just a scurrilous rumor.
I attended a retrospective on Jim’s career hosted by his widow, Jane, at the Center for Puppetry Arts a few years ago. His puppetry career went back much further than most people guessed; Kermit was appearing on variety shows as early as the mid-fifties.
A.) I can’t imagine Henson having too many detractors. B.) It wasn’t like he stayed a junky his whole life. IIRC, it was the work he was doing for CTW which made him realize that he had to quit. C.) He’s not the only creative person to have a deadly habit, who beat it because of work. Stephen Hawking was a heavy drinker until a friend pointed him in the direction of some complicated physics problems that no one had been able to work out. D.) Henson’s body of work being so strong and so large, and the effects of heroin on his work being so minor (AFAIK, no one’s been able to point to a place in Henson’s work and say, "Here the quality dramatically improved), and him not having his life ruined by smack and he being a major imfluence on children, I can see why folks wouldn’t be hammering away at him having used drugs at some point. I mean, it kind of hurts the whole drug war side of things if little kids find out that Kermit used drugs when he’s such a cool “person.”
Do you have any idea where you saw the picture originally published? I remeber seeing it in People or something right after he died and I would love to see it again!
OK, so I had forgotten all about this thread, but now that it’s resurrected, I finally was able to listen to the episode of Wait…Wait from May 17, 2003.
Tuckerfan, Spinney’s segment says nothing close to what you remember. Instead, panelist Roy Blount, Jr., makes a joke that he and others of his generation watched the early days of Sesame Street while stoned. Spinney quipped that they (the Muppeteers) included lots of neat stuff in the show for those stoners watching the show.
It’s by no means a horrible travesty if the Muppeteers used drugs, but I’ve yet to come across anything definitive to indicate that they actually did.
And seven years down the road from your original claim, if you google “Jim Henson” and “heroin”, the first result is this thread. And none of the other results make any reference like what you remember from People.
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan
(BTW, for the old geezers like myself who were wee ones when Sesame Street debuted, Henson was a heroin addict when he was doing the show. Which means that Kermit was on smack! :eek: )[/QUOTE]
The interview in People Magazine doesn’t exist. The entire archive is searchable online. It ain’t there.
