#270 It’s Time to Light The Lights with Muppet Historian Craig Shemin

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:28

All right, Stephanie, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You got this show going each and every week, and this week was no exception. Welcome, everybody to Episode 270 of classic conversations. As always, I am your host, Jeff Dwoskin. Great to have you back for what's sure to be the most Muppet rific show of all time. That's right. I said Muppet rific because my guest today is none other than Craig Sherman, president of the Jim Henson legacy, Muppet historian and author of salmon friends, the story of Jim Henson's first television show, get ready to light the lights because it's time to meet Sam and friends on the classic conversations show tonight. All right, but that's coming up in just a few seconds. In the meantime, I do want to remind everyone Park overall joined us last week. Amazing conversation with Park you'll have drawn an empty nest amazing activist now talks all about her career. Do not miss that. But right now it's time to play the music is time to dress up right. It's time to share my conversation with Craig Sherman on the passive conversation show tonight at something like that I worked better in my head anyway, enjoy. All right, everyone. I'm excited to introduce my next guest president of the Jim Henson legacy Muppet historian, author of Sam and friends the story of Jim Henson's first television show, there's tons of other credits as well, but I just want to get right to it. Welcome to the show, Craig Sherman.

Craig Shemin 2:09

Thank you, Jeff. It's great to be here.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:11

So great to have you. I'm a muppet fan. I love the Muppets. I don't know who does it. Right. I mean, it's a question anyone who wouldn't so when I saw your book, Sam and friends, the story of Jim Henson's first show, I had no idea was my first exposure to that it was really cool diving in and getting some backstory that frankly, I had no idea about, pointed about to write.

Craig Shemin 2:35

No, absolutely. I think a lot of people, the first thing they know about Jim Henson was from Sesame Street, because that was the first big thing that he was involved in on a national level. And a lot of people just don't know he had already been doing it for like 15 years before that was one of these overnight sensations that took 15 years to to happen.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:53

It was interesting. I there was like a 30 minute clip of the very limited what's remained of the samurai friends when I was watching it, the one thing that kind of just struck me was how good it was like how formed it was, it wasn't like a shell of what you could see Jim Henson becoming it was really great. Yeah,

Craig Shemin 3:12

it really does surprise people. Because a lot of these things were things that you could have seen on The Muppet Show if you know if the image quality was a bit better in the characters. So in fact, he did a few of these things that he had done on salmon friends, they repeated them on The Muppet Show. So I think yeah, it was something like really fun and raw about those early shows. But Jane Henson used to say it was some of the best things that you've ever done, even though, Jim, you know, there was a time when he really didn't appreciate this his own work on salmon friends, he was like, Oh, it wasn't a good show. But then, you know, I think he came around and realized that it really was a good show. But the technology really sort of got in the way that Jim was trying to push this technology as much as it could. And there are limitations and cameras and lenses. And you know, the fact that couldn't really save the show, except by filming it with a 60 millimeter camera, but the show itself, the core of it. In fact, right now, I'm working on a follow up book, which is compiling Jim Henson scripts for Sam and friends. So I pulled out about 60 of the scripts to show that it's really fun and clever material. And I think people get a kick out of seeing more material, because there's not a lot out there. Like you said,

Jeff Dwoskin 4:25

it was fascinating to that they were just five minute segments of a morning show in Washington DC. We had something called Hot Fudge here that I grew up loving, but Okay, well let's put a pin in Sam and friends in a second I want to talk about your origin story and how you made it to the Jim Henson Company. You have a speech and Radio TV film degree at or at Northwestern University.

Craig Shemin 4:48

That's right. They call it communications now, and I was there was a degree in speech because it was like the major started back in the days of the 1920s or whatever when you would get a degree in speech. but then they changed it to communications.

Jeff Dwoskin 5:02

So at that point before interning for the Henson Company, what was your plan? Like? What had you hope to do?

Craig Shemin 5:09

You know, I was really interested in writing. And I felt that my life would take me to some sort of writing career. And once I convinced my parents that that was like a valid thing, as many parents do, it's like, we want you to get something to fall back on. And for a while, I took an accounting class in college, and I just was awful and couldn't get anything to match up. So I said, Okay, I'm dropping this before I will get a failing mark. So I got out of accounting, and I decide, oh, no, I'm not gonna get anything to fall back on because you know, you more you think of it, there are a lot of things a writer can do. You know, you can write for publications, you can I ended up doing a lot of them once I actually got the Muppets because I wrote everything I wrote for television, I wrote episodes of shows, but I also wrote trading cards, computer games, I wrote the tags that are going on merchandise from licensed products, every type of thing, or industrial films. So I kind of figured that that would be my future, whether I, you know, would like be lucky enough to work in television or film or to just be involved in some way writing. So it just was it just happened, ended up getting an internship and follow that path at the Henson Company.

Jeff Dwoskin 6:21

I have the same accounting background as you I failed out and the pressure was because my grandpa was an accountant. And I was like, and I sat next to the girl, you know, the one in class that goes, Oh, I failed and then gets a 95%. And that's where I sat next year, which made it even worse. I feel Yeah. Alright. So you want to be a writer, but you started out as an intern with Jim Hanson.

