Jim Henson

The Storyteller

• 1936: Born in Greenville, Mississippi on September 24, 1936, Henson was the younger of two children of Paul Ransom Henson (1904–1994), an agronomist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and his wife, Betty Marcella (née Brown; 1904–1972)
• 1954: While attending Northwestern High School, he began working for WTOP-TV (now WUSA-TV), creating puppets for a Saturday morning children's show called The Junior Morning Show.
• 1960:After graduating from high school, Henson enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, as a studio arts major, thinking he might become a commercial artist.[11] A puppetry class offered in the applied arts department introduced him to the craft and textiles courses in the College of Home Economics, and he graduated in 1960 with a BS in home economics. As a freshman, he had been asked to create Sam and Friends, a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV.
• 1954-1961:The characters on Sam and Friends were forerunners of Muppets, and the show included a prototype of Henson's most famous character: Kermit the Frog.[12] Henson would remain at WRC for seven years from 1954 to 1961. Henson also hired writer Jerry Juhl in 1961
• 1963: Henson and his wife moved to New York City, where the newly formed Muppets, Inc., would reside for some time. Jane quit performing to raise their children. Henson hired puppet performer Frank Oz in 1963 to replace her. Henson later credited both (along with Jerry Juhl) with developing much of the humor and character of his Muppets. Henson and Oz developed a close friendship and a performing partnership that lasted 27 years; their teamwork is particularly evident in their portrayals of the characters of Bert and Ernie, Kermit and Miss Piggy, and Kermit and Fozzie Bear.
• 1963-1966: Henson began exploring film-making and produced a series of experimental films. His nine-minute experimental film, Time Piece, was nominated for an Academy Award for Live Action Short Film in 1966. The year 1969 saw the production of The Cube — another Henson-produced experimental movie.
  Also around this time, the first drafts of a live-action experimental movie script were written with Jerry Juhl, which would eventually become Henson's last unproduced full-length screenplay, Tale of Sand. The script remained in the Henson Company archives until the screenplay was adapted in the 2012 graphic novel, Jim Henson's Tale of Sand.
• 1969: Television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and her staff at the Children's Television Workshop, impressed by the quality and creativity of the Henson-led team, asked Henson and staff to work full-time on Sesame Street, a visionary children's program for public television. This union of talents would become legendary in television entertainment.
• 1970-1976:Concerned that the company was becoming typecast solely as a purveyor of children's entertainment, Henson, Frank Oz, and his team targeted an adult audience with a series of sketches on the first season of the groundbreaking comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL). Eleven Land of Gorch sketches, aired between October 1975 and January 1976 [inclusive], with four additional appearances in March, April, May, and September [of 1976]. Henson recalled that "I saw what [creator Lorne Michaels] was going for and I really liked it and wanted to be a part of it, but somehow what we were trying to do and what his writers could write for it never gelled." The SNL writers never got comfortable writing for the characters, and frequently disparaged Henson's creations; one, Michael O'Donoghue, quipped, "I won't write for felt."
• 1977: Henson produced the one-hour television special Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas for HBO, which was based on the Russell Hoban story of the same name.
• 1979: he was asked by the producers of the Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back to aid make-up artist Stuart Freeborn in the creation and articulation of enigmatic Jedi Master Yoda. Henson suggested to Star Wars creator George Lucas, himself a Muppets fan, that he use Frank Oz as the puppeteer and voice of Yoda. Oz voiced Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back and each of the four subsequent Star Wars films. The naturalistic, lifelike Yoda became one of the most popular characters of the Star Wars franchise. Lucas even lobbied unsuccessfully to have Oz nominated for a Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
• 1981:Three years after the start of The Muppet Show, the Muppets appeared in their first theatrical feature film The Muppet Movie. The movie was both a critical and financial success; it made US$65.2 million domestically and was at the time the 61st highest-grossing film ever made.
