Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

 

A couple of years ago, I grabbed a book randomly off of the new books display, as it looked interesting. That book was Becoming Dr. Seuss by Brian Jay Jones. I took it along on one of our last trips before Covid wrecked travel, and found it to be quite fascinating and compellingly written. As a result of that experience, I put this book on my list. Oh, and we also saw a fascinating exhibit on Jim Henson at the Skirball Center when we went down to see the one on Leonard Bernstein. 

 I didn’t include it in my previous post, but Brian Jay Jones is an interesting character in his own right. His first career was, believe it or not, a policy analyst and speechwriter for senators James Jeffords and Pete Domenici - both Republicans at one time. (Ah yes, back in the day when Republicans still supported civil rights and democracy and so on. Jeffords would leave the party in 2009, in significant part because of the Republican refusal to fund education for the disabled. Now, of course, he would be called a communist for opposing tax cuts for the ultra-rich, supporting abortion rights, and sponsoring enviromental protections. 

 

Jones then made a dramatic career switch in 2008, leaving politics altogether in order to pursue a career as a biographer. He started with a book about Washington Irving, which was a fascinating choice, in my opinion. It sold well enough for him to continue writing, and he would eventually hit it big with this book, Jim Henson: The Biography. In addition to his book about Dr. Seuss, he also wrote a biography of George Lucas. 

 

His books have been widely praised by critics, and it is easy to understand why. They are impressively researched, with both personal interviews and a lot of contemporary primary sources. He has been able to strike a good balance in his portrayals. The books are not takedowns, but they also do not elide the flaws and skeletons of his subjects. This was probably easier because Seuss and Henson were both decent human beings who actually made the world a better place in a lot of ways. About the worst anyone seems to have been able to say about them were either typical human flaws or to point out that each had a failed marriage in which they didn’t behave particularly well at the end. Also interesting is that people close to his subjects have also praised his writing, noting how well he captures the nuances of the lives he portrays. 

 

Like Dr. Seuss, Jim Henson was one of the major influences on at least two generations of Americans. I noted in my prior review that Gen X (that’s me!) was raised on Dr. Seuss, and that he gave us a certain amount of our ways of thinking about the environment, the Cold War, prejudice, and so on. 

 

Jim Henson filled that role for many of us as well. I know very few people of my age who didn’t spend at least some time watching Sesame Street. One might say that for my generation of urban kids, it was a ubiquitous presence in our lives, and one of the positive influences on our thinking. (Not coincidentally, it was ahead of its time in portraying a desegregated world.) It wasn’t just the show, of course. We had a few records or tapes, including the iconic (and still awesome!) C is for Cookie. 

 

And then there was The Muppet Show. While Sesame Street was about a lot more than Henson’s muppets, The Muppet Show was all about Henson and his colleagues and the unforgettable goofy puppets. 

 

Some of us also remember Fraggle Rock, and Labyrinth, and various other projects. I also remember feeling pretty sad when Henson suddenly died in 1990. 

 

As a parent now, the kids and I watch The Muppet Christmas Carol every year - I think it captures the spirit of the Dickens original quite well. 

 

So, clearly, the creations of Jim Henson were an important part of my childhood, and remain favorites today. 

 

There isn’t much point in summarizing Henson’s life - that is the point of the book, after all. But there are some fun lines worth quoting. 

 

For example, I thought that the fact that as a kid, Henson loved Grackles - a medium-large blackbird with a loud and irritating sound - much like my kids do. The name itself is such a Muppet name, right? 

 

I also found it fascinating that the most famous puppeteer of all time got into puppetry by accident, and for years saw it as only a way to get to his ultimate goal of making television and film art. But, the opportunity presented itself to do a puppet routine on a local TV show at age 17, and he jumped on it. And turned out to be really, really good at it. 

 

It was while doing this that he met his eventual wife, Jane. Their story is sad for a number of reasons. It seems that, while they had obvious professional chemistry, the romantic spark was never that great. (That’s from both sides, by the way.) But even more than the eventual failure of the marriage, I found it sad that once the kids started coming, Jane essentially gave up her own career - she was arguably every bit as talented as Jim - and never really got it back. I know, this is totally what everyone (well, everyone in white suburbia) did in the early 1960s, but it still was a shame. 

 

Fun fact about Jane: her parents were named Winifred and Adalbert. Which sound like Muppets too. 

 

Also worth mentioning is the unintentionally hilarious moment in the book when Jones is describing the process of negotiating a legal separation between Jim and Jane. “The stack of legal papers would eventually tower to nearly a foot high.”

 

LMFAO. 

 

I suspect that Jones was underplaying things there. Surely as someone connected to the Senate, he would know that even a basic divorce can run that many papers pretty dang fast - and they were negotiating, among other things, a buyout of a 100 million dollar company - Jane co-founded and built the thing from the beginning. 

 

I mentioned the shared love of Grackles. Henson also was a fan of The 13 Clocks by James Thurber - one of my favorites that I recently enjoyed reading to the younger kids. 

 

Another thing that really struck me was the policy that Henson had about his creations. As he told his agent, “never sell anything I own.” The muppets - including the Sesame Street characters, remained owned by Henson until the end of his life. In retrospect, it was a good idea, in that he retained control over how the characters were used - and eventually reaped the financial benefits of that control. When he died, though, he was in the process of negotiating to sell the company (and some of the characters) to Disney, in significant part because he was tired of the work of running an increasingly large and complex business. I might mention here that Disney did eventually come to own the Muppets - but not until 15 years later, after they were sold to another company, bought back, and then re-sold. 

