Jim Henson: The Biography (6 page)

Only a little more than a year into its remarkable twenty-seven-year run—and, in 1950, carried in only a handful of daily newspapers—
Pogo
had already charmed its way to a position of prominence at the top of the
Evening Star
’s left-hand comics page. Set in the Georgia portion of the Okefenokee Swamp—and probably looking to Jim like an idealized version of Leland
—Pogo
starred an amiable possum whose kind nature frequently, and sometimes unwillingly, wrapped him up in the lives and machinations of a colorful cast of supporting characters, ranging from a wisecracking alligator named Albert to the self-important
faux
intellectual Dr. Howland Owl.

Jim was an enormous fan of
Pogo
, buying the paperback reprints of the daily strips almost as fast as Simon & Schuster could print them, and would remain a fan the rest of his life. With its calm-at-the-eye-of-the-hurricane main character and colorful ensemble cast, it is no great leap to see Kelly’s fingerprints on what Jim would later create with his cast of Muppets. Indeed, Jim would always willingly and cheerily cite Kelly as an inspiration:

But beyond the dynamic of his cast of characters, Kelly performed a clever sleight-of-hand with
Pogo
—a trick Jim would also master and which would, in some ways, sum up his charm as an entertainer. A skilled satirist, Kelly often used
Pogo
to comment on social and political issues, tweaking religion and eggheads, presidents, and politicians. It was snarky and sometimes subversive, but
when coming out of the mouths of Kelly’s entertaining, disarmingly cute, funny animals, readers were inclined to let him get away with it. It was snuggly satire, a deliciously dangerous combination of art and writing—and younger readers could be entertained by the antics of the cute characters while their parents smiled over the more adult humor and themes.

What it taught Jim Henson is that, done right, you can have it both ways. You can entertain younger audiences while still playing to adult viewers—a practice that would make Jim’s contributions to
Sesame Street
so powerful and memorable. Perhaps more important, it also showed that you could get away with being a little dangerous, provocative, or just plain deep if you did it with a smile on your face and remembered that entertainment always came first. When done right, it’s possible to be silly and subversive at the same time.

F
or Jim, who had come to appreciate in Leland that he need look no further than his own backyard for excitement, Hyattsville, Maryland, was a wealth of entertainment. Blended almost seamlessly with the neighborhoods of northeastern Washington, Hyattsville was a fully realized suburb that could reap the benefits of its urban neighbor—good roads and mass transit, easy access to museums and Washington’s touristy attractions—and still manage to feel almost as rural as Mississippi, with plenty of woods and open spaces where Jim could bird-watch or just lie on his back and stare dreamily into the sky.

Jim particularly loved bike riding with Paul in Rock Creek Park in Washington, speeding down the tree-shaded pathways on their bikes or, at times, laughing and shouting as they pedaled a tandem. As they rode, Jim would snap pictures, usually capturing Paul only as a blur as he sped past, but delighting when he managed to keep Paul in focus by riding alongside him with the camera, keeping Paul sharp against the blurred background of trees and pedestrians. On rainy weekends, the brothers would ride in the park with their cousins Will and Stan—Attie’s boys—and Jim would position himself near one of the deep puddles in the path to try to capture on film the exact moment when Will’s front wheel entered the puddle, spraying
water in a deep V around the bike. Even at thirteen, Jim took great joy in seeing the world as the camera saw it.

In the evenings, the Hensons would sit on their back porch and talk well into the evening—Jim would always love good conversation—or would gather around an old pump organ in the parlor that Jim and Paul Jr. had rescued from a junk pile and repaired back to playability. As Betty Henson pumped and pounded the keyboard for all she was worth, the family sang songs from the A. A. Milne songbook and, later, Walt Kelly’s pun-filled
Songs of the Pogo
, which Jim adored. Indeed, twenty years later, Jim would use songs from both songbooks—including Kelly’s “Don’t Sugar Me” and Milne’s “Halfway Down the Stairs”—on
The Muppet Show
.