Craig Shemin 6:43

In 1987. He was still around. I was a big fan from when I was a younger kid. The Muppet Show came out when I was about 10 years old. So it was like right there. And I grew up with Sesame Street. I was in that first Sesame Street, you know, sort of graduating class because I was born in 66. And Sesame Street came on in 69. So it was you know, right there. I was watching that. Watch The Muppet Show loved it. And you know, this was before you had the internet. So I'd go to the library to look up articles about Jim Henson. And I was a big fan. He was sort of like I got older and then sort of that left my mind, but I was a really big fan for a long time when I was 1011 12. In college, I was trying to figure out what to do for my summer between junior and senior year and a lot of us were trying to get internships, and I happened to see a documentary in my dorm. It was on the public TV station in Chicago, I went to Northwestern. And it was a show called ensigns place. And it was a one hour documentary about Jim Henson. And they had footage from Blackburn was coming out just about the time they made this documentary. That show was about one or two years old when I saw it, I started thinking, hey, that would be a really cool place to internship there in New York. I'm from New Jersey, so maybe I could live at home and take the bus in. So the next day, I called information tell you how long ago this was. And I got the number for Ensign associates, which is what it was called then in New York, and I called them and I asked if they had internships and they connected me to someone who made an appointment to interview me. We were maybe two or three weeks away from a spring break. So I knew I'd be going home. And then I went and did an interview during that break. And they offered me an internship. But it was in the public relations department, which didn't sound that fun, but I figured hey, I'll get in there. And it was during that internship that I met Jim, for the first time at the company softball game

Jeff Dwoskin 8:33

position to Jim Henson play on the team, whatever he wants to do.

Craig Shemin 8:38

He was pretty much an outfielder, you know, but he came up to me he knew everybody in the company was pretty small company. But he didn't recognize me. He came up and started a conversation. You know, I told him I was an intern said Oh, I heard we had an intern. He welcomed me. And then he didn't have a glove. And I had my old little league baseball glove with me. So I loaned that to him. And we were on the opposing team. So we keep on swapping it back forth. And the end of the day, I had him autograph my glove. And you still have it. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Frank Oz sign it too. So I think I probably have the only game used Jim Henson autographed baseball glove.

Jeff Dwoskin 9:12

And where does that sit in your house?

Craig Shemin 9:14

We have a little my wife and I have a little display case in our living room with various collectibles and things that we've accumulated over the years. So that sits right in a place of honor.

Jeff Dwoskin 9:26

That's really cool. I love that. That's awesome. Then you went on to archives.

Craig Shemin 9:31

The following year, they offered me a full time position in the public relations department, which at that time had supervision over the archives. We didn't have like an actual full time archivist. The whole idea we were just trying to save stuff, so wouldn't get thrown away because Jim always wanted to save things. He didn't necessarily like looking at them and looking back, but figured it was important to save things. So part of my job in public relations was to look after the archives but because my pride I'm here a job in public relations was to answer the telephone and departmental stuff going and making sure that my supervisor was kept apprised or anything I didn't have a lot of time to devote to the archives.

Jeff Dwoskin 10:11

What was the craziest thing you ever found in the archives that maybe even didn't go anywhere?

Craig Shemin 10:15

You would see various, like, it was not unusual to open a box and you see like a head from the Dark Crystal, or one of the things we found, it's like, oh, here are these long arms and hands from labyrinth, there was a scene with the shaft of hands. And it's like, Oh, of course, their hands in here. You would just, there was nothing unusual when you think about the fact that this was the Henson Company, so nothing could surprise you. Because you knew how many weird and ridiculous things they had Mac made over the years?

Jeff Dwoskin 10:46

Is the room I'm picturing. Does it look like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark is this

Craig Shemin 10:51

the storage we had off site storage. And this was I tell the story in my book, but that's when I found a lot of the really important historical images and scripts and things Jim had put them away. It was in a box Mark old production files. And they were put into deep storage in this huge warehouse up near the George Washington Bridge, which does look just like that seen in Raiders Lost Ark and was always a big sign. It's it's Sophia brothers fireproof warehouse, and you go in there and everything's cardboard and wood. And it's like, how can this be fireproof? It's like, okay, yeah, the building is fireproof. But everything in it is kindling, basically. Right? Right.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:32

They make no claims on the concept. The building won't burn down everything in their burn. No, Chris, but the building is going to be fine.

Craig Shemin 11:40

Yeah, so we were changing storage locations. And I was sent there from my department, it's like, oh, make sure that everything in the PR storage is supposed to be there. So it's like all these press kit folders and stuff. And then on my way there, someone from the production department said, Hey, here's a list of old production files we have listed as old production files, we don't need them anymore. Maybe you want them for archives. So I pulled out those files. And those had, like all of the old salmon friends scripts, and Jim storyboards for Sesame Street counting films, and the original drawings of Roth and these other characters. And Jim had just carefully saved them and put them aside, but made no real effort to track where everything was. We just, we just, it was just under old production files. So I brought them back and that a lot of that stuff I was able to use later, decades later in the book, and also in a lot of these touring and permanent exhibits. We have a great archivist at Penson. Now Karen Falk, and she sort of after I was promoted to being a staff writer, she had been hired and she really went through everything I sort of just blindly saved and gathered and she did a great job cataloging it and preserving it and conserving it.

