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Jim Henson, Puppeteer, Dies; The Muppets' Creator Was 53

Jim Henson, Puppeteer, Dies; The Muppets' Creator Was 53
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May 17, 1990, Section A, Page 1Buy Reprints
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Jim Henson, the puppeteer whose Kermit the Frog and other Muppet creatures became the playmates and teachers of millions of youngsters who grew up watching ''Sesame Street'' on television, died early yesterday at New York Hospital. He was 53 years old.

Hospital spokesmen said he had died of streptococcus pneumonia, a bacterial infection, a day after he was admitted to the emergency room.

Mr. Henson's creatures first appeared on television in 1954. But it was on ''Sesame Street,'' the program for preschoolers that began in 1969, that Kermit the frog, Oscar the Grouch, the voracious Cookie Monster, considerate Bert, fun-loving Ernie, innocent Big Bird and the rest of the Muppet crew won the hearts of a generation.

With wit that also appealed to adults, the Muppets helped youngsters learn about everything from numbers and the alphabet to birth and death.

They were role models, and they imparted values. And they were more than just daily television pals. Muppets romped on lunch boxes and sheets, and they were reincarnated as toys. As ''Sesame Street'' evolved in the hands of its creators, the Children's Television Workshop, and the scope of its subject matter increased, so did the Muppets.

It was ''The Muppet Show,'' introduced in 1976, which starred Kermit and the egotistical Miss Piggy, that established Mr. Henson as a puppeteer for people of all ages.

The show succeeded phenomenally, reaching an estimated 235 million viewers each week in more than 100 countries and winning three Emmys and other awards during a five-year run.

Expanding Into Feature Films

In 1979 Mr. Henson turned to the big screen with a feature film, ''The Muppet Movie,'' followed in 1981 by ''The Great Muppet Caper,'' in which he made his debut as a director, and in 1984 by ''The Muppets Take Manhattan.''

Two fantasy films - ''The Dark Crystal'' (1982), co-directed with Frank Oz, a long-time associate, and ''Labyrinth (1986), directed by Mr. Henson - introduced new Muppet characters. His technological hand is evident in the current box-office hit ''Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles.'' Another feature film in which Mr. Henson was involved, ''The Witches,'' directed by Nicholas Roeg, based on the Roald Dahl children's tale, is to be released this year.

On television, his animated series, ''Muppet Babies,'' which won four Emmy Awards, is in its sixth season on CBS. It is also in domestic syndication and is broadcast in more than 50 countries.

His live-action puppet series, ''Fraggle Rock,'' which was HBO's first original children's program, is now shown on cable television's TNT and is broadcast in more than 40 countries.

Mr. Henson recently won an Emmy for ''The Jim Henson Hour,'' a family entertainment series on NBC. And ''The Ghost of Faffner Hall,'' a series about music that combines puppets and celebrity guests, is seen on HBO.

Disney Deal Pending

Last year the Walt Disney Company announced an agreement to acquire Henson Associates Inc., which owns the Muppets, for a price estimated by Wall Street analysts at $100 million to $150 million. The deal has not been concluded, but Erwin Okun, a Disney spokesman in Burbank, Calif., said his company and Mr. Henson's had already been ''working very closely on theme parks, television and consumer products.''

The deal does not include rights to characters created by Mr. Henson for ''Sesame Street.''

For ''Sesame Street,'' now seen in more than 80 countries, Mr. Henson not only created but was the voice and manipulator of Kermit, Ernie and Guy Smiley, a game-show host.

Mr. Henson's role in the early success of the public television series was cited yesterday by officials of the Public Broadcasting Service as having been ''the spark that ignited our fledgling broadcast service.''

Joan Ganz Cooney, chairman and chief executive of the Children's Television Workshop, which produces ''Sesame Street,'' said: ''He was our era's Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, W. C. Fields and Marx Brothers, and indeed he drew from all of them to create a new art form that influenced popular culture around the world.''

Adapting an Ancient Art

Although he was not the first television puppeteer, Mr. Henson was the first to adapt the ancient art to the modern medium.

