Jim Henson: The Biography (24 page)

Actually, Jim’s rambunctious Muppet meeting was bitingly close to reality—for the CTW team
hadn’t
come up with the show’s name until practically the moment before Jim began rolling tape on the pitch reel. In late 1968, Stone had suggested
123 Avenue B
, a title that held until mid-January 1969, when it was decided the name sounded too much like a real address. At that point, Stone turned to his writing team for suggestions, poring over lists with everything from the boring
Fun Street
to the uninspired
The Video Classroom
. Nothing really leapt off the page until a writer named Virginia Schone submitted a list containing two alliterative words:
Sesame Street
.

“
I fought like hell—I thought it was an awful name,” Stone said later. “I thought the E at the end was bad education—it looks like a silent E, so it’d be ‘
See-same Street
’ if you’re trying to read—and I thought it was too cute.” Producer Dave Connell, however, issued a directive that “
if nobody came up with a better idea, as of Monday we [are] going to call the show
Sesame Street
.” By Monday, the name had stuck—and as Jim began filming on Wednesday, it was Kermit who was shown coming up with the name on-screen, casually explaining that the reference to the phrase
open sesame
“kinda gives the idea of a street where neat stuff happens.”

CTW intended to have pilot episodes of
Sesame Street
ready by June 1969, so Jim began sketching out a few new Muppets for the show early that spring, handing Don Sahlin a felt-tip drawing, little more than a doodle, of two characters. The first had surprised eyes set in a tall, banana-shaped head, topped by a shock of dark hair, while the other—looking rather like Moldy Hay from
Sam and Friends
—had a head like a football, a large nose, and even larger ears, with shaggy dark hair covering his eyes. Typically, Sahlin captured the spirit of Jim’s drawing—highlighting the features that defined the characters and discarding those that didn’t—and produced two Muppets that manifested the study in opposites, both in design and personality, that Jim always found wonderfully funny. “
The design was so simple and pure and wonderful,” said Oz. “You had somebody who is all vertical and somebody who is all horizontal.” In the talented hands of Oz and Jim, those vertical and horizontal characters would quickly become, in the minds of many, one of the
funniest comedy duos anywhere, providing teachable moments for millions even as they poked, prodded, teased, and taunted each other: Ernie and Bert.

It took some trying for Jim and Oz to decide which performer would take which puppet. “
We played with who did what using the mirror in the workshop,” recalled Oz, with each taking a turn performing Ernie then Bert. Ultimately, the design of the puppets triggered their personalities. “The design really reflects the character and affects the kind of voice you do,” Oz said. “Ernie is expansiveness, while Bert is this rigid, uptight guy.” With that as the basis, it was easy for Jim to finally assume the more laid-back Ernie, and Oz the serious Bert. Still, it would take a bit more tinkering before everything would fall into place with the characters—it even took Jim awhile to find the right voice for Ernie, at first giving the character a voice similar to Rowlf’s. But with the creation of Ernie and Bert, Jim had made his first iconic contribution to
Sesame Street
. It would be far from his last. (Contrary to popular rumor, Ernie and Bert were
not
named for the similarly named cop and taxi driver in the film
It’s a Wonderful Life
—“
it’s a total coincidence,” said Stone—though it should perhaps be noted that Jim
did
have a great-uncle named Ernie.)

Another of Jim’s most endearing contributions to
Sesame Street
were the short films and animations he would supply to be used as inserts, many of which were completed before the first episode aired. Following the completion of the body parts film in January 1969, Jim began working on a series of storyboards for ten short pieces of film and animation that would be used to teach children to count. While Jim would label his March 1969 storyboards
Numerosity—
and CTW would invoice them under the labels “Henson 2” or whichever number Jim featured in his film—for a generation of viewers, they would always be known simply as “the baker films.”