Jeff Dwoskin 12:55

Amazing. I can't even imagine craziness of everything that you must have stumbled upon when you went to work, or Hanson is in turn, were you aware of Santa friends? Are you kind of discovered it?

Craig Shemin 13:06

I was a little bit aware. Because, you know, I looked up things over the years and tried to read whatever I could. I didn't really understand what it was until I started seeing these old tennis scopes. And during my internship, I started watching some of these tapes. We had a big conference room at the old Henson townhouse on 69th Street in that conference room was a wall of old three quarter inch videotapes. So you could go in during lunchtime if no one was using the conference room and just grab the tape off and put it in the machine and watch on the television in the conference room. So that's where I started exploring and seeing like the salmon friends episodes and one of these old commercials and really appreciating them. It's funny

Jeff Dwoskin 13:48

as I was kind of going through, I'm just a few years younger than you don't rub it in. Well, I've just because like there's some of the nostalgia terms that now belong in the Smithsonian themselves, like you ran a prodigy group project. And like the CD ROMs that you did, you know,

Craig Shemin 14:06

I remember, this will sound quaint. I remember when the World Wide Web was first becoming active. And there were a bunch of Muppet fans that had started their little web pages for various Muppet topics. And since I was working on some of these early computer projects, for Hanson, I had put together a little show Intel for the people in the merchandising departments, consumer products and publishing at Henson. i We set up a computer when I got it, everybody gather around, and I showed them some of these Muppet fan pages. And they just were puzzled by it. A heads of these departments were like, who did this? Or like, just map advance? Why Why would they do this? Well, because their fans are trying to share their fandom and nobody's paying them to do this. And it's like, no, they're doing it because they love this. They couldn't get behind the idea. that someone would go to all this trouble and not be paid for it, because that's what they do. And you know, they were getting paid to try and get my product out there. And I'm like, Well, you can use this as a tool to reach people. And it took a long time until they really, you know, it took a long time until we had a Henson website and a muppet website. But it was, you know, it was early days back, there was a frontier of internet

Jeff Dwoskin 15:24

way back when the Muppets though, have always adapted? Well, I think they all have Twitter accounts, or Yeah, x or whatever. And the personalities are out there. And the YouTube videos that went all went viral.

Craig Shemin 15:37

One of my favorite things to do early on there. We had a henson.com and a muppets.com. website. This was in the days when the Henson Company still owned all the different character groups. Yeah, I wrote an ask Dr. Honeydew column for the muppets.com site. And it was so great, because you know, you could come up with all sorts of different we had a question about sort of an homage to the old song. And it's like, can a little ant really move a rubber tree plant? And I had Dr. Honeydew. Say, Well, you know, if you're a Muppet Labs, we have the Department of ant enlargement and the Department of rubber tree miniaturisation when we hope to be able to have them meet halfway, you know, that sort of thing. And it was sort of the cool thing about Dr. Honey Dewey, because he would always try and find the most complicated solution to any problem most and most ridiculous solution

Jeff Dwoskin 16:27

and an O is upstaged by beaker, of course who

Craig Shemin 16:30

end up suffering horribly.

Jeff Dwoskin 16:33

I only foray into three Muppet fandom was, I was a HuffPost, writer, contributor, and in 2015, I wrote and Miss Piggy and Kermit broke up, I wrote an article, one of the things I'm most proud of actually, to this day, have to explain the Miss Piggy current, my breakup to your parents. It was a guide for kids to get their parents through this rough time. I love it. I love it. Sorry to interrupt, have to take a quick break. Thank you for your support of the sponsors. When you support the sponsors. You're supporting us here at Classic conversations. And that's how we keep the lights on. And now more Muppets with Craig Sherman.

Craig Shemin 17:14

And that was the great thing is you know, when you're working for the characters, you know, Miss Piggy was always most fun to write for. And Kermit was always, you know, yeah, he's Kermit. So it's a challenge. But with Miss Piggy, you could go really out there.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:29

You wrote a cookbook with Miss Peggy? Yes. In the Kitchen with Miss Peggy.

Craig Shemin 17:34

i Yes. i co wrote it with Miss Piggy and another writer Alison inches.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:38

So I assume that's kind of like just kosher recipes.

Craig Shemin 17:44

Well, a couple of people, it was a celebrity cookbook. So Miss Piggy, we reached out to all bunch of different celebrities, and they had them contribute recipes. And one or two were insensitive and include pork recipes, which was pig he did point out

Jeff Dwoskin 17:58

that is criminal. So when you moved into writing, what's your favorite thing you ever wrote for The Muppets?

