Jim Henson's Muppets Get The Smithsonian Treatment

I remember watching the Muppets on The Ed Sullivan Show back in the sixties.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

The earliest Sesame Street shows were my first knowledge of Hensen.

Then, the short lived muppets on Saturday Night Live.

Maybe we could do a "your favorite muppet" thread.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

My earliest memories of muppets, are from Sesame Street too. IIRC, I had an English teacher in h.s., who said he did some puppet show with Henson, while they were in h.s. (I'll have to check an old yearbook for that teacher's name, then do some googling...). While I was taking baking and pastry arts some years ago, there were times some of us couldn't help but do "Swedish Chef" impersonations while in the baking lab...

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" The universe is running away
I heard it on the news just the other day
There's this new stuff called dark energy
We can't measure and we can't see..." - from Jimmy Buffett's What if the hokey pokey is all it really is about?

Showing my age, my earliest Muppet memories are from the Ed Sullivan show in probably 1964-1966 (I was like 6 to 8 years old). One bit was this frog character (Kermit, but not publically named that yet) playing music on a piano to calm bigger and bigger monsters, until the piano opens it mouth (the keys are the teeth) and swallows him. Another were these two dancing U-shaped creatures - the bigger one keeps stomping the little one, until the little one raises one of its leg and shoots a bullet out of the hole in the bottom of its foot. They were definitely strange and very appealing to my warped little brain.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

I too remember them from Sullivan. Wasn't there a little dog on that show that was the first muppet? It had the deep voice and the funny way of saying "all right." Said it kinda gangster style "Saw-dite."

I remember when Sesame Street first started, and even though I was a bit older than their target audience, took an immediate liking to Cookie Monster. He is stil my favorite.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

That sounds to me like you're thinking of señor Wences and his
puppets. He was Spanish. I think he had three sidekicks, but
I can only remember two at the moment. One was just his hand
with a tiny wig, lipstick, and drawn-on eyes. It had a high
voice like a child or female. The other was a dark-colored
head lying on its back inside a small box on a table. When
señor Wences accidentally dropped the lid closed on the box
or someting else happened to the head in the box, señor Wences
would lift the lid, ask the head if it was all right, and it
would answer, "'S'all right" in a gravelly voice. The head
was very laconic. The hand was more garrulous.

I can't believe Henson started the Muppets in the 50's!
I knew he was around for some time before Sesame Street, and
the sketches on the Ed Sullivan Show described by Swift sound
familiar, but 1956!? Fifty years ago!?

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

Edit to add: Hey, my memory was pretty good!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Se%C3%B1or_Wences

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http://www.FreeMars.org/jeff/

"I find astronomy very interesting, but I wouldn't if I thought we
were just going to sit here and look." -- "Van Rijn"

"The other planets? Well, they just happen to be there, but the
point of rockets is to explore them!" -- Kai Yeves

wikipedia on James Henson

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

The Smithsonian's own webpage about the exhibit
Some neat old photos are on the site.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009

Jimmy Dean, and Rowlf, early sixties. Great stuff.

The Muppets and Jim Henson are part of my family history. My aunt Susie used to be a professional puppeteer, a long time ago, and she was actually in The Muppet Movie as one of the puppeteers. According to Aunt Susie, the way they filmed those enormous crowd sequences was to get all the regular guys' puppeteers friends, and all their puppeteer friends, and so on until they had enough people.

Also, she stood next to Jim Henson at the puppeteers' convention where he debuted Hey, Cinderella! and got to see his reaction to the audience's reaction.

And, as if all that weren't enough, I have a framed Popular Mechanics cover with Miss Piggy on it that belonged to my dad.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

That's the one. Very good.

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Growing up in Denmark I remember watching the muppet show in the 70's (closed captioned). As a child I liked the Swedish chef, and the "Muppets in space" skits.

When Fraggle Rock premired in Denmark, I remember the (one and only at the time) tv channel announcing that now that they had bought the rights to show Fraggle Rock, that they would not show the Muppet Show anymore. With cable TV I do not know if it is available again.

When I was growing up Seaseme Street had not been imported to Denmark yet, but as far as I know it is now. Though I do not know if they just dub the voices, or if it is an entirely Danish cast interacting with Danish Licenced Muppets.

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Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.

--Niels Bohr, Danish Physicist.

A classic piece of Muppet memorabilia: Buddy Rich vs Animal

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"An armed man is a citizen
An unarmed man is a subject"

Robert A. Heinlein

To the best of my knowledge, every country that gets Sesame Street gets its own Sesame Street. The only exception that I know of is, sadly, no longer on the air--the Chinese Sesame Street had Big Bird, because of the whole Big Bird Goes to China thing, but the Chinese government has, according to Carrol Spinney (the guy who does both Big Bird and Oscar), since taken it off the air completely.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

To the best of my knowledge, Denmark don't have Sesame Street, I'm guessing we're too small to justify the production costs.

Of the people in suits shows, we have Teletubbies and Bamse og kylling (bear and chicken).

The latter is only vaguely entertaining if you've consumed vast amounts of alcohol and has realised that chicken's squawks sounds like it's about to experience an orgasm.

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And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Sharing a house with some engineers about 28
years ago. Its an enduring memory finding
them all on the sofa one evening waiting for
that weeks episode of the Muppet Show

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N6MAA10816
Faber '62 ΔTX
Are you a Bright?

I don't think that's true. A Korean friend of mine said that the Sesame Street she watched as a child was the American version. I don't remember if she said it was dubbed, but she said it was ours.

It's what the books I have on the subject say. Among other things, I can tell you that Sesame Street in South Africa has an HIV-positive character. It's possible that countries do in addition have dubbed American Sesame Street, and it's possible that not every country has its own Sesame Street and I'm wrong about that, but I know that they try to have each one be something kids in that country can identify with. (They're also, to my knowledge, the only joint Israeli-Palestinian production.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"