Jane Henson, who has died aged 78, was a puppeteer and co-creator of the Muppets; her early designs for characters on the television programme Sam and Friends shaped the unique style of her husband Jim’s internationally successful Muppet Show.
Together they pioneered a new performance style that gave their puppets a realistic edge. While most puppeteers of the era were still using theatrical techniques, hiding behind a screen or sitting onstage with the puppet, Jane and Jim worked with a viewing monitor below camera-level, holding the puppets high above their heads. The characters lip-synched to popular songs and performed sketches that spoofed other television shows.
“We were mostly doing it just to entertain ourselves,” Jane later claimed; but the show’s manic energy won many supporters, and its bizarre cast of characters included an early prototype for the Muppets’ biggest star — Kermit the Frog.
Jane Nebel was born on June 16 1934 in St Albans, New York City, the youngest of three children. Her father, Adalbert, was an astrologer who worked under the name Dal Lee. She majored in Fine Art at the University of Maryland, and was intent on a teaching career when she met Jim Henson, who was studying to be a commercial artist. He was then working part-time for WRC-TV’s weekday show Afternoon, and needed a partner for a regular feature entitled Inga’s Angle. Jane agreed to work alongside him, and their success soon gave them their own slot for Sam and Friends.
With Jim’s friend Bob Payne, they spent many hours preparing each skit, rehearsing and making puppets. In 1956 Jim and Jane were asked to perform on Steve Allen’s Tonight show. Jim, as Kermit the Frog, and Jane, as the purple skull-like Yorick, performed I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face.
The success of Sam and Friends paved the way for further television ventures, including an advertising contract with Wilkins Coffee. When Jim set off on a tour of Europe in 1958, he handed control of the show to Jane. By the time he returned, Sam and Friends had been nominated for an Emmy award. Jane became Henson’s formal business partner in the same year.
After graduation, Jane studied Fine Art at Catholic University in Washington, DC, and she and Jim married in 1959. To prepare for the occasion, Jim shaved off his beard and sent her the clippings with a note reading: “From Samson to Delilah.” Their first child was born a year later, and Jane retired from puppetry in 1961 to become a full-time mother (they would have five children together.)
The family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, in January 1964. There, Jane Henson was an assistant art teacher at the Mead School for Human Development. She continued to have an active role behind the scenes of the Jim Henson Company, collaborating with him on projects such as The Art of the Muppets touring exhibit, which debuted at the Lincoln Center in New York in 1979, and the Sesame Street Live arena stage shows. She also made occasional appearances on Sesame Street, providing the movements for various Muppets. From 1982 she served on the board of the Jim Henson Foundation, established to promote the art of puppetry in the United States.
Jim Henson died in 1990 aged 53, after developing a bacterial infection that led to sepsis. Though they had separated by the time of his death, Jane Henson was determined to celebrate and preserve his life’s work.
In 1992 she founded the Jim Henson Legacy, which continues to publicise his creative influence through exhibitions and presentations.
In 2010 she donated several of the Muppets from Sam and Friends — including the original Kermit the Frog — to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
Once asked for her reaction to seeing the Henson collection on display, she replied: “I don’t think of it as historical. It’s my life.”
Her children survive her.
Jane Henson, born June 16 1934, died April 2 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment