Jim Henson: The Biography Read online

  Copyright © 2013 by Brian Jay Jones

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  THE MUPPETS and associated characters, trademarks, and designed elements are owned by Disney Muppet Studios. Copyright © Disney. All rights reserved.

  “Sesame Workshop”®, “Sesame Street”® and associated characters, trademarks and design elements are owned and licensed by Sesame Workshop.

  © 2013 Sesame Workshop. All rights reserved.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.: “Just One Person” (from the musical Snoopy), lyrics by Hal Hackady, music by Larry Grossman, copyright © 1976 (Renewed) Unichappell Music, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Used by permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.

  The Joe Raposo Music Group, Inc.: “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green,” music and lyrics by Joe Raposo, copyright © 1970 by Jonico Music, Inc., and copyright renewed © 1998 by Green Fox Music, Inc. Used by permission of The Joe Raposo Music Group, Inc.

  Credits for the photographs that appear at chapter openers can be found on this page.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Jones, Brian Jay.

  Jim Henson : the biography / Brian Jay Jones.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  eISBN: 978-0-345-52613-7

  1. Henson, Jim. 2. Puppeteers—United States—Biography. 3. Television producers and directors—United States—Biography. 4. Muppet Show (Television program)

  5. Sesame Street (Television program) I. Title.

  PN1982.H46J66 2013

  791.4302′33092—dc23

  [B] 2013024039

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE BLUE SKY 1973

  CHAPTER ONE THE DELTA 1936–1949

  CHAPTER TWO A MEANS TO AN END 1949–1955

  CHAPTER THREE SAM AND FRIENDS 1955–1957

  CHAPTER FOUR MUPPETS, INC. 1957–1962

  CHAPTER FIVE A CRAZY LITTLE BAND 1962–1969

  CHAPTER SIX SESAME STREET 1969–1970

  CHAPTER SEVEN BIG IDEAS 1970–1973

  CHAPTER EIGHT THE MUCKING FUPPETS 1973–1975

  CHAPTER NINE MUPPETMANIA 1975–1977

  CHAPTER TEN LIFE’S LIKE A MOVIE 1977–1979

  CHAPTER ELEVEN THE WORLD IN HIS HEAD 1979–1982

  CHAPTER TWELVE TWISTS AND TURNS 1982–1986

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN STORYTELLER 1986–1987

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN A KIND OF CRAZINESS 1987–1989

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN SO MUCH ON A HANDSHAKE 1989–1990

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN JUST ONE PERSON 1990

  EPILOGUE LEGACY

  Photo Insert

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  NOTES

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Photograph Credits

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  BLUE SKY

  1973

  (photo credit prl.1)

  JIM HENSON SLOWLY FOLDED HIMSELF INTO A COUCH INSIDE REEVES Teletape Studio, sliding down, as he often did, until he was nearly horizontal, his shaggy head against the back cushions and his long legs stretched out in front of him. As always, Jim was the calm in the middle of the chaos, sitting quietly as studio technicians and crew members whirled around him, adjusting lights and bustling about the background sets for Sesame Street’s Muppet segments. Jim simply lounged, hands folded across his stomach, fingers laced together. Draped limply across his lap was the green fleece form of Kermit the Frog, staring lifelessly at the floor, mouth agape.

  Jim and Kermit were waiting.

  In the five years Sesame Street had been on the air, many of its most memorable moments involved children interacting with the Muppets. And while all of the Muppet performers were good with children, most agreed that it was Kermit children believed in and trusted completely—mostly because they completely believed in and trusted Jim Henson. Jim—and therefore Kermit—had a natural sweetness, a reassuring patience, and a willingness to indulge silliness—and the resulting interaction could be pure magic. Even as Jim sat waiting, then, there was, as always, a buzz of anticipation.

  Sesame Street director Jon Stone—a warm bear of a man with an easy smile—strolled the set, the end of a chewed pencil sticking out of his salt-and-pepper beard. “Blue sky!” he said loudly—a signal that a child was present on the set, a coded reminder that the normally boisterous Muppet performers and crew should watch their language. There was actually little chance of Jim himself swearing—normally his epithets were nothing stronger than “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”—but with the cue that his young costar, a little girl named Joey, had arrived, Jim slowly unfolded himself and rose to his full six-foot-one height.

  Casually, Jim pulled Kermit onto his right arm, slightly parting his thumb from his fingers as he slid his hand into the frog’s mouth, then smoothed the long green sleeve from Kermit’s body down over his elbow. He brought the frog’s face up toward his own, tilting the head slightly—and suddenly, Kermit was magically alive, sizing up Jim with eyes that seemed to widen or narrow as Jim arched or clenched his fingers inside Kermit’s head.

  While Sesame Street’s Muppet sets were usually elevated on stilts some six feet off the floor—making it possible for puppeteers to perform while standing—no child would ever be placed at such a perilous height. Instead, Joey—in a pink striped shirt, with her long blond hair tied at the top of her head—was moved into position on a stool while Jim knelt on the floor next to her. Slowly he raised Kermit up beside her, eying the Muppet’s position on a video monitor in front of his crouched knees. Joey’s eyes locked immediately on Kermit. The frog was no mere puppet; Kermit was real.

  “Rolleeoleeoleeyo!” called out Stone—and as tape began to roll, Joey was already patting and petting Kermit lovingly.

  “Hey, can you sing the alphabet, Joey?” asked Kermit.

  “Yes,” said Joey, nodding earnestly, “yes, I could.”

  “Let’s hear you sing the alphabet.”

  “A B C D…” sang Joey, and Jim bopped Kermit along in time to the familiar “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” melody, bouncing the frog’s head back and forth. “E F,” continued Joey—then instead of G, she substituted “Cookie Monster!” and giggled at her own joke.

  All eyes in the studio were on the frog, waiting to see what Jim would do.

  Jim reacted instantly, arching his long fingers inside Kermit to give him a surprised expression. Then he turned the frog, in a classic slow burn, toward the still-giggling Joey. “You’re not singin’ the alphabet!” Kermit said cheerily, and began the song again. Joey sang along eagerly, this time gliding past the letter G without incident, and stumbling only slightly through the troublesome quintet of LMNOP.

  Joey patted Kermit lightly, unable to keep her hands off the slightly fuzzy Muppet. “Q R Cookie Monster!” she sang, and broke down in another fit of giggles.

  Jim pressed his thumb and fingers tightly together inside Kermit’s head, giving the frog a brief look of mock irritation. Then he arched his hand back upward, returning Kermit’s expression to one of mild surprise. Joey tilted her head slightly and giggled directly into Kermit’s eyes. She believed in him completely.

  �
�Cookie Monster isn’t a letter of the alphabet!” said Kermit helpfully. “It goes, Q R S …”

  “T U Cookie Monster!” Joey exploded into giggles, clenching her hands in front of her.

  For a moment, Jim nearly broke character. He snickered slightly. “Yuh-you’re just teasing me!” he finally said in Kermit’s voice, and the two of them began singing together again. “W X Y and Z …”

  Joey briefly placed her hand on Kermit’s shoulder as they entered the refrain. “Now I’ve sung my ABCs…” the two of them sang.

  “… next time Cookie Monster!” Joey erupted, and broke down in giggles again.

  “Next time, Cookie Monster can do it with you!” griped Kermit. “I’m leaving!” Jim pulled Kermit’s face into a mild grimace—and with a groan of exasperation skulked the frog away, out of camera shot.

  Joey stared after him. “I love you,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  Jim bounced Kermit eagerly back toward the little girl. “I love you, too,” he said warmly.

  “Thanks,” said Joey.

  And she draped an arm around Kermit and kissed him on the head.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE DELTA

  1936–1949

  James Maury Henson in 1937, at about six months old. (photo credit 1.1)

  DEER CREEK WINDS CASUALLY, ALMOST LAZILY, THROUGH THE MUGGY lowlands in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. Its point of origin—near the little town of Scott, in Bolivar County—lies roughly ninety miles north of its terminal point at the Yazoo River three counties away. But Deer Creek takes its time getting there, looping and whorling back and forth in a two-hundred-mile-long amble, looking like a child’s cursive scrawled across the map.

