On-Set at The Muppet Show #1: Uppity Muppets
Over at ToughPigs.com they have something rather special - an exclusive location report from the latest Muppet movie (okay, TV movie). That such a thing should exist at all in 2008 is exciting enough, but past the initial thrill this piece is also a rollocking good read - informative, intelligent, witty and providing a view of the Muppet world few are privileged to experience firsthand. O, would it not be a better world for the existence of such pieces providing similar on-set reports on the recording of original episodes of The Muppet Show.
You guessed it - we got ‘em. Three to be precise, each reporting on a single episode from the first three series - the guests stars are Twiggy, John Cleese and Liberace, respectively. Soon we’ll post the other two but for now, this is from page 11 of Time Out, 19th to 25th November 1976:
Uppity Muppets
To the horror of every stand-up comic in the country, America’s ‘Sesame Street’ Muppets are the stars of a new ‘Laugh In’ format series. Andrew Nicholds investigates the zany antics of Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear and friends in ATV’s Elstree studios.
‘Jim Henson’s Muppet creations are fresh expressions of one of the world’s oldest art forms - puppetry - which predates even the Greek tragedies!’ said the handout. Meanwhile on the set at Elstree, Twiggy was having difficulty coping with two three-foot Muppets and a cow. A A Milne’s poem ‘The King’s Breakfast’ was being rehearsed - ‘The King asked the Queen and the Queen asked the Dairymaid (Twiggy): “Could we have some butter for the royal slice of bread?” The Queen asked the Dairymaid, the Dairymaid said “Hold on, the Queen’s got her head caught…”’
The trouble was that while Jim Henson and master puppeteer Frank Oz were actually inside the King and Queen - Henson kneeling on pads, Oz waist-high to the raised set - they couldn’t see anything and therefore didn’t know which camera to react to. Henson was also concerned in case moving his head meant losing his line, since the microphone was round his neck inside the Muppet.
Finally it was all worked out:
‘“Nobody.” he whimpered, “Could call me a fussy man; I only want a little bit of butter for my bread!” The Queen said “There there” and went to the Dairymaid. The Dairymaid said “I’m coming undone underneath… I’ve lost me bustle, I can feel it dropping”.’
After two hours Henson was satisfied, the scene was recorded, the Queen goosed the Dairymaid and everyone broke for lunch. In the restaurant the puppeteers, producers and their star sat in a solicitous know. Tuesdays tend to be fraught, since Tuesday is Guest Day, and in almost all of the 24 episodes of ‘The Muppet Show’ (Twiggy and Bruce Forsyth being the British exceptions) the stars have had to be specially flown in and out. As with ‘Space 1999’, the show is an ITC production, largely intended for America but using ATV’s facilities. Why record it in England? ‘Because Lew bank-rolled us,’ said Muppet exec David Lazer, rendering further comment superfluous.
Jim Henson has been making Muppets - literally a cross between puppets and marionettes, being operated by both hand and strings - since 1954. After years of TV commercials, specials and guest appearances, the Muppets became regulars on ‘Sesame Street’ for five years, while continuing to upstage stars of increasing magnitude. In the present series the stars have become very much second fiddle, allowed to do their speciality but without the opportunity of being disgustingly ‘sporting’ in the way of ‘The Morecambe and Wise Show’ or ‘Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In’, using the latter’s writer/script supervisor, Marc London, and relying on familiar characters, running themes and set-piece gag-bangs. In common with ‘Phyllis’ and ‘Rhoda’ (themselves off-shoots of ‘the Mary Tyler Moore Show’) and the ‘Love and the…’ series, Muppet humour is a mixture of the zany and the mildly abrasive: shouts arch-critic Waldorf to bum comedian Fozzie Bear, ‘You remind me of Charlton Heston’ … ‘But he doesn’t tell jokes’ … ‘So?’
Though the kiss-of-death word ‘cult’ has often been applied to the show there’s no reason to suppose it won’t go on providing its own brand of confectionery, unspoilt, for a long time. Any archness or spirit of this-isn’t-for-the-kids-really is in the mind of the beholder: ‘He’s so… what’s the word… sympatico’ someone said, trying to define the appeal of ten-foot Muppet monster Sweetums. The puppeteers themselves were obviously as delighted to ad-lib in character as Twiggy was to sit among them; voices and puppet-movements continued long enough after recording for it to be disconcerting to visit the workshop and see three spare Kermit the Frogs dangling forlornly.
The excuse for Twiggy’s song was a Muppet press conference, a barrage of flashlights and inane questions. Behind the Muppets stood the British press photographers, shooting the Muppets shooting Twiggy.
As it was a rehearsal, Twiggy’s hair was still in curlers. A sudden voice: ‘Hey man - don’t take pictures in her curlers’. Muppet exec David Lazer hurried over to the press lady - ‘they can’t do that, it’s like showing her nude’. The press lady had a quiet word with the photographers. They desisted. Twiggy apologised to them. The man from the Mirror recalled how once Twiggy had refused to sit on a donkey with Harry H Corbett for him, in Leicester Square.
The rehearsal began again. The man from the Mirror took a surreptitious photo, the sound drowned by Muppet cameras. ‘You know, I just love press conferences,’ Twiggy told the Muppet press.
The Muppet Show, Sunday, 5.35pm. LWT.
