Jim Henson: The Biography (20 page)

Where Jim was involved, too, nothing was ordinary. Even the official letterhead for Muppets, Inc. had a ragged colored bar angling across the page so that letters had to be oddly formatted—a task that fell to secretary Carroll Conroy, who had taken on responsibilities as a bookkeeper in addition to her tasks as Jim’s executive secretary. Conroy brought her own sense of fun to Jim’s formal correspondence, writing pithy letters to Brillstein or bantering with clients on Jim’s behalf (“
With typical speed and efficiency of the broadcasting industry,” begins one note, “we just got your letter”). She also managed to resist the urge to correct the countless clients who constantly misspelled Jim’s last name as “Hensen.”

The confusion was probably understandable; after all, it wasn’t Jim’s name on the door or the company letterhead, but rather The Muppets. Booking agents hired the Muppets, not Jim Henson. “
The Muppets were known,” Brian Henson said later, “but he wasn’t.” With their plentiful commercials, countless appearances on variety shows, and Rowlf’s continued prominence on
Jimmy Dean
, it may have looked from the outside like the Muppets was a large organization. Even Jerry Nelson admitted as much; after being hired, he had headed up the stairs of the townhouse of Muppet Studios with stars in his eyes only to discover, to his surprise, that “
it wasn’t all that big.”

“
We were just kind of this crazy little band at that time,” Oz said later. “We would go into
The Tonight Show
 … with these black boxes and Jim’d have this beard. We’d be these guys and they’d think we were rock musicians.… We were
The Muppets
, like an act.” In fact, in an era when rock groups had names like the Troggs or the Animals, being booked into hotels as “The Muppets” could sometimes
lead to confusion. Once, following a Muppet performance in Los Angeles, a hotel manager refused to give the team their rooms. “
They thought the Muppets were a rock group,” Juhl said, and were concerned the performers would trash the hotel. Jim managed to smooth things over by having “a serious conversation” with the hotel management, though Oz added that Jim “didn’t look very clean cut either!”

Actually, in the mid-1960s, Jim looked more like a beatnik businessman, wearing slacks and crisply starched shirts with brightly colored ties, his brown hair cut short and his beard neatly clipped close to his face. After arriving at the workshop, Jim would roll up his sleeves, then sink down into his black Eames chair, scrunching down until he was almost lying on his back, one long leg on the desk or crossed over the other as he sketched in his notebook or jotted story ideas on yellow notepads. From this position, too, he would discuss story or commercial ideas with the rest of the Muppet team,
hmmmm
ing or laughing as he considered each suggestion. “
Someone would have an idea, and we’d laugh out loud at it and throw it around some more,” said Oz.

One of Jim’s more playful ideas—which was thrown around, then finally deposited squarely on the shoulders of Oz—was a spirited ad campaign for La Choy Chinese food. For the first time, Jim designed and built a full-sized walkaround character: a fluorescent pink-and-orange-colored dragon named Delbert who, with the help of some Don Sahlin sorcery, breathed real fire. For the La Choy commercials, Oz lumbered around in the gigantic dragon costume, surprising Boy Scouts and housewives as he knocked over rows of food in a supermarket, crashed through walls, and shattered a television. “
I hated those costume things, and Jim knew it,” Oz said. “That’s why he reveled in me doing it!” The problem, Oz explained, was that once he got into the dragon costume, “
I was blind … I counted steps to figure out where to walk and listened to voices so I would know which way to turn.” It was a dry run for the kind of large walkaround characters that Jim would refine for
Sesame Street
’s Big Bird, then perfect for sweeping fantasy projects like
The Dark Crystal
.

Just as ambitious were a number of short films that Jim would produce for IBM at the behest of a charismatic and forward-thinking
IBM executive named David Lazer, who was hoping to inject Jim’s “
sense of humor and crazy nuttiness” into short “coffee breaks” to be shown at IBM business meetings. Briskly written and enthusiastically performed and edited, some of these films were to promote new products, while others were simply intended as “icebreakers” for business meetings and staff retreats. Jim reported that IBM was “
ecstatic” when it received the first four short films in early 1966—and Jim, too, was delighted with the opportunity to work with the company, forging a friendship with Lazer that would eventually extend beyond their work for IBM.