  A song from the film, The Rainbow Connection, sung by Henson as Kermit, hit number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for a Academy Award for Best Original Song. A Henson-directed sequel, The Great Muppet Caper, followed, and Henson decided to end the still-popular Muppet Show to concentrate on making films. AFrom time to time, the Muppet characters continued to appear in made-for-TV-movies and television specials.
• 1982: Henson founded the Jim Henson Foundation to promote and develop the art of puppetry in the United States. Around that time, he began creating darker and more realistic fantasy films that did not feature the Muppets and displayed "a growing, brooding interest in mortality."With 1982's The Dark Crystal, which he co-directed with Frank Oz and co-wrote, Henson said he was "trying to go toward a sense of realism—toward a reality of creatures that are actually alive [where] it's not so much a symbol of the thing, but you're trying to [present] the thing itself."To provide a visual style distinct from the Muppets, the puppets in The Dark Crystal were based on conceptual artwork by Brian Froud.
• 1983-1990Though he was still engaged in creating children's television, such as the successful eighties shows Fraggle Rock and the animated Muppet Babies, Henson continued to explore darker, mature themes with the folk tale and mythology-oriented show The Storyteller (1988), which won an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program. The next year, Henson returned to television with The Jim Henson Hour, which mixed lighthearted Muppet fare with riskier material. The show was critically well received and won Henson another Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Variety or Music Program, but was canceled after 13 episodes due to low ratings. Henson blamed its failure on NBC's constant rescheduling.
• 1989: Henson entered into negotiations to sell his company to The Walt Disney Company for almost $150 million, hoping that, with Disney handling business matters, he would "be able to spend a lot more of my time on the creative side of things." By 1990, he had completed production on a television special, The Muppets at Walt Disney World, and a Disney World (later Disney California Adventure Park as well) attraction, Jim Henson's Muppet*Vision 3D, and was developing film ideas and a television series titled Muppet High.[7] He also made a Disney show called Little Mermaid's Island.
• May 12, 1990: Henson traveled to Ahoskie, North Carolina, with his daughter Cheryl, to visit his father and stepmother. They both returned to New York on May 13, and Henson cancelled a Muppet recording session scheduled for May 14. That night, Henson's wife Jane, from whom he was separated, came to visit for the last time. Hours later, on May 15, Henson was having trouble breathing and began coughing up blood. He suggested to his wife that he might be dying, but did not want to take time from his schedule to visit a hospital.
  Two hours later, Henson finally agreed to go to New York Hospital in New York City. By the time he was admitted shortly after 4:00 am, he could no longer breathe on his own, and an X-ray revealed he had abscesses in his lungs. He was placed on a mechanical ventilator to help him breathe, but his condition deteriorated rapidly despite aggressive treatment with multiple antibiotics.
• May 16, 1990: Less than 24 hours later on May 16, 1990, Henson died at the age of 53.
  The official cause of death was first reported as Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterial infection that causes bacterial pneumonia. It was later classified as organ failure resulting from streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (caused by Streptococcus pyogenes). S. pyogenes is the bacterial species that causes strep throat, scarlet fever, and rheumatic fever. It can also cause other infections.
• May 21,1990: Henson's public memorial service was conducted in New York City at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Another was conducted on July 2 at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. In accordance with Henson's will, no one in attendance wore black, and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band finished the service by performing "When the Saints Go Marching In". Harry Belafonte sang "Turn the World Around," a song he had debuted on The Muppet Show, as each member of the congregation waved, with a puppet performer's rod, an individual, brightly colored foam butterfly.Later, Big Bird, performed by Caroll Spinney, walked out onto the stage and sang Kermit the Frog's signature song, "Bein' Green".

"Yeah, well, I've got a dream too, but it's about singing and dancing and making people happy. That's the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with."
~Kermit the Frog

If you have time, you should read more about this incredible human being on his Wikipedia entry. Additionally you can find all things Muppets here The Muppet Wiki