Craig Shemin 18:06

That's a really good question. I think that I think my favorite thing are so many. But I think one of the most special early things that I got to write, we did a muppet CD ROM game called Muppets inside that was special to me, because I got to really write or it and supervise the writing of most of the thing. There's one game where it was a lot of questions and answers. And we get brought in someone who sort of specialized in that sort of quiz show writing to write a lot of the questions, but I wrote the entire script with the exception of that. And that was a lot of fun to do, because the Muppet stuff was fun. But it was also, you know, it was new ground in terms of doing this interactive computer CD ROM game, and we were writing it for a brand new operating system, Windows 95. People, you know, we were all sitting around. It's like, it's like, Are you sure we should be doing this? It's only going to work on Windows 95. And at that time, Windows 95 had not yet shipped. So we were like, are people going to have Windows 95. And they're trying to like every computer is going to have it from now on? Yes, it will be fine. And it got great reviews and the whole thing. It starts out with this new version of The Muppet Show theme, and then it freezes and crash and we scripted this computer crash and then the Muppets sort of opened the screen. And we were using all sorts of really cool technology. The game would take a snapshot of your computer screen. So when the Muppets opened it up your whatever was on your desktop would be split open, so it looked like the Muppets were actually in there.

Jeff Dwoskin 19:39

That's amazing.

Craig Shemin 19:42

And we did these great parody games like The chef's kitchen, the Swedish chef's kitchen of doom, and it was a doom version. But with the Swedish Chef during the first person shooting of eggs and things he'd throw eggs. It's awesome. Yeah, we did sort of a Missile Command game with Gonzo I think, you know was all these like little mini game parodies that you'd have to play all these games to pick up members of the Muppets who had been scattered all through the computer. And once you were able to pick up everybody, it would end the game and the Muppet Show theme would play and we do a whole little closing thing. And it was so much fun to do. And one of the reasons it was fun is that no one at Penson really understood what we were doing. So I didn't get a lot of notes. Because they didn't they didn't know is I my boss at the time, was a great guy, Mike Michael Frith, who's the head designer, and I sent him the script for notes. And he didn't quite understand the whole idea of this branching computer game. And he said, Oh, you know, I see an ending on page seven, and then it goes on for another 130 pages. I'm not quite sure I understand. And I'm like, Yeah, well, don't worry. It's like, Well, I'm sure it's okay, then, you know, so no, no, it's, you're corrected a few little things, but I had a lot of freedom to work on it. And it's something that's very special to me. And the saddest thing is that, you know, you can't really play it anymore. There are some people that have emulators, there are gameplay, sort of walkthroughs on YouTube that people have recorded. So if you want to watch some of the stuff, you can watch some of the elements, but it's sort of sad that it's sort of a little thing last time,

Jeff Dwoskin 21:19

I know I'd say it's interesting to think like what technology we rely on right now that isn't going to be around like I don't have CD player on my computer. I don't even have a CD or I can't even play DVDs anymore. And it's like, I used to have zip drives quest drives. It has a wealth of stuff on it that oh, yeah, just you can't even get to man. So you also wrote guest appearances, right? Because that was a big thing on how the Muppets as one of the things I kind of learned from your book was guesting and appearing on other shows is what helps make the Muppets so huge.

Craig Shemin 21:52

It really did in the 60s. And by the time I was there working on it in the 90s. It was sort of the way you kept the characters alive between television shows. And it was great way to use, you'd use these guest appearances to promote things because officially the Muppets don't promote products, or at least at that point in time, we didn't promote products, but we could appear on a talk show to do a promotional event. If we didn't mention the specific product. And the host would hold up to it's like, oh, yeah, this DVD is available. But yeah, I did a lot of those. We did a lot of the morning shows Today Show and Good Morning, America. And CBS This Morning. You know, Rosie O'Donnell, we did a Kermit and Miss Piggy opening for Monday Night Football. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things I worked on fairly early on, you do a lot of them with Jim Lewis, who was another Henson, staff writer, and we would come up with something and then we'd work with the performers doing Miss Piggy appearances on The Today Show, we'd always work with Frank Oz. And he would sort of the way he would work is to try and get to the essence of the comedy beats, you know, we would write something scripted. And then he would sort of say, Okay, I want to get to this, and I want to hit this. And he'd sort of cross out a lot of the words and he would take the script, and he would turn it into a little index card that he would take to his his knee. So he would get you know, if you if there was a specific line and a joke that he wanted to hit, he would work that thing, but everything leading up to it would be he would figure out some improvised dialogue to get there. He would do it, he would kill it. And then he come back to us. And it's like, oh, I shouldn't use more neutral stuff. But he you know, it was Frank God, so he knew what he was doing.

Jeff Dwoskin 23:31

That's impressive, because that's a whole secondary skill. I mean, besides mop is free to be able to edit and know how to deliver punch lines and all that kind of stuff.

Craig Shemin 23:40

Early when I was I think I was still an intern, I got to go over and watch Jim and Frank do Ernie and Bert Sesame Street, Jim was still around. And it was great, because that's what they would do in Sesame Street. They'd sort of read through the script. And they'd figure out, oh, we can cut this line. And we can get to this faster. And the sort of, you know, I'm sure the writers on Sesame Street worked very carefully figured, hey, that this is it. This is what it's going to be like, and then Jim and Frank would get there. And then they'd learn Oh, yeah. Well, we didn't need this. And we didn't need this. And Frank and Jim would just sort of find that essence and pare away the unnecessary material. And they had a great instinct for doing that. Because they had they come out from different mindsets Franco. He says that Jim goes with the flow and Frank fights the flow. It's like he's always sort of pushing back on things. So that's why Ernie is just all nice and playful. And Bert,

Jeff Dwoskin 24:32

Bert Bert, Bert spur. Tell me a little bit about your responsibilities as president of the Jim Henson legacy nonprofit.