As a gadget enthusiast, Jim was intrigued by the company’s constant stream of new contraptions. For most of his IBM films, Jim chose to use the versatile Rowlf, in part because as a live hand puppet he could pick up and fiddle with each new machine—such as an electric guitar from the “Hippie Products Division”—but also because Lazer was a fan of the character. “
We made Rowlf a … bungling salesman,” Lazer said, and “everyone just went crazy over him.” Jim also created a number of artsy films for the company, such as
Paperwork Explosion
, a rapid-fire appraisal of IBM’s technology set against a background of electronic music by Raymond Scott, in which Jim cautioned viewers to remember that “
Machines should work; people should think.”

Lazer loved escaping his “
dinky little offices” at IBM to come brainstorm with Jim and Jerry Juhl at Muppets, Inc. “There was this aura of calmness, gentleness,” Lazer recalled. “Everybody was so nice. It was a nice warm feeling. It sounds trite now, but it was true.” As with much of the commercial work, Jim was barely breaking even on the IBM films. But Lazer came to appreciate that, for Jim, it was usually more about fun than profit. “I knew that he was taking a beating [financially],” Lazer said later. “Something about Jim—it’s not the money. It’s got to feel right for him. It’s got to click for him.… I liked that about him very much.” The affiliation with IBM would also give Jim the opportunity to take short working vacations to perform Rowlf at a number of IBM’s high-powered meetings, traveling with Jane to Florida and with Juhl and Nelson to Nassau, where Jim was excited to win $75 gambling—a new pastime that agent Bernie Brillstein claimed was due to his influence.

Jim was still traveling across the country with Jimmy Dean, too, though the appearances at enormous nightclubs and open-air venues were more work than vacation, especially since the members of the Muppet team were responsible for serving as their own stagehands, setting up and taking down the puppet stage for Rowlf’s appearance in complete darkness. “
We’d do our little bit,” Nelson recalled, “and then the lights would go out and we’d pick up our little stage in the dark and find our way out.” During one intermission, Jim stepped out of the darkened theater with Rowlf still on his arm, and was immediately mobbed by fans. “
Next thing you know,” said an amused Dean, “they’ll be calling the
dog
the star of this here ol’ show.” After a show in Anaheim, Jim dodged around fans and dashed immediately to the airport, to arrive back home in Connecticut just in time for Lisa’s sixth birthday party. No matter how hectic his schedule, Jim would always take the time to be an active, attentive parent.

T
o Jim’s delight,
Time Piece
was continuing to attract audiences—and awards—not only in the United States, but overseas as well. In August 1965, he was notified that the film had received the Plaque de St. Mark (“
whatever that is,” Jim wrote dryly in his journal) at the Venice Film Festival, as well as several smaller prizes, including recognition in Berlin at the XII Oberhausen Film Festival. Reactions to the film still varied, as Jim noted,
“from ‘A frightening look at modern living’ to ‘A very funny movie,’ to ‘What the hell is it?’ ” In early 1966, Jim learned
Time Piece
had been nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Short Subject, Live Action category. He and Jane attended the awards ceremony in Los Angeles in April, where the film lost to Claude Berri’s French comedy
The Chicken
. Nevertheless, the Hensons, Jane remembered, still had “
such fun!”

While Jim could shrug off losing the Oscar, there was one potential loss that wouldn’t be so easy to shake. In early 1966, Frank Oz, now twenty-one, was notified that he had been drafted and was being asked to report for duty in February. Oz vacated his New York apartment and Jim, trying to make the best of the situation, informed Jerry Nelson that he would now be hired full-time to take over Oz’s performing duties—welcome news for the recently divorced
Nelson, who was caring for a daughter with cystic fibrosis and looking for more than just part-time jobs. Oz was working to secure placement in a unit to entertain troops, rather than serving in combat, “
which lessened the dramatic impact of my leaving,” Oz said, but the team was still determined to send him off with a flourish. On February 18, the Muppet staff and their families threw a goodbye party for their youngest performer, waving to him from the second-story window as his cab sped toward Whitehall Street, all but certain they had lost Oz for at least the next two years.

As it turned out, they lost him for barely an hour.
“I reported for duty,” Oz recalled, “and was let go because of a minor heart condition.” Oz excitedly climbed back into a cab and ordered the driver back to the Muppet offices, where his own farewell party had only just ended. “I came back up the stairs to the office, and there was Jerry Nelson, sitting by himself on the couch,” Oz said, laughing. “And he looked up at me with this blank look on his face and just said, ‘Shit!’ ” Jim was delighted. “
FRANK OZ
is not drafted!” Jim wrote in his journal, with near palpable relief.