 

The book is about Henson, but it also takes great pains to do what Henson himself always did, which was to insist that the Muppets weren’t just about him, but about the dozens of creators, builders, and puppeteers who worked with him. Frank Oz, Richard Hunt, Jerry Nelson, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, and Jane Henson - all these were great artists in their own right, and indeed created many of the Muppet characters. In negotiating the sale to Disney, Henson originally intended to give significant payouts to his employees. Unfortunately, when his death scuttled the negotiations, that didn’t happen. 

 

Jim had a great sense of humor, with a particular love for explosions, but he could also have an acid tongue. One of the incidents that made me laugh was the response to his bizarre art film, The Cube. The critical reviews were mixed at best, and there was definitely some puzzlement about what on earth it was meant to mean. But it was a letter sent by a viewer, one Mr. Dionne from California, who said “the most disciplined attention I could give [The Cube] was a belch from the grave of Marcus Aurelius occasioned, I might add, by the dead weight of its own dust caving in on itself.” 

 

Leaving aside the question of whether the writer was high, Jim’s response was hilarious - he actually wrote back. 

 

Dear Mr. Dionne:

What the fuck are you talking about?

Yours truly, Jim Henson

 

This fascination with art and art films was a thread that ran through Henson’s life, and had a significant influence on his work, both the successes and the dramatic failures. (And there were a LOT of those too.) One particularly odd example of a success is with the song “Mah Na Mah Na.” Any guess where that came from? Would you believe an Italian sexploitation film entitled Sweden: Heaven and Hell? Henson’s longtime collaborator (and pantheon puppeteer himself) Frank Oz thought that the two of them might have seen the film together, as it came to a small theater across from the office, but only someone like Henson would figure out how to completely repurpose a song that successfully. Here is the original. Clearly not the smash it would become. 

 

 

 

I was struck throughout the book by just how thoroughly Henson believed in everything he attempted. Even the messy failures. But just think about what it would take to try to sell The Muppet Show to a television executive today. Or back then, for that matter. Here is literally what Henson put on his first official pitch for the show:

 

“The time is right for a variety show hosted by dogs, frogs, and monsters.”

 

No way, right? But The Muppet Show didn’t just make it, it freaking dominated for its five season run. Not bad for a bunch of puppets that had to find a British guy to finance the show. In hindsight, it was a mistake for the US networks to pass on getting in on the ground floor with the Muppets. 

 

The Muppet Movie has been a favorite since I was a kid, not least because of how fun it is to say “Studebaker.” Which, as everyone knows, is a bear’s natural habitat. One bit of trivia I learned from this book is that Henson insisted on using all 250 puppets in the closing scene of the movie - and every one moving and singing, not just propped up as extras as was the usual way of doing big scenes. To pull that off, he conscripted family, and hired a bunch of extras - including this young guy named Tim Burton. You may have heard of him. 

 

I didn’t discover Henson’s non-Muppets work until later in life, although a friend is a big fan of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. At the Skirball exhibit, they had various things related to the movies there, and it intrigued all of us enough to find a DVD with those two and Mirrormask. (That last one was produced by the Henson Company in 2005, based on a story by Neil Gaiman.) At the same time, my eldest was getting seriously into David Bowie, so it was definitely a fit. 

 

Speaking of Bowie, he wasn’t Henson’s first choice for the villain in Labyrinth. Yes, I know, that is hard to believe. He actually wanted Sting to play the part, but his son John argued for Bowie instead, saying that Sting was “happening now; whereas David Bowie is an artist, he’s got longevity.” 

 

This certainly raises the intriguing thought of the alternative. Bowie was a more proven actor at the time, and was indeed more popular with the youth. And absolutely no doubt, a true artist, whose music and other stuff has aged quite well. Sting, though, is no slouch. And The Police were influential artists in their own right. I could have seen Sting pull it off in the movie. But John was probably right that Bowie was the best choice. Labyrinth was a lot of fun, too. And it was truly amazing what Henson was able to do with puppets in that film. 

 

The Dark Crystal was the more popular film, although I prefer Labyrinth myself. I wanted to mention the soundtrack, though. Henson chose to use Trevor Jones, who in turn wrote a score using synthesizers along with a double flageolet. (You can see and hear that unusual instrument here.) 

 

As a final word about the book, it is difficult to read the last couple of chapters, which tell of Henson’s untimely death and the aftermath. It isn’t common to die of bacterial infections these days, fortunately, but it still happens, and some germs are just nasty. A friend’s son died a few years back of something similar to what killed Henson, and I wrote a bit about the similar death of Rachel Held Evans on my blog. Much has been said about the “what ifs” of Henson’s death. Was his mother’s Christian Science belief a factor? (Probably not.) Could he have been saved with antibiotics if he had sought help sooner? (Maybe.) But ultimately, the chilling part about this is that many of us could have been him. I have had some nasty cases of pharyngitis that could have been serious. I am glad my wife the nurse made sure I got treatment quickly, but if I had gotten a worse specific bacteria, I might not have known I was gravely ill until too late. It sucks, and the world is a sadder place without Henson. 

 

But his legacy was one of advocating for peace, for equality, for human decency. And good humor that was zany and edgy and wasn’t afraid to blow things up. Jones wrote a compelling story about the man that was Jim Henson, bringing him and his creations to life.