Craig Shemin 24:40

Yeah, they're not a lot of responsibilities, per se. What we try and do is I work with this group of people, some of them worked with Jim for many years have some of them on our board. Are Jim's children. Cheryl Henson and Heather Henson are on the board. And Karen fall, the Henson archivist and Bonnie Erickson who was the designer who did Miss Piggy And it's all about trying to share Jim Henson's art with the world. And Jane Henson, Jim's wife had founded this organization and was really, you know, people were like, well, is this necessary, she founded it shortly after Jim died, she was getting a lot of requests from people to name stuff after jam or honor him present awards. So she figured an organization would be a good thing to receive this stuff, then it sort of grew because the Jim Henson legacy became custodians of this big puppetry collection of a collection of puppets from the Henson work that were not in performable condition. You know, there was a short time when the Henson Company was sold to a German conglomerate. And one of the terms of that deal is that they got all of the puppets that were performable and anything that was not in performable condition, all these vintage puppets remained property of the Henson family. So the Henson family asked the Jim Henson legacy to sort of take care of it. So over the years, we catalog took care of it allowed elements to be displayed. We put together some some exhibits ourselves, and then we found homes for a good deal of the collection, either in the Smithsonian, which has the Salman friends characters, or the Center for puppetry arts in Atlanta, which has big collection now of Henson stuff in a permanent exhibit and the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, which also has a traveling exhibit. So they have the major of the Henson collections of puppetry and of puppets and props and things, artifacts over the years, that sort of our role of Jim Henson legacy has sort of evolved over the years. Originally, it was just to deal with the public in terms of honors, and then it became a preservation and dispensation of the Henson families public collection. And then now what we do is we just worked with these various partners to help them with their programming. So I work with the Museum of the Moving Image to program their screening series. We all work with Center for puppetry, arts, and other partners will do events with the Smithsonian. So it's all about celebrating Jim Henson in a way. The fact is that the Henson characters are owned by primarily three different companies. Now, Disney owns the classic Muppet characters and Sesame Workshop owns the Sesame Street characters and everything else. Bear in the Big Blue House is also owned by Disney, and then everything else is owned by the Henson family in the Henson Company. So that covers Fraggle Rock and Dark Crystal and Emmett, Otter, and labyrinth. So each of these companies has their responsibility to their own parts of Jim Henson's collection. But we try and make sure that all of these things are still connected to Jim by name, because Sesame Street has a limited use of Jim's name, I think they can call the characters Jim Henson, Sesame Street Muppets. Disney doesn't have the usage of Jim's name in most circumstances, and the Henson Company can use Jim's name. So we feel you know, when we do stuff with the Jim Henson legacy, it's our way of connecting Jim to all of these things that he did. Wow,

Jeff Dwoskin 28:11

that is quite a task for you, sir. That's awesome. Now that's great. So far, it seems extremely successful. I mean, the Muppets always seem alive. The whole Jim Manson legacy.

Craig Shemin 28:23

Yeah, you mentioned this a little before. And one of the coolest things about what we do is to sort of give people this new information that hey, yeah, Jim did this to you. And especially the exhibit we have at Museum of the Moving Image. People didn't know that Jim made experimental films in the 60s. And he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Film, that he did these really weird television things and a lot of experimental commercials, because people think of him as doing the Muppet. So it's really exciting for us to share. You know, we love the Muppets, and we love all of these other things that people know about. But it's really exciting to share things with people that they don't know to hey, you know, you love Korean speaking but hey, have you seen this?

Jeff Dwoskin 29:09

That's great. And for the hardcore fans, even even just people who are starting to fall in love with it, it's great stuff. It's great to see like these origin so like I can say my friends. One of the things I read in the book, which I thought was interesting was the Kermit is in salmon friends. He's not a frog yet, but the only character to not have survived but it's still around today active is Kermit and his current Kermit the Frog. But it's Sam and friends when they did a vote of the most popular characters. He was fourth. Yeah, yeah. And then the other interesting thing was moving forward just a little bit, right. They I think this is after Salman friends, maybe the pre Purina dog Chow commercial, and they invent Rolf was one of my favorite characters who I didn't know was the most famous character ever at one point.

Craig Shemin 29:59

Yeah, yeah, he was To the Muppets big star. In fact, in September, I don't know when this drops, but on September 24, at the Museum of the Moving Image, it's Jim Henson's birthday. And we were going to be doing a compilation of profs appearances on the Jimmy Dean show. Yeah, he was a big star, got lots of fan mail, and then was great is that after that he sort of went back to if you saw some of the interviews with Rolf later on, it's like, yeah, I used to be a big star. Now I live in a box. You know, he was sort of resigned to the fact that he used to be big.