In the fall of 1950, both Jim and Paul Jr. were headed for new schools—
Paul to the University of Maryland, and Jim to Hyattsville High School, where he was starting his freshman year. While Paul was ostensibly studying teaching—likely at the behest of Betty Henson—he had different career ambitions. In Hyattsville, as they had in Leland, Paul and Jim had continued to tinker with engines and small machines. While Jim had developed a fascination with cars—an affinity that would continue for the rest of his life—Paul was absolutely transfixed by airplanes. “
He always wanted to fly,” remembered Tommy Baggette. If Paul had his way, then, he was going to be a pilot.

Jim, meanwhile, would attend classes at Hyattsville High until 1951, when the crumbling school would be closed for good. For the next three years, Jim attended the sparkling new Northwestern High School, the pride of the Hyattsville community—Maryland governor T. R. McKeldin himself had spoken at its dedication in November—just around the corner from the Henson home. At Northwestern, Jim joined the tennis team, where he quickly became one of the best players on the squad. Like his parents and grandparents, Jim took the game seriously, and teammate Joe Irwin—who would remain a lifelong friend—remembered the tennis court as one of the few places he ever saw Jim’s temper flare. During a game of doubles, recalled Irwin, “
I hit a bad lob, and this guy crushed it right at Jim and hit him.” Jim and Irwin locked eyes, “and I knew the game had changed,” Irwin said. On the next volley, “Jim crushed it
right back at this guy,” Irwin remembered. “That was about as much anger as I’ve ever seen Jim put out. There was this need to get even, and Jim did. And then they played nicer.” Playing nice would always be important to Jim.

Off the court, Jim participated in high school drama, mostly designing posters and painting sets, but every once in a while taking on small acting parts. He also joined the school’s new puppetry club, most likely because its sponsor, Miss Dawson, announced they would be performing a show
based on Jim’s beloved
Pogo
. But just as with the drama club, Jim was far more interested in designing and building sets than in doing any of the performing.

In September 1952, Jim Henson turned sixteen. As a budding car enthusiast, getting his driver’s license was a definite thrill, but Jim was even more excited by the prospect that he was now old enough to work. He was determined, however, that his first job would not involve busing tables or washing dishes; television was still where he wanted to be. As Jim recalled, “
When I was old enough to get a job—sixteen—I went out and approached all these little studios in Washington” eager to fill any opening that might be available. But the enthusiastic teenager was out of luck—either none of the local television studios was hiring, or none was willing to take a chance on a passionate but unproven young man. Jim would have to wait more than a year for his opportunity.

It would be hard to wait. By March 1954—Jim’s senior year—television would provide Americans with a window on a riveting real-life drama, as the United States Senate Subcommittee on Investigations began televising hearings to look into conflicting accusations between Senator Joseph McCarthy and the U.S. Army regarding the treatment of McCarthy’s former aide David Schine. In the Washington area, the tumultuous hearings were broadcast live on two channels, making them unavoidable, must-see television. Even under the impartial gaze of the black-and-white television cameras, McCarthy’s true colors were soon obvious. “
You’re not fooling anyone,” Senator Stuart Symington warned McCarthy—and Symington’s disgust was shared by millions of television viewers. It was the end for McCarthy, but for television, it was a beginning—a new and unexpected flexing of muscles. Simply by broadcasting the hearings
live, television had created An Event. It was Jim’s first real experience with the power of television not only as entertainment, but as informer and educator. Jim would never forget the power of the glowing image on the small screen as an agent for change.

L
ess than a mile from the Henson home was Baltimore Avenue, considered the main drag in Hyattsville, and crammed with plenty of diversions like the orange-roofed hamburger joint called Hot Shoppes, the bowling alley, and the thousand-seat Hyattsville Theatre, built in 1938 in a flashy Art Moderne style. The theater was only a little more than a mile from the Henson home, a quick sprint down Baltimore Avenue, and was always a good place to catch a movie, along with the latest
Looney Tunes
cartoon that always showed before the main feature.

The Hyattsville Theatre was also a good place to bring prospective girlfriends. While his quiet way of speaking often led many to think he was shy, Jim was actually popular among the girls and had
little trouble getting dates. Unusually tall for his age—he would eventually top out at six foot one, though he was so lanky everyone would always swear he was taller—Jim’s height gave him presence, and even standing still, with one foot slightly forward and one hand resting lightly on his hip, he could exude the casual charm of his Southern forebears.

