That is true, but makes it seem as if you are under the misapprehension that Jim Henson invented Sesame Street, or that Muppets are the point of Sesame Street, neither of which is at all the case. The Muppets are, obviously, key characters on Sesame Street, but the show’s conceptual genius goes far beyond his contribution.
I had forgotten but was reminded when looking up the numbers I referenced in my post. On the other hand, I suspect that the people who came up with the concept for Sesame Street are far less likely to have done so if they weren’t aware of Jim Henson and that the show would likely not have taken off if not for him.
Despite my admiration for Henson, he’s not the first, surely. Maybe the first of the television era.
Well, not the first of the television era. Maybe the second.
Well, not the second. Dammit. At least Henson was next, right?
Aw man.
As wonderful as Henson’s creation grew to be, he was firmly grounded in an ancient tradition and the inheritor of expectations that came before him.
Note that these examples are not just “puppets I thought of.” Punch and Judy has been the archetypal puppet show for hundreds of years. Kukla, Fran, and Ollie’s puppteer, Burr Tillstrom, mentored Shari Lewis and Jim Henson. The show (Kula, Fran, and Ollie) was a big deal culturally:
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
During that time, KFO was a hugely successful show that counted Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Tallulah Bankhead, Ben Grauer, Milton Caniff, and Adlai Stevenson among its many adult fans. The show had sponsors like Life magazine, RCA, Nabisco and Ford Motor Co., who surely weren’t trying to reach children. James Thurber once wrote that Tillstrom was “helping to save the sanity of the nation and to improve, if not even to invent, the quality of television.”
[/QUOTE]
Trey Parker and Matt Stone, maybe? Starting from a little animated Christmas card, they built up a media resume that includes TV, feature films and Broadway.
Kevin Feige is another maybe. The interconnected Marvel movie universe he’s creating is pretty unprecedented in film, and other franchises are already trying to follow his lead.
Good luck finding a steady supply of panda milk.
Don’t forget the Ritts Puppets, which started out in 1950 and continued on until the 1990s:
And Bob Clampett started out his Beany and Cecil as puppets on TV LONG before he turned them into animated cartoons, with Time for Beany premiering in 1949 – before Howdy Doody or those other newcomers (and long before Henson). The show was immensely popular, with its current-affairs references that appealed to adults (Einstein was reportedly a fan). It inspired thepuppet show referred to in Heinlein’;s The Star Beast and reportedly injfluenced Larry Niven to create the Pierson’s Peppeteers, and for Joel Hogdson to create Mystery Science Theater 3000
I suspect it also inspired Vernor Vinge’s Tines.