Jeff Dwoskin 30:29

Why didn't he stay big? I love Ralph. He was always one of my favorites. So they'll

Craig Shemin 30:35

just sort of segue to a different handle what used to be the one guy out front, because on the Jimmy Dean show you had Jimmy Dean, this country singer who went on to big career in sausage making those just Jimmy Dean. And you know, Roth would appear on every episode. So there weren't other Muppets. So it was just Jimmy Dean and Roth. So he became big. And then later on, it was like, rough still around. But now he's just one of those groups. Now. He's the dog who plays piano. So I think he just became one of the ensemble

Jeff Dwoskin 31:04

but Kermit, it's always moved along. Right. So Kermit was on Sesame Street. He was a reporter on Sesame Street, right? And then gets his own show. Yep, I'm on that show where he's, again, front and center and then probably becomes the Kermit that we all know. Absolutely. Yeah. I probably didn't heard that. It was Jim Henson voicing.

Craig Shemin 31:22

Yeah. And I think that it's a lesson to us all show business. I mean, it can be fickle. One day, you're getting tons of fan mail with Jimmy D in the next week, you're living in a box.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:34

It's so funny. I so the book salmon friends, the story of Jim Hansen's first television show bear manner media, I'll put links in the show notes. So everyone will be able to go buy this. So salmon friends ran from 5519 55 to 1961. Right? Like when you were digging into this, like, what was the most surprising thing that you found? Like, was there something in a script, you're like, Oh, my God, how did they get away with this?

Craig Shemin 32:00

Well, I think that there were a bunch of surprising things just that we knew, until I really dug into it. You know, salmon friends from the surviving Kenneth scopes, which only about 15 of them, and then found the scripts. And then about seven or eight years ago, the Henson archives found a box that had about 45 reel to reel tapes that Jim had started recording the audio. So suddenly, you have 40, you know, 45 tapes. And between them, it's about 440 episodes of salmon friends. So you can see like what they do every day that I think the thing that really was surprising is that yeah, they they would make fun of what was happening. They were in the same studio, where Nixon and Kennedy did one of their presidential debates, the salmon friends broadcasts was like only about an hour, hour and a half before the debate. So they you know, they did their show, they were sort of sent to the secondary studio because the main studio that they were usually in was being occupied by the debate. So they did a an episode where while they're talking about the debate, everybody's getting ready for the debate, equipment is being brought out in front of them. It's like, oh, we need this in the other studio for the debate. And they're trying to come up with questions for the big presidential debate. Interesting. You think of when you first see some of those Kenneth scopes, and it's like, as salmon friends is this cute little Muppet thing, but you don't really think about it interacting with other stuff that was happening historically in the world.

Jeff Dwoskin 33:26

It's interesting, because they can probably get away with things too. And they're like, oh, it's like, it's a puppet.

Craig Shemin 33:31

Exactly. If you know, they could get away with stuff that people could not and I think it's still that way, you know, if Miss Piggy, you know, is insulting to someone. It's like, oh, isn't that cute? It's Miss Piggy. You know, we just lost there was a an English talk show hosts, Michael Parkinson just passed away. And the Muppets did a guest appearance on Parkinson show in the 70s during the run of The Muppet Show, and they did this running bit over Fossey and piggy, we're both asking Michael Parkinson, if he wears a toupee, and it was just, you know, an fossi just staring at him. And it's like, yeah, I have a question. I started to pay and caught Michael Parkinson off guard, but he's laughing hysterically. But if people were asking him that, he would be offended,

Jeff Dwoskin 34:14

right? Yeah, that is so funny. Yeah. Because what can you do? You just laugh, right?

Craig Shemin 34:19

Yeah. And later on, piggy is staring at him and asked the same, you know, she's like, looking at your eyes. And I just have one question. Is that okay? And, you know, and he takes it in an entirely different direction, and Parkinson's like, well, if things work out, you could find out, you know,

Jeff Dwoskin 34:34

I'll be upset if the answer is no, but when you're writing for The Muppets, do you do what you just did?

Craig Shemin 34:40

Yes, absolutely. It's it's important to do that because you have to make sure that this dialogue is going to fit the characters, so yes, I will do very bad Muppet impersonations. When I'm writing. I could

Jeff Dwoskin 34:55

be a whole thing bad Muppet impersonations, but it's they weren't that bad.

Craig Shemin 34:59

Some even worse than others. Yeah,

Jeff Dwoskin 35:01

I wish I could do a walk along a walk. I'm better I would do it all the time. Ah. My favorite place in the world is Hollywood studios at the Muppet theater.

Craig Shemin 35:13

That's a great thing. Yeah, I remember I did a little work on that when that was going into Muppet vision 3d. I didn't work on the movie, but I got to work on the installation. And we did these posters and the parody posters, we had to come up with parody posters of different Muppet fake movies. And we did like a Tarzan movie. And it was all based on old photography that had been taken for Muppet calendars are one of the favorite things that I written for that it was a Tarzan movie. And I wrote the headline. It was Tarzan, Kermit was Tarzan and was PE was chain. And the headline I wrote was, she's Hollywood. He's vine.

Jeff Dwoskin 35:54

That's great. Yeah, I think they saw that when they were doing the Barbie stuff. There you go. Alright, so Santa friends, completely live lip synced? How was that easier? I would seem like, it just seemed like that would be even harder to do.

