50 Fun Facts About Jim Henson

In which US state was Jim Henson born?

Mississippi. Leland, the Delta town where he went to school, bills itself as the birthplace of Kermit the Frog, though Henson built the first Kermit years after his family had moved away.

Where did Henson study, meeting his future wife in a puppetry class as a freshman?

The University of Maryland. A life-size bronze Henson now sits beside Kermit on a granite bench outside its student union, dedicated on what would have been his 67th birthday.

What subject was Henson's university degree in?

Home economics. He needed six years to finish the degree, switching to part-time study because he was already performing his puppets on television, often twice a night.

What was the name of the short puppet show Henson and Jane Nebel made for WRC-TV from 1955 to 1961?

Sam and Friends. Its puppets often lip-synced to comedy records, and in the 1961 finale one of them blew up the set because it wouldn't be needed any more.

The first Kermit was made from what?

A ping-pong ball and his mother's old coat. The ball was halved for the eyes, the discarded coat became the body, and that first Kermit is now in the Smithsonian.

Henson claimed "Muppet" was a portmanteau of which two words?

Marionette and puppet. Henson later admitted the tidy story wasn't true: he rarely used marionettes, and said Muppet was simply a word he made up because he liked the sound.

After James Frawley directed The Muppet Movie, which film became the first feature Jim Henson directed himself?

The Great Muppet Caper. Because audiences had raved about Kermit riding a bike in the first film, Henson gave his own a whole bicycle parade, with his son Brian helping to work the linked bikes.

Henson's ad puppets Wilkins and Wontkins took their names from a Washington company that sold what?

Coffee. Cheerful Wilkins would drink Wilkins Coffee and grumpy Wontkins wouldn't, so the few-second ads usually ended with Wontkins shot, run over or blasted by a cannon.

Which company used an early version of Cookie Monster to advertise its Munchos potato crisps in 1969?

Frito-Lay. Its ads starred a crisp-crazed monster called Arnold, a puppet Henson had first built in 1966 to steal snacks in an unaired General Foods commercial.

Which piano-playing Muppet found national fame as Jimmy Dean's sidekick on his 1960s variety show?

Rowlf. He was built in 1962 to sell Purina Dog Chow, and Dean later turned down a 40 percent stake in Henson's company, saying he had done nothing to earn it.

Henson's experimental short film Time Piece earned what honour?

An Academy Award nomination. The puppeteer's Oscar nod came for a film with no puppets at all: Henson himself stars as a man hurried through life, and his only line is a cry of "Help!"

Which puppeteer did Henson hire in 1963, beginning the partnership behind Kermit and Miss Piggy?

Frank Oz. He joined at 19, and Henson credited him with much of what's funny about the Muppets, their best comedy sparking between the exuberant Oz and his far calmer boss.

Which producer invited Henson's team to work full-time on Sesame Street in 1969?

Joan Ganz Cooney. Her advisers first kept the Muppets out of the street scenes, but children at test screenings lost interest whenever the puppets vanished, so the show was rebuilt to mix them.

Besides Kermit, which Sesame Street regular did Henson himself perform from the show's first season?

Ernie. Henson recalled that he first tried Bert while his partner tried Ernie, before they swapped and settled into the roles they kept for two decades.

How does the baker always end up in Henson's Sesame Street counting films?

He falls down the stairs, desserts flying. Henson only supplied the baker's sing-song voice; the tumbles were taken by Alex Stevens, a stuntman who also played the werewolf on Dark Shadows.

What were Henson's sketches on the first season of Saturday Night Live called?

The Land of Gorch. SNL's writers dodged the sketches whenever they could, and one of them, Michael O'Donoghue, announced that he didn't write for felt.

Which British impresario financed The Muppet Show after US networks rejected it?

Lew Grade. He agreed to finance the series when the American networks would not, and because it was to be made at his ATV studios, Henson moved his creative team to Elstree in England.

Why did the American networks turn down The Muppet Show?

They thought Muppets were only for children. Sesame Street's very success had typecast Henson as a children's entertainer, which is why he had tried adult sketches on Saturday Night Live.

Henson performed which Muppet Show character's head and voice while a second puppeteer supplied its bare human hands?

The Swedish Chef. To find the voice, Henson practised on his daily commute with a tape on how to speak mock Swedish that a comedy writer had recorded for him.

Which song from The Muppet Movie, sung by Henson as Kermit, reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100?

Rainbow Connection. Songwriters Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher modelled it on "When You Wish Upon a Star", wanting an opening number that set the mood for the whole film as that song does in Pinocchio.

Henson dedicated The Muppet Movie to the memory of which boyhood idol, who died during its production?

Edgar Bergen. The ventriloquist had just filmed a cameo with his dummy Charlie McCarthy as a county-fair judge, and Henson brought Kermit along to speak at his memorial.

Which Star Wars character did George Lucas ask Henson to help create, and even to perform?

Yoda. Lucas wanted Henson to perform the Jedi master himself, but Henson said he was too busy and put forward a trusted colleague, who went on to play the part for decades.

Which fantasy illustrator's designs shaped the creatures of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth?

Brian Froud. He married puppet sculptor Wendy Midener after meeting her on The Dark Crystal, and their baby son Toby went on to play the stolen baby in Labyrinth.

What are the evil rulers of the planet Thra in The Dark Crystal called?

The Skeksis. Henson modelled them on the seven deadly sins, but with ten of them to cast, some sins had to be used twice or simply invented.

Who played Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth (1986)?

David Bowie. He wrote the film's songs as well, but Jareth's hypnotic crystal-ball tricks weren't his: they were the work of juggler Michael Moschen.

