Jim Henson Tribute

He was born James Maury Henson in Greenville, Mississippi to Paul Ransom Henson, an agronomist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Elizabeth Marcella Henson. After spending his early childhood in Leland, Mississippi, he moved with his family to Hyattsville, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., in the late 1940s. Henson was raised a Christian Scientist and had a happy, quiet childhood; he later remembered the arrival of the family's first television as "the biggest event of his adolescence," being heavily influenced by radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and the early television puppets of Burr Tillstrom (on Kukla, Fran and Ollie) and Bil and Cora Baird.In 1954, while attending Northwestern High School, he began working for WTOP-TV creating puppets for a Saturday morning children's show. After graduating from high school, Henson enrolled at University of Maryland, College Park as a studio arts major. 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 with a B.S. in home economics in 1960. As a freshman, he was asked to create Sam and Friends, a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV. The characters on Sam and Friends were already recognizable Muppets, and the show included a primitive version of what would become Henson's most famous character, Kermit the Frog.In the show, he began experimenting with techniques that would change the way puppetry was used on television, including using the frame defined by the camera shot to allow the puppeteer to work from off-camera. Henson believed that television puppets needed to have "life and sensitivity," and so, at a time when most puppets were made out of carved wood, Henson began making characters from flexible, fabric-covered foam rubber, allowing them to express a wider array of emotions. In contrast to a marionette, whose arms are manipulated by strings, Henson used rods to move his muppets' arms, allowing for greater control of expression.When Henson began work on Sam and Friends, he asked fellow University of Maryland freshman, Jane Nebel, to assist him. The show was a financial success, but after graduating from college, Jim began to have doubts about going into a career as a puppeteer. He "wandered off to Europe for several months," where he was inspired by European puppeteers who looked on their work as a form of art. Henson returned to America and he and Jane began dating. They were married in 1959 and had five children: Lisa (b. 1960), Cheryl (b. 1962), Brian (b. 1963), John (b. 1965) and Heather (b. 1970.)