When Jim Henson used to go on television talk shows, he`d come out with Kermit the Frog on his arm. He`d make no pretense of the fact that he was the one who brought the endearing puppet to life.
”I don`t think it spoiled the illusion,” says his son, Brian Henson, president of Jim Henson Productions. ”He always enjoyed showing people how the puppets worked.”
Now an exhibit called ”The World of Jim Henson: Muppets, Monsters & Magic,” opening Monday at the Museum of Science and Industry, will reveal even more of the stuffing and sophisticated technology inside Henson`s gentle creatures and grotesque characters.
”My father was sort of the originator of puppetry for television and film,” says Henson. ”He ushered what is maybe the oldest art form into the newest media and did it very successfully.”
First, in the evolution of Henson`s puppets, came Kermit, a gentle everyman in an evergreen suit, a kind-hearted creature ready with a wisecrack. Several Kermits are in the exhibit. ”Kermit and my father were almost interchangeable,” recalls Henson, whose father died in the spring of 1990.
Kermit and other creatures like him were neither marionettes nor puppets. Jim Henson called them Muppets. They were goggle-eyed characters made of soft foam covered with stretchy fabric so that human fingers inside could manipulate their features to imitate human expressions for the TV camera`s closeups.
When Kermit joined ”Sesame Street,” many other Muppets came with him and soon American children were learning to say Bert and Ernie not long after they first said ”Mama” and ”Dada,” and imitating Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch became second nature.
All Muppets were not created equal, though. ”Sometimes my father would sit down and design a puppet and know what its personality was,” his son recalls. ”Other times they evolved with the puppeteer.”
A case in point: The exhibit, in a display called ”C`est Moi,” follows the career of Miss Piggy, who began in show business as an ordinary pig until her extraordinary ego eventually elevated her to the spotlight of stardom.
”Miss Piggy was one of the background pigs on `The Muppet Show` and then Frank Oz got attached to her and started having more and more fun with her,” explains Henson, ”and she became so funny that the writers started to develop her character.”
By 1981, in the movie ”The Great Muppet Caper,” Miss Piggy was dressed in shocking pink sequins and plumes and performing a tap dance number. A video monitor in the exhibit shows behind-the-scenes glimpses of how the Muppets are manipulated in their movies as well as the memorable amorous bike ride that Kermit and Miss Piggy took together.
Recalls Henson, ”There was some radio-control work of the heads and mouths, but there were two of us riding along in a crane 20 feet up working the bicycles as marionettes. It took us about a week of long days to get it to work before we started shooting.”
The movie ”The Dark Crystal” was so difficult to make that it took five years to complete. Complex electronic and mechanical techniques were created so that little elf-like Gelflings could walk and talk, laugh and cry like real children and the evil vulture-like Skesis on display in the exhibit could strut about in their rococo finery and demonstrate to perfection the art of bad table manners.
By the time the movie ”Labyrinth” was made in 1986 the animatronics created to control the puppets had new dimensions. Hoggle, a crochety yet kind-hearted old gnome-like creature whose voice was dubbed by Brian Henson, also is included in the exhibit. Hoggle, in fact, was a human being inside a costume with a motorized head and face controlled by three puppeteers.
But such puppeteering by committee tended to spoil the show. ”We realized we were losing something in the performance because there were too many people involved,” says Henson. The technique has since been refined so that now on the TV series ”Dinosaurs,” for which Henson is co-executive producer, it takes only two people to animate one creature.
But no matter how simple or complex a puppet is, on its own it is nothing more than fabric and foam or synthetics and computer chips. ”The puppet has to be well-designed so that the audience can relate to the character,”
explains Henson, ”but the puppeteer is critical. He is the actor who brings it to life.”
What: ”The World of Jim Henson: Muppets, Monsters & Magic”
Where: Museum of Science and Industry, 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive;
312-684-1414
When: Monday through Jan. 5.
How much: $2, $1 for children 5-12 plus regular museum admission ($5, $4 seniors, $2 children; Thursdays free)