Recalling the arrival of a television set as the biggest event of his adolescence, the tall, lean, bearded and soft-spoken puppeteer once remarked on how impressed he had been with Burr Tillstrom's ''Kukla, Fran and Ollie'' and Bil and Cora Baird's ''Life With Snarky Parker.''

''Burr Tillstrom and the Bairds had more to do with the beginning of puppets on television than we did,'' Mr. Henson noted in a 1979 interview. ''But they had developed their art and style to a certain extent before hitting television. Baird had done marionette shows long before he came to television. Burr Tillstrom's puppets were basically the standard hand-puppet characters that went back to Punch and Judy. But from the beginning, we worked watching a television monitor, which is very different from working in a puppet theater.''

Mr. Henson coined the name Muppet to describe his own combination of marionette and foam-rubber hand puppets. Most Muppets' heads are basically hand puppets, but their hands and other parts of their bodies may be operated by controls, including strings and rods.

Some characters have electronic remote control eyes and ears, and some of the large ones, like Big Bird, have built-in television monitors.

''Often, on 'The Muppet Show,' we'll have all five puppeteers on a single number,'' Mr. Henson told the interviewer. ''We're surrounded by television monitors so we can see what the audience is seeing. We do bump into each other occasionally. But the audience shouldn't be aware of your problems or they'll lost the thread of the story.''

A Puppet Partnership

James Maury Henson was born in Greenvile, Miss. When his father, an agronomist with the United States Department of Agriculture, was transferred to Washington, the family moved to Hyattsville, Md.

In 1955, during his freshman year as a theater arts major at the University of Maryland, he was offered a five-minute late-night television show of his own called ''Sam and Friends.'' He asked a fellow freshman, Jane Nebel, to join him in operating the puppets. They formed a legal puppet partnership in 1957 and were married in 1959.

It was in 1956 that he built a frog hand puppet and called him Kermit. ''I suppose that he's an alter ego,'' Mr. Henson said. ''But he's a little snarkier than I am - slightly wise. Kermit says things I hold myself back from saying.''

His wife told an interviewer that Mr. Henson was ''calm and unbelievably patient,'' so much so that ''sometimes you want to kick him.'' Patience was probably helpful, though. It would be 20 years before Mr. Henson's view of the Muppets as ''entertainment for everybody'' would be accepted enough for them to have their own television series.

In the late 1950's the Muppets were seen in wacky commercials, and in the 60's they appeared regularly on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' and other variety programs.

'Sesame Street' Years

Then came ''Sesame Street,'' which, oddly enough, held back his career by labeling him as a children's entertainer. The Muppets' ability to make children remember letters, numbers and various concepts brought Emmys. But at first the networks only shrugged when he insisted that his Muppets' ''satiric comment on society seems to delight all ages.'' The breakthrough was ''The Muppet Show.''

Mr. Henson once credited Mr. Oz for ''much of what's funny about the Muppets,'' although perhaps the best comedy emerged from the interplay between the exuberent Mr. Oz and the more subdued Mr. Henson.

It was Mr. Oz who created the superstar Miss Piggy from a nondescript pig puppet for a pilot program. ''In one rehearsal, I was working as Miss Piggy with Jim, who was doing Kermit,'' Mr. Oz recalled in 1979, ''and the script called for her to slap him. Instead of a slap, I gave him a funny karate hit. Somehow, that hit crystallized her character for me - the coyness hiding the aggression; the conflict of that love with her desire for a career; her hunger for a glamour image; her tremendous out-and-out ego.''

Mr. Henson's death was the third to strike ''Sesame Street'' in the last year. Joe Raposo, who wrote many songs for the series, died last year at the age of 52. Another former cast member, Northern Calloway, died last January at the age of 41.

Mr. Henson had homes in Manhattan, Connecticut, Malibu, Calif., and London.

Mr. Henson and his wife had five children. The family said plans for a memorial service would be announced at a later date.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: Jim Henson, Puppeteer, Dies; The Muppets' Creator Was 53. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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