Craig Shemin 36:11

It is hard. I think that at that point, they thought it would be easier to pre record all the audio. I mean, in the very beginning, they did it that way. Because they were mostly lip synching to records. And I think later on, they did it that way, because Jim was providing most of the voices. So it was easier for him to pre record it and edit together the audio of him doing all the voices and then lip sync to that. But it also was easier because they didn't have a live microphone in the studio. So they could talk to each other while they were working. And Jim could say get a little closer. And this stagehands could laugh and enjoy themselves and wouldn't get out over the air. So yeah, it's not necessarily easier at that, you know, it was sort of the way they did it. And it just sort of evolved. And then by the time they got to the late 60s and Sesame Street that evolved into pre recording the music ahead of time and lip synching to that, but the dialogue would always be done live on the studio floor.

Jeff Dwoskin 37:12

Gotcha. It wasn't uncommon for Jim just to create new characters for anything that he was doing. So even like when they would do the talk about doing a coffee commercial. And it was interesting, because like, this is how like Jim became the voice or and knocked out Paul Arnold. Yep. Yeah. Just interesting how things come about right? It 10 seconds to do call letters. But they only took three seconds. So they had to fill sevens. It was only the first thing I thought of when it said seven second commercial was how later it expanded to 30 seconds a minute. And then a few years ago, it got down to you got to tell the story in six seconds.

Craig Shemin 37:52

Yeah. And you know, they were still doing 32nd 62nd commercials because they were doing longer commercials eventually on salmon friends, you know, when they had a sponsor, but this particular coffee commercial thing just grew out of a very specific need. It's like we got to do the station Id like you said, and we have this time over what can we do? Let's sell that time that became very successful. And like you said, that was where Jim first got really comfortable doing his voice. I think one of the reasons it was comfortable is that there was just very short thing so it was only one or two sentences. And that got Jim more comfortable. That's when salmon friends started getting more dialogue and Jim coming up with characters commercials were done and redone for different products around the country. And it was amazing. They did like 180 of these commercials and they were inexpensive relatively speaking, I think a company would pay like $3,000 for a commercial which back then was you know there were expenses to make them but Jim and Jane still pocketed a good deal of money off of those not bad for like a part time college job.

Jeff Dwoskin 38:56

Now that's amazing. Sorry to interrupt by but we have to take a quick break. And we're back who's got $1 I read in your book it said that for $1 You could send in the coffee was Wilkinsons, Wilkins slogans coffee, and you can send in $1 and proof of purchase and get these Wilkins habits that they sold 25,000. So I went on eBay, I couldn't specifically find anything on eBay. There was like pictures of the patty. Goodbye. But they did have I don't know, authenticity wise, but something a puppet they did for caramel milk.

Craig Shemin 39:30

Yeah, it was the same caramel was one of the many other

Jeff Dwoskin 39:34

counties that they did them. And that was going for $99. Correct? Yeah,

Craig Shemin 39:38

there have been, you know, a few years back, I think the Museum acquired a set for the Henson exhibit Museum of the Moving Image. And they get harder and harder to come by because they were made out of relatively inexpensive vinyl and it cracks and damages over time, so it's harder to find them and even though they made 25,000 of them, a lot of them I'm sure and Did being thrown away by parents.

Jeff Dwoskin 40:02

And the sponsor you mentioned was SK meats. I love it, because there's so many of those ads on YouTube. But you can see in that long, 30 minute thing, it's so great. Yeah, they won an Emmy. And then going from black and white to color. You don't think that now, but

Craig Shemin 40:18

yeah, and Jane Henson had told me that Jim really liked working in black and white. So you know, it was happy to get the new technology, but he had worked out everything. So we had to come up with back then there was something called compatible color, which meant that it was color broadcasting, but the show would always be broadcast as well. It was compatible with black and white TV sets. You know, when I was growing up, you know, we were between color television sets, my parents had gotten color when my brother was, you know, baby. And then by the time I came along, that color set had already blown out. So we had black and white when I was growing up. So I always thought we're gonna see, you know, Batman in color. I didn't know what that meant, because I didn't see any color. So that was compatible color, which meant that Jim had to sort of look at creating these backgrounds and new puppets that would look good both in color. And in black and white, which was challenging.

Jeff Dwoskin 41:13

I can imagine. Yeah, cuz they had to go Batman that you mentioned, and color is what started to harm some of the shows the monsters and stuff like that. And what shifted Lawson space from black and white to color because of Batman. So like Batman really blew up color. Right? Yeah. It anyway. But

Craig Shemin 41:31

the shame is that we don't really see we don't have a lot of salmon friends color either. In still photography, there are a couple of films that they Jim had taken what he had done on salmon friends and took it to a film studio and recorded and filmed it in 60 millimeter. But most of what we see in salmon friends is black and white. So I always think I thought of salmon friends is a black and white show. And I would talk to Jane Henson about that. And she always thought of salmon friends as a color show because it switched to color fairly early on, it was like 1959, you know, she had been on a few years, but 1959 they were in color. So she always her memories of Sam and friends is that it's a color TV show. I always try and tell people hey, you think of it in color. I know that, you know, because of the publication limitations of my book, pictures are in black and white. If you get an e book, I think you'll see any color pictures, or will be in color. And my my book on as an e book. It's like, yeah, it was color.