  The town of Leland, Mississippi, straddles Deer Creek just as it twists into one of its first tight hairpin turns, about ten miles east of Greenville. Established before the Civil War, the sleepy settlement, sprawled out across several former plantations, had taken advantage of fertile soil and regular steamboat traffic on Deer Creek to become one of the wealthiest in the Delta region. In the 1880s came the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, along with an influx of grocers and landlords and innkeepers—but even with the growing merchant class and increasing gentrification, it was still land that mattered most in Leland, and in the Mississippi Delta. In 1904, then, the state legislature called for the creation of an agricultural experiment station in the Delta region, preferably “at a point where experiments with the soil of the hills as well as the Delta can be made.” That point turned out to be two hundred acres of land hugging Deer Creek, in the village of Stoneville, putting the state’s new Delta Branch Experiment Station just north of—and practically butted up against—Leland. By 1918, the facility in Stoneville was housing researchers and their families from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, carrying out research on crops, soil, and animal production for the federal government; by 1930, its findings on animal feed and insect control were particularly welcome to planters and sharecroppers doing their best to scratch out a living from the swampy Delta soil during the Great Depression.

  Paul Ransom Henson—Jim Henson’s father—was neither a planter nor a sharecropper. Nor had he come to the Delta region to work a family farm during the Depression or satisfy a random pang of wanderlust. Paul Henson was a practical man, and he had come to Leland in 1931 with his new wife, Betty, for a practical reason: he had accepted a government post at the Delta Branch Experiment Station in Stoneville.

  Paul Henson came from a line of similarly sturdy and clear-minded men who sought neither to offend nor agitate, a trait that Paul’s famous son would inherit as well—and, in fact, Jim Henson would always be very proud of his father’s rugged, even-tempered Midwestern lineage. On one side of his father’s family were the Dolton and Barnes lines—good-natured, nonconfrontational, and accommodating almost to a fault—while on the other were the Hensons—practical, rugged, and imperturbable.

  One of Jim’s favorite family stories involved his great-great-grandfather, a strongly pro-Northern farmer named Richmond Dolton who, during the Civil War, had been living in a small Missouri town in which most of the residents were Southern sympathizers. Rather than offend the Confederate sensibilities of his neighbors, the amiable Dolton simply swapped his farm—in a typically equitable and businesslike exchange—for a similar one in a town in Kansas where the residents shared his own Union tendencies. The move would come to be particularly appreciated by Dolton’s teenage daughter, Aramentia, though for reasons more prurient than political—for it was here in Kansas that Aramentia Dolton met Ransom Aaron Barnes, a New Jersey native who had settled in the area. In 1869, she and Barnes were married; less than a year later, they would have a daughter, Effie Carrie Barnes—Paul Henson’s mother.

  On the Henson side, Jim could trace his pedigree back to colonial-era farmers in North Carolina whose descendants had slowly pushed west with the expanding American frontier, setting up farms and raising families in Kentucky and Kansas. One of those descendants was Jim’s paternal grandfather, a sturdy Kansas farmer named Albert Gordon Henson, who, in 1889, had married Richmond Dolton’s levelheaded granddaughter, Effie Carrie Barnes. After an ambitious though unsuccessful effort to stake a claim during the Cherokee Strip land run—where he had rumbled into the dusty Oklahoma countryside in a mule-drawn buckboard—Albert and Effie would eventually settle in Lincoln County, just east of Oklahoma City. It was here that Paul Ransom Henson—the name Ransom was borrowed from Effie’s father, Ransom Aaron Barnes—would be born in 1904, the youngest of Albert and Effie’s nine children.

  Each morning, Paul Henson would be awakened at first light to do his chores and walk the half mile to school, a one-room building crammed with fifty children and presided over by two teachers. While Albert Henson never had much formal schooling, he was determined to make education a priority for the children in the Henson household. With that sort of parental encouragement, Paul graduated from high school in 1924 at age nineteen, and immediately headed for Iowa State College—now Iowa State University, a school recognized then, as now, for the quality of its agricultural programs. Over the next four years, Paul was a member of the agriculture-oriented Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity, participated on the Farm Crops Judging Team (the team would place third nationally in 1927), and even discovered a knack for performance as a member of the Dramatic Club. In July 1928, he received his BS in Farm Crops and Soils, completing a thesis on the hybridization of soybeans.

