59 Facts About Jim Henson

James Maury Henson was an American puppeteer, animator, actor, and filmmaker who achieved worldwide notability as the creator of the Muppets.

Jim Henson was well known for creating Fraggle Rock and as the director of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.

Jim Henson created Sam and Friends, a short-form comedy television program on WRC-TV, while he was a freshman at the University of Maryland, College Park, in collaboration with fellow student Jane Nebel.

Jim Henson graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in home economics.

In 1969, Jim Henson joined the children's television program Sesame Street where he helped to develop Muppet characters for the series.

Jim Henson produced the sketch comedy television series The Muppet Show during this period.

Jim Henson won the Emmy Award twice for his involvement in The StoryTeller and The Jim Henson Hour.

Jim Henson was posthumously awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1991, and was named a Disney Legend in 2011.

James Maury Jim Henson was born on September 24,1936, in Greenville, Mississippi, the younger of two children of Betty Marcella and Paul Ransom Jim Henson, an agronomist for the United States Department of Agriculture.

Jim Henson was raised as a Christian Scientist and spent his early childhood in nearby Leland, Mississippi, before moving with his family to University Park, Maryland, near Washington, DC, in the late 1940s and later to Bethesda, Maryland.

Jim Henson remembered the arrival of the family's first television as "the biggest event of his adolescence", being heavily influenced by radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and the early television puppets of Burr Tillstrom on Kukla, Fran and Ollie and Bil and Cora Baird.

Jim Henson remained a Christian Scientist at least into his twenties, when he taught Sunday school, but he wrote to a Christian Science church in the early 1970s to inform them that he was no longer a practicing member.

Jim Henson attended a variety of grade schools in his youth, including Hyattsville High School until it was closed in 1951.

Jim Henson completed his high school career at the newly opened Northwestern High School, where he joined the puppetry club.

Jim Henson enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, the following fall as a studio arts major, thinking that he might become a commercial artist.

Jim Henson graduated in 1960 with a Bachelor of Science degree in home economics.

Jim Henson began working at WTOP-TV in the late spring of 1954, at age 17, hired to "manipulate marionettes" on a Saturday morning children's show called The Junior Morning Show, until the show was cancelled only three weeks later.

Jim Henson remained at WRC until Sam and Friends aired its last episode on December 15,1961.

Jim Henson believed that television puppets needed to have "life and sensitivity".

Rather than carving wooden puppets Jim Henson built characters from softer, flexible materials like foam rubber; his first iteration of Kermit was made from a halved table tennis ball and fabric from an old coat belonging to his mother, with denim from a pair of jeans forming the sleeve for the puppeteer's arm.

Sam and Friends was a financial success, but Jim Henson began to have doubts about going into a career performing with puppets once he graduated.

Jim Henson spent six weeks in Europe during the summer of 1958, originally with the intent to study painting, but was surprised to learn that puppets were considered just as serious of an art form as painting or sculpture.

Jim Henson spent much of the next two decades working in commercials, talk shows, and children's projects before realizing his dream of the Muppets as "entertainment for everybody".

Jim Henson appeared as a guest on many shows, including The Steve Allen Show, The Jack Paar Program, and The Ed Sullivan Show.

The Jim Henson Company has posted a short selection of them.

The Jim Henson company claimed that Brady was incorrectly using Jim Henson's name and likeness in their attempts to license the characters.

Jane quit performing to raise their children, and Jim Henson hired writer Jerry Juhl in 1961 and puppet performer Frank Oz in 1963 to replace her.

Jim Henson credited them both with developing much of the humor and character of his Muppets.

In New York City, Jim Henson formed a partnership with Bernie Brillstein, who managed Jim Henson's career until the puppeteer's death.

Henson was so grateful for this break that he offered Jimmy Dean a 40-percent interest in his production company, but Dean declined, stating that Henson deserved all the rewards for his own work, a decision of conscience that Dean never regretted.

From 1963 to 1966, Jim Henson began exploring filmmaking and produced a series of experimental films.

In 1969, television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and her staff at the Children's Television Workshop were impressed by the quality and creativity of the Jim Henson-led team, so they asked Jim Henson and staff to work full-time on Sesame Street, a children's program for public television that premiered on National Educational Television on November 10,1969.

Jim Henson performed the characters of Ernie, game-show host Guy Smiley, and Kermit, who appeared as a roving television news reporter.

Jim Henson was involved in producing various shows and animation inserts during the first two seasons.

Jim Henson produced a series of counting films for the numbers 1 through 10 which always ended with a baker falling down the stairs while carrying the featured number of desserts.

Jim Henson liked Lorne Michaels' work and wanted to be a part of it, but he ultimately concluded that "what we were trying to do and what his writers could write for it never gelled".

Jim Henson began developing a Broadway show and a weekly television series both featuring the Muppets.

The Jim Henson-directed The Great Muppet Caper followed, and Jim Henson decided to end the Muppet Show to concentrate on making films, though the Muppet characters has appeared in TV movies and specials.

Also in 1982, Jim Henson co-founded Jim Henson International Television with Peter Orton and Sophie Turner Laing as his partners.

Jim Henson was a distribution company for children's, teens' and family television.

Jim Henson worked with Oz again on The Muppets Take Manhattan, this time with Oz as sole director.

In 1984 Jim Henson traveled to Moscow, where he made a film about Sergei Obraztsov.

Jim Henson donated four dolls to the puppeteer to replenish the Moscow Museum of Obraztsov Puppets: Fraggle, Skeksi, Bugard, and Robin the Frog.

Jim Henson continued creating children's television, such as Fraggle Rock and the animated Muppet Babies.

Jim Henson continued to address darker, more mature themes with the folklore and mythology-oriented show The StoryTeller, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program.

Jane said that Jim Henson was so involved with his work that he had very little time to spend with her or their children.

Jim Henson's children began working with Muppets at an early age, partly because "one of the best ways of being around him was to work with him", according to Cheryl.

Jim Henson was a strong supporter of the civil rights movement.

Jim Henson appeared with Kermit on The Arsenio Hall Show in Los Angeles on May 4,1990.

Jim Henson suggested to his wife that he might be dying, but he did not want to take time off from his schedule to visit a hospital, feeling that his illness would resolve on its own.

Two hours later, Jim Henson agreed to be taken by taxi to the emergency room at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan.

Jim Henson was placed on a ventilator but quickly deteriorated over the next several hours despite increasingly aggressive treatment with multiple antibiotics.

David Gelmont, the hospital's intensive care unit director, announced that Jim Henson had died from Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterium that causes bacterial pneumonia.

Gelmont noted Jim Henson might have been saved had he gone to the hospital just a few hours sooner.

News of Jim Henson's death spread quickly and admirers of his work responded from around the world with tributes and condolences.

Jim Henson was dismissed from the cast in October 2016, and Matt Vogel succeeded him in the role of Kermit.

The Jim Henson Company retains the Creature Shop as well as the rest of its film and television library, including Fraggle Rock, Farscape, The Dark Crystal, and Labyrinth.

In 2024, Jim Henson was portrayed by Nicholas Braun in the biographical dramedy Saturday Night, which chronicles the production of the first episode of Saturday Night Live.

Jim Henson's characters are currently performed by the following puppeteers: Matt Vogel, Peter Linz, Eric Jacobson, Dave Goelz and Bill Barretta.