A new book dives into how Jim Henson honed his puppetry skills at NBC4’s studios with the show “Sam and Friends” as he started his career. Kermit the Frog was created for the show and from there The Muppets were born.
Author and historian Craig Shemin has been a Muppets fan for as long as he can remember. Now he's channeling that passion into a new book focused on a unique part of creator Jim Henson's history.
"I wanted to tell this story, because not a lot of people know about it," Shemin said.
It's the story of "Sam and Friends," Henson's very first television show, which was produced at NBC's WRC station in Northwest Washington, D.C.
"The Muppets were invented right there in that studio," Henson's daughter, Lisa Henson, said. "My father never would even have taken up puppetry, were it not for the fact that that station wanted to have a show with puppets."
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"Sam and Friends" first went on the air in 1955.
"Even though it was only five minutes a day, it was a big part of the WRC promotion, and it won Jim Henson his first Emmy Award," said Shemin, whose book "Sam and Friends - The Story of Jim Henson's First Television Show" was published earlier this month. "This is where Kermit was introduced, which had a lot of influence on what would come later."
Kermit would be the only character to have life after the "Sam and Friends" show. But many of the puppets and techniques experimented with on that show would have a lasting impact on Henson's later work.
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Jim [Henson] did an enormous amount with very simple materials. Kermit was made from his mother's coat and a ping-pong ball. You can't get simpler than that.
Craig Shemin, author, "Sam and Friends - The Story of Jim Henson's First Television Show"
"The way that the characters lip sync, where the hand movements match the words, these basic techniques which we would now take for granted — 'that's puppetry' — it wasn't puppetry in those days," Lisa Henson said.
"Jim did an enormous amount with very simple materials," Shemin said. "Kermit was made from his mother's coat and a ping-pong ball. You can't get simpler than that."
But Henson wasn't doing all of it alone. His partner was fellow University of Maryland student (and his future wife) Jane Neville.
"A big part of this book is also celebrating Jane," Shemin said.
The couple's daughter, Lisa Henson, said, "You know, what emerges is a very sweet love story between Jim Henson and Jane Henson — is not only they started the Muppets together, but they see this evolution as they work together for years, to falling in love and getting married and starting a family."
"Jane sort of went out of her way to divert all of the attention to Jim," Shemin said. "The more research I did, the more I found out how involved, how deeply involved, she was in the creative process."
Many episodes of "Sam and Friends" have been lost to time. So, to write his book, Craig used existing footage, images and more than 400 audio tapes.
"Craig is a great archaeologist — like, he went and found photographs that I had never seen before," Lisa Henson said.
But this isn't just a story for history buffs. Shemin hopes that the book will inspire future generations as well.
"When you see the work of great artists, you see the later stuff; you see what made them incredibly famous. And I thought that if people saw where Jim came from," he said, "and the work that led to what came later, it could be inspiring to young artists today."