  Following graduation, Paul began work on his master’s degree at the University of Maryland, enrolling in courses covering plant physics, biochemistry, genetics, statistics, agronomy, and soil technology. One afternoon, while eating his lunch, he caught sight of an attractive young woman walking toward the campus restaurant—when pressed, he would later admit his eyes had been drawn mainly to her legs—and was determined to win an introduction. The legs, as it turned out, belonged to Elizabeth Brown—Betty, as everyone called her—the twenty-one-year-old secretary to Harry Patterson, dean of the College of Agriculture.

  Elizabeth Marcella Brown was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Maryland, but had lived in Memphis and New Orleans long enough to pick up both the lilting accent and genteel demeanor of a Southern belle. The accent and the manners were fitting, for Betty had a refined, distinctly Southern, and generally artistic pedigree. In fact, it was through Betty’s side of the family that Jim Henson could trace his artistic ability, in a straight and colorful line running through his mother and grandmother back to his maternal great-grandfather, a talented Civil War–era mapmaker named Oscar.

  Oscar Hinrichs—a swaggering Prussian who had immigrated to the United States in 1837 at the age of two—began working as a cartographer for the United States Coast Survey at age twenty-one, reporting directly to Alexander Dallas Bache, head of the survey and a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin. When the Civil War began in 1860, Oscar enthusiastically enlisted with the Confederacy—even smuggling himself into the South with the help of Confederate sympath
izers in Maryland—and loaned his valuable mapmaking skills to the Southern cause even as he survived battles at Antietam, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness. After the war, Oscar married Marylander Mary Stanley—whose father had helped him sneak into the Confederacy—and moved to New York City. Over the next ten years, Mary bore Oscar six children, including one daughter, Sarah—Betty Brown’s mother, and Jim Henson’s grandmother. It was Sarah who inherited Oscar Hinrichs’s innate artistic streak, and she would learn not only how to paint and draw, but also how to sew, carve, and use hand tools—talents that Jim Henson would wield just as skillfully two generations later as he sketched, carved, and sewed his earliest Muppets.

  The Hinrichs family eventually settled in Washington, D.C., where Oscar unhappily bounced between jobs, convinced employers were discriminating against him because of his service to the Confederacy. Compounding his misery, Mary became ill with uterine cancer and died in 1891 at the age of fifty-two. Less than a year later, a grief-stricken Oscar Hinrichs took his own life, leaving an orphaned fourteen-year-old Sarah to tend to two younger brothers. Dutifully, Sarah dropped out of the art school into which she had just been accepted and moved with her brothers into a Washington boardinghouse. For the rest of their lives, neither Sarah nor her siblings openly discussed Oscar Hinrichs’s sad demise—a penchant for maintaining a respectful silence about unhappy circumstances that her grandson Jim Henson would also share.

  In 1902, twenty-four-year-old Sarah Hinrichs was introduced to Maury Brown, a lanky, thirty-four-year-old clerk and stenographer for Southern Railway. Born in Kentucky on the day after Christmas in 1868, Maury Heady Brown—Jim Henson’s grandfather—was a self-made man with a rugged Southern determination. Raised by a single mother who was totally deaf, Brown had run away from home at age ten and learned to use the telegraph, supporting himself by reporting horse-racing scores for a Lexington racetrack. A voracious reader and quick learner, he next taught himself typewriting and shorthand, eventually becoming so proficient at both that he was hired as the full-time private secretary to the president of Southern Railway. When he met Sarah Hinrichs in the winter of 1902, Brown fell in love immediately—and on their second date, as they ice skated on the frozen Potomac River, Maury Brown presented Sarah Hinrichs with an armful of red roses and asked for her hand. While the newspapers in 1903 may have noted the marriage of Maury and Sarah Brown, to each other—and to the rest of the family—they would always be “Pop” and “Dear.”