Each film began with a colorfully animated counting sequence, followed by a number of short live-action clips in which human actors counted aloud various objects (including, in one segment, Jim as a juggler who counts three balls). At the end, a neatly pressed baker carrying a precariously balanced armful of the appropriate number of desserts appears at the top of a short flight of stairs, dramatically
announces his culinary creation (“Ten … chocolate layer … cakes!”), and immediately falls down the stairs—Jim’s educational television equivalent to ending a sketch with an explosion. “
I don’t like it,” said Cooney of what she called “banana peel humor.” “Younger children—two-year-olds—they think he’s hurt.” But it would stay. With the films completed, Jim sent his usual thank-you notes to his actors, then billed CTW an even $40,000, well below the actual costs for producing the films—especially since Jim had estimated his expenses based on producing ten one-minute films, when the completed films actually ran nearly two minutes in length. In the spirit of the project, however, Jim refused to bill CTW for the overages.

O
n July 9, 1969, only a little more than a month after the
Numerosity
work sessions, Jim and Oz—stocked with Ernie and Bert and a handful of generic puppets with interchangeable eyes, noses, and hair that Jim called “Anything Muppets”—spent nine days in Philadelphia taping five pilot shows for
Sesame Street
. The pilots were to be shown to test audiences in Philadelphia and New York, a group that included the toughest critics of all: the preschoolers who were
Sesame Street
’s target audience. As it turns out, the responses of this key group would result in an important change in the show’s format.

In its original pilot format,
Sesame Street
moved from segment to segment in a deliberate, self-aware manner, with the human cast members introducing many of the short films or animations. The Muppets would then be seen in their own segments, often referencing prior inserts, and serving as the links from one piece to the next. This gave the show the magaziney
Laugh-In
feel Cooney had originally envisioned, but such a format meant the Muppets were completely isolated from
Sesame Street
’s human cast. This had been done deliberately, and with the best of intentions. “
We had been told by all our advisors that preschoolers have difficulty in differentiating between fantasy and reality,” Stone said. “So the first idea was that you would have the street—a very real-looking set with real people on it—and then you would cut away to puppets, to animation, to all the things that make up the fantasy.

“We did the test shows that way,” Stone continued, “and we realized right away that we had a problem, because the people on the street couldn’t compete with the puppets. We had children watching these shows and their attention span just went way down when we cut to the street.… So the information we got from these test shows demonstrated that we needed a transition from the fantasy to the reality.”

The solution to this unforeseen hitch, then, was simple: Muppets were needed on the street.

Jim thought about it, and after taking his family on a quick vacation to Barbados and St. Lucia at the end of July, returned to Jon Stone with several ideas. One of his thoughts was “to have a character that the child could live through,” a Muppet who was representative of the audience. “Big Bird, in theory, is himself a child,” said Jim, “and we wanted to make this great big silly awkward creature that would make the same kind of dumb mistakes that kids make.” To make things even more interesting, Jim and Stone decided on another character that was nearly the antithesis of the wide-eyed, innocent Big Bird: a cynical, complaining grouch named Oscar. “
Oscar is there because we didn’t want a bland kiddie show,” said Stone. “We didn’t want to let it get too sweet.”

The remaining issue, at least for Jim, was one of personnel. Doing brief Muppet sketches and inserts on tape was one thing; appearing regularly on a daily show was another. Performing Big Bird and Oscar would be a time-consuming task that would require the puppeteer to be present for all 130 shows CTW anticipated filming each year—and Jim, who intended for both characters to be performed by the same puppeteer, was not inclined to devote himself to full-time puppeteering. The versatile Oz was briefly considered for the task, but Jim had envisioned Big Bird as a full-body, walkaround puppet, and Oz, after his experience in the stuffy La Choy dragon costume, was remaining steadfast in his refusal to perform any more large characters—and besides, Oz was too valuable to spare for 130 shows. With the first episodes of
Sesame Street
going before the cameras in less than four months, then, Jim needed to quickly hire a puppeteer specifically for the job of performing Big Bird and Oscar.