Nelson’s job, meanwhile, would remain secure for most of the year, as Oz decided to take some time visiting relatives in England and Belgium; indeed, Jim and Nelson would perform Rowlf for the final episode of
Jimmy Dean
on March 25, 1966. On Oz’s return, Nelson would remain on staff as a part-time performer, splitting his time between Jim and Bil Baird. According to Nelson, “
Jim would call me up and say, ‘Are you able to do an
Ed Sullivan
? And I would check with Bil to make sure it was okay—he always said ‘yeah, sure.’ He liked Jim a lot and respected his work.”

Fortunately for Nelson, the appearances on
Ed Sullivan
or
The Tonight Show
would continue with an almost rhythmic regularity. Jim was writing more and more new material for these appearances, honestly appraising the relative success of each in his private journal. Jim was unhappy, for example, with a Thanksgiving-related appearance on Johnny Carson, scrawling B
OMB
in his journal entry in all capital letters (“
Johnny is not one of those people who is really comfortable talking to the puppets,” Juhl offered helpfully). Better were two sketches on a live New Year’s Eve appearance six weeks later, though Jim was only willing to call the appearance “fair,” perhaps
realizing that one sketch had gone on a bit too long. For a Perry Como Christmas special, the Muppet team performed a piece involving five of Santa’s reindeer trying to make it snow for Christmas—a skit Jim decided was “Fairly good,” and it truly was, getting laughs in all the right places and enthusiastic applause from the audience.

Despite insisting that he would never perform voices, Oz had made his vocal debut in July 1965 performing half of a confused two-headed monster on trumpeter Al Hirt’s
Fanfare
. The same show featured another new skit involving two Oz-designed abstract Muppets—basically flexible tubes with wide eyes and fuzzy feet—who danced to Hirt’s chart-topping “Java.” The “Java” sketch, which became one of the Muppets’ most popular, was a throwback to the earliest Muppet performances, essentially a game of one-upmanship that ended with the smaller character blowing up the larger one. “
Our material does have a certain similarity,” Jim good-naturedly admitted.

Jim, it seemed, could find inspiration anywhere. In late 1964, Jim—along with Juhl, Oz, and Sahlin—arrived at NBC studios at 10:00
A
.
M
. for a morning rehearsal for
The Jack Paar Program
, only to be told they weren’t needed until 4:00 that afternoon. As the Muppet performers lounged around the dressing room with nothing but time on their hands, someone pulled open a door at the other end of the room, “expecting it to lead somewhere,” said Juhl, “but instead it was just this shallow closet with a maze of pipes.” Where others might see twisting pipes and valves and spigots, Jim saw monsters and faces and noses. The rest was easy. As Juhl explained:

Soon the team had the pipes and valves decorated with colored paint, fake fur and hair, googly eyes, and grinning or roaring mouths—a shrine to the Muppets’ brand of “
affectionate anarchy,”
as Oz said later. Even as the team worked, Juhl said, “people at the studio began to hear about this crazy closet and started stopping by, asking if they could take pictures.” By the time of their 4:00 performance, even Paar had heard what the “crazy Muppet people” were up to and sent a cameraman to film the closet for his television audience to see. “
What’s interesting is that Jim never intended for those pipes to be discovered that quickly,” Diana Birkenfield remembered later. “He wanted it to be a surprise for the next person who might open that closet door.”

During the summer of 1966, the Muppets spent a week cohosting
The Mike Douglas Show
, which gave Jim the opportunity to perform several quirky pieces, such as feathers dancing to the Young Rascals’ recent hit “Good Lovin’ ” (soldiering on even as one feather puppet accidentally wrapped around the blades of a spinning fan) and yet another variation of the Limbo character. Jim was increasingly fascinated by Limbo, which gave him the opportunity to explore his own interests in how the brain processed information and imagination. To produce one memorable sequence, Jim maneuvered a camera slowly through a tangle of materials he had strung throughout the Muppet workshop—webs of yarn, scraps of paper, wads of plastic wrap—then projected the final film behind Limbo as a representation of various regions of the brain.