Word: muppeteer
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Henson is clearly a gifted businessman, and on the point of becoming a very wealthy one, but he is secretive as a nesting hen when asked to talk figures. The Muppet Show, considered separately, is listed on the books as making no profit, in part because Henson keeps putting money back into the program. Help is on the way. "The long-range profit for this show is down the road, when it's syndicated and sold to the stations," says Henson. "It's a couple of years away." Lord Grade adds with satisfaction that the take from this "strip syndication...
...Costumer Calista Hendrickson worked on a purple chiffon dress for Miss Piggy to use in one of the fall shows in which she dances cheek-to-cheek with Danny Kaye. She began to talk about what puppets mean to people, and that reminded her of the first time the Muppet crew met Edgar Bergen, who was the guest star on one of their early shows. "When he walked into our studio in London, they all gathered around him like children. And then the box was brought in, Charlie's box, and they all sank to the floor...
...Henson's Christmas present last year from Muppeteer Dave Goelz was a diver's weight belt, which Goelz called a "metabolic equalizer." The idea was that Henson, suitably ballasted, might slow down. That seems not to have happened; as Henson ricochets off New York on his way from Los Angeles to London, he spins out titles for the 50 or so Muppet books he has decreed: Miss Piggy's Foolproof 14-Day Diet, The Swedish Chef on How to Cook a Chicken...
...wisecracking green frog. And the curious truth about this gaunt, bearded, rather ascetic-looking craftsman, as he admits, is that "my nature is not particularly witty." He is funny only with Kermit on his arm, and the same thing seems to be true of Frank Oz and the other Muppet people...
Henson and Nebel began experimenting to see what effects they could get by synchronizing mouth movements with the words of the records they played. They used TV monitors from the start, which allowed them to edit their performances as they went along. The elements that would form the Muppet style were coming together. Only dialogue was missing, and this appeared in primitive form when they signed to do a series of commercials for Wilkins coffee. In the first of these, a happy character asked a grouchy type what he thought of the coffee. The grouch said he had never tried...