Like many young people, Jim struggled with acne for most of his teenage years, his condition eventually becoming so severe that
he pleaded with his mother for a medical treatment. Betty Henson, standing firm in her Christian Science beliefs, refused to allow Jim to take medication to clear his skin. It was a point of considerable friction between mother and son; but while Paul Henson, Sr., might wilt under Jim’s persistent badgering, Betty Henson would not. Even though his
gee whiz
Jimmy Stewart looks made him more striking than he often gave himself credit for, Jim’s acne would leave him scarred and somewhat self-conscious about his looks. As he got older, he would hide his pocked cheeks behind a beard.

While Jim was, for the most part, a gentlemanly date—outgoing, slightly silly, with an engaging Southern gentility—he could be, as
one former girlfriend put it,
a little fast
. Joe Irwin, who frequently double-dated with Jim, could only shake his head in amusement at his friend’s boldness as they parked with their dates on Maryland’s rural back roads. “
I would have a nice little proper date sitting up [front] next to me and Jim would be disappearing into the back seat,” Irwin laughed, then arched an eyebrow coyly as he chose his words carefully: “Jim was more … adventurous.”

Meanwhile, Jim had made a name for himself at Northwestern High School with his artwork, turning in cartoons for student publications and silkscreen-printed posters promoting plays in the theater department. Even early on, Jim had already learned how to get the most out of simple shapes; his poster for the murder mystery
Nine Girls
shows eight lollipop-headed stick figures with surprised white eyes gaping nervously as the ninth casts a glance sideways with suspicious, slitted eyes—more of the stylized simplicity he would bring to his early designs for the Muppets. Just as important, Jim almost intuitively understood that it was the eyes that gave characters focus and life, even when those characters were drawn simply.
Especially
when those characters were drawn simply.

With high school graduation approaching, Jim was still considering ways to break into television. He was already planning to enter the University of Maryland in the fall, hoping to study stage and television design with an eye toward securing a job in television—or, barring that, in theater. But he was also still on the lookout for any opportunity to get his foot in the door of any television studio as quickly as possible.

In the late spring of 1954, toward the end of Jim’s senior year, he suddenly found his chance. In May, the local CBS affiliate, WTOP, announced that TV personality Roy Meachum was seeking “
youngsters twelve to fourteen years of age who can manipulate marionettes” for Meachum’s upcoming
Junior Morning Show
, which WTOP was planning to launch in June as a children’s version of CBS’s successful
Morning Show
. Despite his regular membership in Northwestern’s puppetry club, Jim considered himself more of an artist and designer than a puppeteer. But if puppetry was what it was going to take to get into television, Jim would sell himself to the network as just the right puppeteer for the job.

Unfortunately, Jim knew very little about puppetry. “
When I was a kid, I never saw a puppet show,” he said later. “I never played with puppets or had any interest in them. It was just a means to an end.” But with his opportunity to get into television on the line, this particular means to an end was going to require Jim to learn about puppets and puppetry—and fast. Fortunately, help was as close as Northwestern’s library, where Jim checked out two books that would change his life: Marjorie Batchelder’s 1947 puppetry handbook
The Puppet Theatre Handbook
, and
My Profession
, the 1950 autobiography of the versatile Russian puppeteer Sergei Vladimirovich Obraztsov. With Batchelder’s practical advice on puppet building, and Obraztsov’s inspired suggestions for performing—and with only a week or so before the audition—Jim immersed himself in a self-taught crash course in puppetry.

Jim enlisted the help of friend and fellow drama club member Russell Wall, and together they built what we can fairly call the ancestors to the Muppets in the living room of Jim’s home on Beechwood Road. While it is likely that Jim and Wall built at least two puppets, one for each to perform, we only know that one was a puppet called Pierre the Rat, based on a cartoon Jim had drawn for Hyattsville High School’s student publication
Wildcat Scratches
. Pierre was
a small, skinny hand puppet with a rat head carved of plastic wood, wearing sunglasses and a beret with a white-tipped plastic cigarette glued to a hinged mouth—primitive, but an impressive first effort. Equipped with their new puppets, Jim and Wall headed over to WTOP studios in D.C. and auditioned.