Fortunately, Jim already had a recruiting mission on his calendar—and
in August 1969, he traveled to Salt Lake City for several days to attend the annual conference for the Puppeteers of America. There he attended a performance by a thirty-five-year-old puppeteer named Caroll Spinney, who advertised his performance as “
an experimental production” of live puppetry interacting with an animated background. It would have been an impressive combination of media had it actually worked. But as Spinney began his performance, an errant spotlight shone down on his movie screen, completely washing out the animated background. “
I couldn’t see my films to synchronize my movements,” Spinney lamented. “It was an immediate disaster. I lost the whole bit.” Spinney managed to salvage the performance through a bit of ad-libbing, then slunk offstage. To his surprise, Jim greeted him backstage in his near-whisper way, and asked Spinney if he could meet with him later to talk.

That invitation sounded familiar to Spinney, who had met Jim several years earlier at a puppetry convention in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. There, Jim had suggested Spinney come to New York “to talk about” working for the Muppets—but Spinney hadn’t followed up on the suggestion, failing to realize that “
Jim never just wanted to chat. If he said he wanted to talk about something, it meant that he wanted to
do
it.” This time, Spinney wouldn’t make the same mistake.

Spinney stashed his gear, then ran to the lounge where Jim was already waiting, slouched down on a couch. “
I saw your show,” Jim told Spinney. “I liked what you were
trying
to do.” Spinney laughed, relieved. Jim understood—and when offered another chance to “join the Muppets,” Spinney eagerly accepted. As usual, Jim had a knack for choosing the right people for the job—and despite Spinney’s disastrous live show, Jim had seen the performer’s talent.

Even as Jim was finding his puppeteer, the workshop at Henson Associates was bustling with activity. With production on
Sesame Street
ramping up, Jim had employed several more designers to work alongside Sahlin, including Caroly Wilcox—a talented puppeteer with a penchant for design—and the serendipitously named Kermit Love, a marionettist and former Broadway costume designer with a Santa Claus beard who excelled at crafting full-body puppets. Meanwhile, in the administrative offices upstairs, Jim had recently hired
Diana Birkenfield, a former production assistant on
The Jimmy Dean Show
, to act as his first full-time producer, reviewing and vetting potential projects.

One office, however, sat empty. In June, Jerry Juhl had approached Jim and amiably informed him that he and his wife, Susan, were planning to move to California, where Jerry hoped to make it as a freelance writer. “
I wasn’t in California very long at all before I got a call from Jon Stone,” recalled Juhl. “They actually had a really hard time finding writers [for
Sesame Street
].” Like many, Juhl was skeptical about whether
Sesame Street
would last more than a season—and he didn’t want to relocate to New York to find the worthy experiment had failed after three months. But Stone, and Jim, were persistent; when it came to the Muppets, Jim was certain Juhl knew their temperament and rhythms better than anyone—Jim wanted and needed him. So Stone tried again, offering Juhl the option of remaining in California and working long-distance. With that, Juhl agreed to become one of Stone’s most important
Sesame Street
writers, mailing in Muppet scripts from California—and commuting into New York when necessary—for the next five years.

A
s fall approached, the Muppet builders were putting the finishing touches on both Big Bird and Oscar, readying them for the first full day of street shooting on October 13, 1969. Jim wanted Big Bird to be the next phase in full-body characters, an improvement over earlier efforts that had limited facial expressions and squatty arms that inhibited arm and hand movements. Jim wanted Big Bird to have a more expressive face, with eyes that blinked, and a flexible body that allowed the performer to more easily move and react. Sahlin, then, was eagerly at work on Big Bird’s head and the whirl of gears that would allow the performer to open the puppet’s eyes, while Kermit Love, with his flair for the dramatic, assembled the body. Apart from the drawings he had provided, Jim had inspired Big Bird’s design in other ways. “
When Big Bird was being developed, I kept the image of Jim Henson in mind,” said Love. “I always thought of Jim’s stature—he was well over six feet tall, and that loping gait he had when he walked down a hallway. Somehow or other, that was what stuck in my mind.” For a moment, Jim had even considered constructing a
puppet in which the performer walked backward, to more closely simulate the actual bend of a bird’s leg. “
Fortunately,” said Spinney, “Jim abandoned that idea, or I could have spent over thirty years walking around backward.”