SCPA collection on Jim Henson

Jim Henson was born on September 24, 1936 in Greenville, Mississippi. He was raised in Leland, Mississippi, and Hyattsville, Maryland as a Christian Scientist, and although he later left the church, his membership was reflected by frequent coverage in The Christian Science Monitor. A lifelong fan of television, Henson began working in the industry at the CBS local affiliate WTOP while in high school, and continued with WRC, an NBC affiliate, during his college years.

He originally enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park seeking an art degree but shifted to Home Economics, a major focused more on commercial art, costume design, and other areas more interesting to Henson. While attending classes at the University of Maryland, he created sets and designed and printed posters for theater productions, eventually running a silkscreen printing business out of the student union building (now known as the Adele H. Stamp Student Union). He also began working on the local short-form television show Sam and Friends (1955-1961) in addition to a variety of local commercials, a schedule which kept him in and out of taking classes until he graduated in 1960. It was also in a University of Maryland puppetry class that he met Jane Nebel, his first long-running production partner. They married in 1959 and separated in 1986, although they never divorced.

He designed and performed for a number of television shows with WRC-TV throughout his college years. The Muppets eventually landed on The Tonight Show, which introduced the Muppets to a national audience and led Henson and his troupe to perform on The Today Show and The Jimmy Dean Show in New York. In 1968, Henson joined the production of Sesame Street, a still-ongoing educational children’s show which premiered in 1969 and has received numerous awards and accolades, including over 200 Emmy Awards. Following Sesame Street’s initial success, Henson was able to produce The Muppet Show (1976-1981), a vaudeville-style comedy television program, under British producer Sir Lew Grade of ITC Entertainment. The Muppet Show ran for five seasons and spawned a number of movies, including The Muppet Movie (1979), The Great Muppet Caper (1981), and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984).

The Muppets eventually grew to international fame, with The Muppet Show airing dubbed and subbed in over one hundred countries. This recognition sprouted into merchandise, books, records, and spin-off television and live theater shows, as well as a second major production hub in London eventually named The Creature Shop, which focused more on research and technology for productions. It was here that Henson, wishing to reach beyond children’s entertainment, began work on The Dark Crystal (1982), the first of many projects requiring the development of unique technology and costuming. The company brought these techniques into later projects such as Labyrinth (1986), Fraggle Rock (1983–1987) and The Jim Henson Hour (1989–1993).

Henson’s creative work included innovations in puppetry and television, the first of which being the use of the eye of the camera as a stage, rather than filming puppets on a traditional puppet theater. This allowed for unusual entrances and exits, closeups, and other techniques normally reserved for live-action filming. Additionally, Henson and his performers watched live feeds on small screens behind the sets, allowing puppeteers to see their performances as the audience would. Large walkaround suits like Big Bird on Sesame Street evolved into more complicated technology for the Skeksis of The Dark Crystal, which required the suits to completely conceal the performers as well as the necessary cables and wires while incorporating remote controls to move the puppets’ faces.

Henson died suddenly of toxic shock syndrome on May 16th, 1990, in a hospital in Manhattan. Negotiations that were underway regarding the sale of his company to Walt Disney Studios fell through following his death, although Disney would ultimately acquire the Muppets in 2004. In 2006, Jane Henson established the Jim Henson Artist-in-Residence Program in his memory at the University of Maryland, College Park.