Background
Henson, James Maury was born on September 24, 1936 in Greenville, Mississippi, United States. Son of Paul Ransom and Elizabeth Marcella (Brown) Henson.
Actor director producer puppeteer screenwriter
Henson, James Maury was born on September 24, 1936 in Greenville, Mississippi, United States. Son of Paul Ransom and Elizabeth Marcella (Brown) Henson.
Recieved bachelor's degreee of the University Maryland, 1960.
When only a senior in high school, Henson began to work as a puppeteer for a Washington, D.C., television show, Sam and His Friends. Thus, throughout the sixties, Henson made and characterized a series of puppets that were to become international figures: the Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, Kermit the Frog (Henson’s chief alter ego), and, eventually, Miss Figgy. It was in 1969, when American public television launched Sesame Street, that Henson moved from being a local entertainer to a national figure.
He was playing to preschool children for the most part, and he created a style—slow, tender, repetitive—that was easily parodied, but which actually fits in with all our knowledge about how children learn, and was even more accentuated with Teletubbies. Inevitably, Henson and his band of Muppets were drawn into movies—and extraordinary success, which led to toys and other forms of merchandising.
Henson had mixed feelings about the success, and its exploitation. It is not easy to predict the way in which he would have moved. He had sought an offer to be bought out, by Disney, for $150 million. But before the contracts were com¬plete, Henson died, suddenly, from a respiratory illness. Since when, his company lias passed into the Disney machine, just as his special character has nearly vanished.
It's not easy nowadays to ensure that work made for children stavs personal. Any sign of success is taken over, promoted, and deprived of strangeness. The several Muppet movies were not always natural or comfortable solutions. Miss Piggy could not quite resist the urge to be the last of the Gabors. And the guest stars came from a disturbingly different species.
At the same time, Henson’s vision had already been of huge value to a few uncommon films: Dreamchild (85 Gavin Millar), where Henson provided characters to go with Dennis Potter’s script and the live actors; Labyrinth (86, Henson), where Terry Jones’s script incorporates David Bowies King of the Goblins and Henson’s imaginary landscape; and The Witches (90, Nicolas Roeg), a rare combination of child’s story and horror.
Of course, it was always asking too much to expect Jim Henson to withstand Walt Disney. But he has left a valuable tradition or direction, and we are in urgent need of young artists taking it up all over the world.
Sesame Street
1969Member Puppeteers of America (president 1962-1963), American Federation of television and Radio Artists, Directors Guild American, Writers Guild, National Academy television Arts and Sciences, Screen Actors Guild.
Jim Henson’s early death was all the harder to take in that he worked with the odd, the personal, the wild, and the homemade, and flourished in the last age before the computer. It's therefore very important that Henson was not just the entrepreneur and the visionary, but often the hand in the glove, the voice, and the tall man bent double, putting on the show.
Married Jane Anne Nebel, May 28, 1959. Children: Lisa Marie, Cheryl Lee, Brian David, John Paul, Heather Beth.