Which Monty Python member wrote the screenplay for Labyrinth?

Terry Jones. He kept the sole screenplay credit even though others, including George Lucas and Elaine May, reworked his script, and he said the finished film was far from what he first wrote.

Jim Henson's Creature Shop built the animatronic creature suits for which 1990 box-office hit?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Each turtle took a team: a performer inside the suit, and a puppeteer off camera working the face through motors hidden in the shell.

Which pay-TV service co-produced Fraggle Rock with Henson, TVS and the CBC from 1983?

HBO. It was the channel's first original children's show, built so each country could film its own human scenes: in Britain the Fraggles' hole opened into a lighthouse, not an inventor's workshop.

Which actor played the fireside narrator of Henson's folk-tale series The Storyteller?

John Hurt. Aged by a false nose and outsized ears, he told each tale to a sceptical talking dog, a puppet performed by Henson's son Brian, in a series that won an Emmy.

Which studio was Henson negotiating to sell his business to when he died?

Disney. The deal, which left out the Sesame Street characters, was still unsigned when he died and soon fell apart; his family finally sold the Muppets to the same studio 14 years later.

What caused Jim Henson's death in May 1990?

Toxic shock from a streptococcal infection. What had seemed like flu overwhelmed his body within days, and his doctor said that reaching hospital only hours earlier might have changed the outcome.

Whose show hosted Henson's last TV appearance?

Arsenio Hall. Henson, who was 53, went on his show with Kermit to promote a new television special; soon afterwards he fell ill, and within two weeks of the broadcast he was dead.

Which entertainer died on the same day as Henson, sharing the headlines?

Sammy Davis Jr. One newspaper editorial mourned the two as opposites: Davis the performer who was always out front, Henson the puppeteer who stayed in the shadows and let his creations take the stage.

At Henson's memorial in Manhattan, what did mourners wave as Harry Belafonte sang?

Foam butterflies on rods. In a letter written four years earlier, Henson had asked for a friendly little service with a rousing Dixieland band, and mourners were asked not to wear black.

Which character sang "Bein' Green" at Henson's memorial service?

Big Bird. In full yellow feathers, performer Caroll Spinney sang Kermit's song alone before the congregation, then said "Thank you, Kermit" and bowed his head.

Which Roald Dahl book did Henson's company turn into a 1990 film starring Anjelica Huston?

The Witches. Its makers gave the story a happier ending, turning the boy back from a mouse into a child, and a furious Dahl called the film "utterly appalling".

Who took over performing Kermit six months after Henson's death?

Steve Whitmire. Henson's family asked him to take over, and he first performed Kermit in the tribute special The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson, keeping the role until 2016.

Which attraction, one of Henson's last projects, opened at a Florida theme park a year to the day after his death?

Muppet*Vision 3D. Henson directed the film and performed Kermit in it shortly before he died, and it went on playing to theme-park crowds for 34 years, until 2025.

A fantasy sequence in The Muppets Take Manhattan grew into which Henson animated series?

Muppet Babies. The toddler Muppets had begun as designs for baby clothes a year before the film gave them Miss Piggy's daydream, and the cartoon that followed won four Emmys in a row.

Who directed the 2024 documentary Jim Henson Idea Man?

Ron Howard. Henson's family opened the company archives to him, so the film draws on home movies, sketches and diaries never shown before; it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

Which actor played Henson in the 2024 film Saturday Night, about SNL's first episode?

Nicholas Braun. He took two parts in the film, Andy Kaufman as well as Henson, and his Henson spends the night complaining to Lorne Michaels that the writers have given the Muppets no script.

In 1984 Henson travelled to which city to film the great Soviet puppeteer Sergei Obraztsov?

Moscow. Obraztsov had founded its State Central Puppet Theatre in 1931, and Henson, shaped as a beginner by his book My Profession, wanted him for a television series on the world's great puppeteers.

Which faith was Henson raised in, teaching Sunday school into his twenties?

He wrote to the church in the early 1970s to say he was no longer a practising member.

In which city did Henson buy a house in 1979 that he kept as a base until his death?

London. He liked to walk and picnic on nearby Hampstead Heath, where he put up a bench in memory of his puppet builder Don Sahlin; in 1990 Henson's own name was added to it.

Which variety host introduced Henson in 1966 as "Newsom" and called his Muppets "Puppets"?

Ed Sullivan. The slip did no harm: the Muppets became regulars on his show for the rest of the decade.

Which Hollywood manager, whose clients included John Belushi, represented Henson from the 1960s until his death?

Bernie Brillstein. As Henson's first agent he sold a Muppet to a network variety show, and he is often credited with getting the troupe onto Saturday Night Live's first season, though his own memoir gives the idea to NBC executives.

Which singer made the 1979 television special and album A Christmas Together with the Muppets?

John Denver. It opens with The Twelve Days of Christmas, in which Miss Piggy belts out her five gold rings and adds a "ba-dum-bum-bum" that the whole cast ends up copying.

Which ballet star danced "Swine Lake" with a giant pig on The Muppet Show?

Rudolf Nureyev. Guests had been so hard to book that the producers were calling in favours from friends; once the great dancer had partnered a pig, celebrities queued up to appear.

Which grumpy Muppet Show critic, heckling from a theatre box, did Henson himself perform?

Waldorf. He and Statler are named after two grand New York hotels, a joke the show completed by giving Waldorf a wife called Astoria.

Henson entered which instrument's hall of fame in 2018 for portraying it positively in his shows?

The banjo. The American Banjo Museum honoured him for putting the instrument in front of a mainstream audience, above all in Kermit's hands, and opened a Henson exhibition to mark the occasion.