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Welcome to Spotlight. I’m Alice Irizarry.
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And I’m Patrick Woodward. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand, no matter where in the world they live.
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Miss Piggy looked deeply into Kermit the Frog’s eyes. She knew she could never love anyone as much as him. She would always tell him the truth. She held his little frog face and said, “I love you!”
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Kermit the Frog looked behind him and then all around. He looked back at Miss Piggy. He did not understand. Why would anyone love him, a frog – a small green animal that jumps! He pointed at himself and asked:
“You mean me?”
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Today’s Spotlight looks at Jim Henson, creator of The Muppet Show.
Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog were two of Henson’s most famous Muppet characters. Kermit was the calm, cute leader of the Muppets, while Miss Piggy was loud, demanding, funny, and in love with Kermit.
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Miss Piggy and Kermit were puppets. A puppet is a figure of an animal or human that a person can hold. The person, or puppeteer, slides his hand into the puppet to move its mouth as if it were talking. The puppeteer speaks as he moves the puppet’s mouth with his hand. He changes his voice to sound like the puppet’s character. The puppeteer hides so that people can only see the puppet.
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Sometimes puppeteers control the puppets from above using wires and strings. These puppets are called marionettes.
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Henson changed puppetry by combining the methods used with puppets and marionettes. He used one hand to control the puppet’s mouth while using his other hand to move the puppet’s arms with thin, bendable bars. He made his puppets out of material called foam rubber. Foam rubber bent more easily. Henson could move his puppets to look more like real people. Henson made his puppets show more emotions on their faces. The characters he created looked more realistic. Henson called them Muppets as a combination of the two words “puppets” and “marionettes.”
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Henson grew up in the state of Maryland in the United States. He attended the University of Maryland. There, he created a puppet show called Sam and Friends for a local television station. Henson created his most famous puppet character, Kermit the Frog, for this show. He also met his future wife, Jane, in college. They were in the same puppetry class. Together, they had five children.
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After he finished college, Henson used his Muppets in local television commercials. A woman called Joan Cooney saw these television commercials. She loved Henson’s Muppets. Cooney worked for Children’s Television Workshop, a company that educated children through creative television programs. At that time, the company was developing a new children’s television show called Sesame Street. Children’s Television Workshop wanted the show to teach as well as to make children laugh. Cooney thought Henson could help them achieve this.
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Cooney contacted Henson, and he joined their team. During the early 1970s , Henson created different Muppets for Sesame Street to help teach children valuable lessons. He created Big Bird, a tall, yellow bird, that taught children it was okay to ask questions. Henson created Oscar the Grouch, who lived in a bin and was always in a bad mood. This helped teach children how to solve conflicts. He created Bert and Ernie, two characters who were very different from each other. They lived in the same house. Bert and Ernie helped teach children more about how to be good friends.
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The success of Sesame Street and Henson’s Muppet characters won many fans. In 1976, Henson created his own television program called The Muppet Show. The show included older characters like Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, but also new characters that Henson created. For example, he created Fozzie Bear. Fozzie Bear told jokes and was Kermit’s best friend. Fozzie Bear became one of the most popular Muppets. The Muppet character Animal played drums for the Muppet music group. Animal had wild, red hair and wore a chain around his neck. He loved to play his musical drums, eat, and sleep. He shouted when he spoke.
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The Muppet Show was set in an old theater. The Muppets sang songs and acted with famous film and music performers who joined them each week. The Muppets also talked with the singers and actors backstage, the area behind the main curtain, before the next performance.
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It was a new and entertaining idea to let viewers see the Muppets backstage hurrying to prepare for the next act.
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The Muppet Show has become popular around the world. 235,000,000 people watch the show each week. The Muppet Show was broadcast in over 100 countries. It stayed on the air for five seasons from 1976 to 1981. The show had 120 episodes. It won four Primetime Emmy Awards, the highest award for a television show.
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One of the biggest reasons for the popularity of The Muppet Show was that it appealed to children and adults. Henson wanted to make a show that centered on the whole family so that parents could enjoy it with their children. Children liked the colorful Muppets with their funny voices and behavior. Adults enjoyed seeing the Muppets working jobs like them. The Muppets had bosses, relationships, responsibilities, and concerns like other adults.
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The show was so popular that Henson got the chance to make films with The Muppets. He made his first Muppet film, The Muppet Movie, in 1979. Two years later, Henson made another film called The Great Muppet Caper.
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These two films were very successful. Eleven more Muppet films were made over the next 35 years. All the Muppet films, The Muppet Show, and the Muppet toys and games made billions of dollars.
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Not only did Henson help make the other Muppet films, but he also directed two films without his beloved Muppets. They were called The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. Neither film made much money. Film reviewers did not like them. It seemed the world was not willing to accept anything from Henson other than the Muppets they already loved.
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A few years later, Henson decided to sell his business, the Jim Henson Company. He was going to sell all the rights to his Muppets and the Muppet films to the Walt Disney Company. But Henson died from an infection before he could complete the sale. He was 53 years old.
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Henson’s children continued his work by managing his company. Many years later, they finally sold the legal rights to the Muppet characters to Disney. But the family did not sell the legal rights to Henson’s films, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. They thought one day there would be a new interest in these films. They were right.
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The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth were released again in 1987 and 1988 . This time, they sold well. Film reviewers took another look at the two films and praised them. Both films became popular. People understood that Henson’s ideas and puppetry in the two films were very special. No one had done anything like them before. They liked his artistry and the emotions expressed in the films.
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Other artists created books, television shows, and picture books based on The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. Film director Robert Eggers began making a new film called Labyrinth 2 to continue the story Henson created. The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth became the foundation of The Jim Henson Company.
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Henson’s eldest daughter, Lisa, is the Chief Executive Officer of the Jim Henson Company. She said:
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“We are so happy that Dark Crystal and Labyrinth now have the complete love of the public that they did not have the first time around. It is nice to have such a lasting love for these films. We are excited because we always want to have more generations, new viewers, families.”
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Henson was so creative that it usually took the public many years to understand and enjoy his ideas. He created Kermit the Frog and other Muppet characters twenty years before they appeared on The Muppet Show. It took another twenty years for people to like Henson’s films The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.
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Henson turned puppetry into an art form. He told stories about the importance of loving one another. He used frogs, birds, and pigs to tell the world his message. As Kermit the Frog sang in his famous song, “Rainbow Connection”: “Someday we will find it, the rainbow connection, the lovers, the dreamers, and me.”
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Did you watch these shows when you were a child? Who is your favorite character on The Muppet Show or Sesame Street? Why do you think children love The Muppets’ characters so much? You can leave a comment on our website at www.spotlightenglish.com. You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and X. You can also get Spotlight episodes delivered directly to your Android or Apple device through our free official Spotlight English app.
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The writer of this episode was Peter Anderson. The producer was Michio Ozaki. The voices you heard were from the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted for this episode and voiced by Spotlight. No AI or artificial intelligence was used in this episode. Spotlight episodes are written, voiced, and produced by real people for real people, no matter where in the world they live. This episode is called, “The Muppet Man.”
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We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight episode. Goodbye.
Questions:
Did you watch these shows when you were a child? Who is your favorite character on The Muppet Show or Sesame Street? Why do you think children love The Muppets’ characters so much?
