muppet week

I am officially designating this week as the Unofficial Muppet Week. It all started when Jim Henson, without a doubt the most famous puppeteer in history, created everyone's favorite little frog, Kermit. Through television and later through feature films, Henson developed the art of puppetry to new heights of technical expertise and storytelling capabilities, particularly in the ability to create sympathetic, emotional characters with whom audiences, both young and old alike, can relate. Jim and Kermit worked together from 1955 until Jim Henson's death in 1990. With the premiere in 1969 of Sesame Street, the Muppets reached superstardom. Henson 

and his creative team created a number of memorable characters for Sesame Street, including Oscar the Grouch, Bert and Ernie, Grover, Cookie Monster, and Big Bird, each with distinctive personalities. Henson’s success on Sesame Street paved the way for his next television production, The Muppet Show, a weekly syndicated variety show hosted by Kermit the Frog with an expanded cast of both new and familiar muppets and guest starring live actors and celebrities. The show was an immediate success upon its premiere in 1976 and was still popular when Henson decided to cease production in 1981 in order to concentrate on greater challenges. His company, by now, had expanded to include a wide variety of children’s programming and educational materials, including books, music, and television shows, such as Fraggle Rock and Muppet Babies. 

His primary creative interest, however, was in motion pictures. In 1979, he had scored a hit with young and old alike with the first big-screen Muppet movie, titled simply The Muppet Movie. The musical-comedy launched a series of Muppet movies, including The Great Muppet Caper (1981) and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), which has continued into the present. Jim Henson died of pneumonia in New York on May 16, 1990. Over the course of a career spanning more than 30 years, Henson received eighteen Emmy awards, seven Grammy awards, four Peabody awards, and numerous other honors. Thanks to others who share Jim Henson's vision, we are still able to experience the joy and imagination of The Muppets. Thanks for encouraging us to fall in love with a frog.