Jeff Dwoskin 42:32

There's so many amazing details. And like you said, this book is broken into two parts. It's all the history and then half the I actually more than half the book is scripts. So you can just kind of you can go watch it online and get a feel for it. I

Craig Shemin 42:46

tried to break down the did synopsis of even if we didn't know what the Muppets were doing and sort of summarize what song they were doing it to we had listings of songs and things before we got to the recordings of the actual episodes. You know, I had no idea I was when we first started thinking about this book, and I approached Henson's about it. And you know, Lisa Henson actually, is there enough for a book? And I was like, I think there is Karen Fox archivist says, Yeah, we think you know, there's enough. And I didn't have any idea that I was going to get nearly 600 pages out of it. I was hoping if I can get like 200 pages, and it just kept getting longer and longer. And I sent my publisher very concerning. He's like, what's getting longer? And he's like, great. It's like, but you're gonna have to increase, right? I don't care if people are interested. They'll buy the book. I think that's what's happened. You know,

Jeff Dwoskin 43:41

it's fascinating. If you love TV history, if you love the Muppets Vela both even better. I mean, this book is incredible. Incredible. One of the cool things with the scripts is it shows images of like the handwriting, and just when you think, Oh, I can't read this handwriting. Oh, doll typed out on the next page. Yeah.

Craig Shemin 43:58

That's one of the things that I don't like I have to do it this way. Because, you know, Jim's handwriting. You know, even if you're seeing the page up close, it takes a while to cipher, but I knew that once it was shrunk down to the size of a book page and printed in black and white, and it was not it was going to be a challenge.

Jeff Dwoskin 44:15

You could take out all the type pages and release a hardcore version.

Craig Shemin 44:20

Yeah, but I think when this follow up book script book will be I won't use the side by side thing that much will have images of the original scripts, sort of as a little bit of a highlight here and there. But primarily, it's going to be the transcribe typewritten and proof read script.

Jeff Dwoskin 44:39

So final question is alright, Sam, my friends went off the air in 1961. When was the last time if ever that we saw them again, other than before your book?

Craig Shemin 44:49

That is a great question. With the exception. I think you're popped up in a Sesame Street film very briefly, but then in 1980 8586 The Muppets did a 30th anniversary show was produced by a great television producer Andrew solt, who now owns the Ed Sullivan libraries really nice guy who's big friend of Jim Henson legacy over the years, and they produced the Muppets, a celebration of 30 years. And the format of this show was that they were honoring Kermit for his birthday. So they had a whole big Deus. And they had sort of banquet tables, and each of the banquet tables, it's like, oh, the Fraggle Rock characters were here and the Sesame Street. We have a couple of tables here. So all of the different characters that Jimmy created, and one of the tables had the salmon friends cast, so they had been cleaned up a little bit and spiffed up but so they had a little bit of a cameo in that special because that Kermit introduces, they were someone introduces a collection of these earliest clips from Sam and friends. And then Fazio is sort of the Toastmasters like all and here they are the SAM and friends. And they had a little dialogue with Kermit. And it's like, how come? You look so much better? And we look like this? And Kermit say, oh, you know, there's one of the things about being a muppet, you know, that I think was the last time that the salmon friends characters were seen on television. And now it's sort of a, they live in a legal limbo, because Kermit is owned by the Disney company. And the rest of the salmon friends characters are owned by Henson. But it was a frozen situation where neither can use the salmon friends characters without mutual permission. So in order for me to do this book, I had to get permission from both Henson and Disney. They were all very, very supportive, because it's an interesting story to tell. And I think it's an inspiring one to young artists. We have this guy, Jim Henson. He started starts working in television and high school created Kermit when he was first year college pretty much and did this whole show in college that ends up being a blueprint for revolutionising an entire art form for television. It's just amazing. And I sort of whenever I do presentations, I try and encourage these young artists that Jim was able to do what he did with very primitive equipment. And it was amazing what he was able to accomplish.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:24

Absolutely amazing. He touched and changed. I think a lot of lives. I think we're all better off because of Jim Henson, I appreciate you making this book. Thank you so much.

Craig Shemin 47:34

Thanks. It was really a labor of love. I think of all of the things that I've done in association with the Muppets. I think I'm proudest of this. And partially, it's because I'm telling Jim's early story, but also that I'm telling Jane Henson story. She was Jane Knebel when she first met Jim, and for many years, I knew her for quite a few years. And Jane would always downplay her own importance to the story. And she would say all I was just to help her. Jim was the one with the vision. And the more I explored, and like looking through all of this great historical stuff, and I'm like, oh, here are the letters of incorporation. Jane was a 40%. Owner and Muppets Incorporated. That's not what a helper is. That's a partner. And I think that while I think Jane would be a little uncomfortable with this book, if she were alive, but I felt that it was a great part of the story to share. So I wanted to give Jane a lot of the credit that she has, for many years deflected towards Jim and I no way I'm not lessening Jim's contribution. Yeah, he was the incredible creative vision. But Jane was very important to the store. So I think one of the reasons that I really loved telling it was to give chain some of this proper credit,

Jeff Dwoskin 48:57

where Jane's and Jim's kids appreciative of that.

Craig Shemin 49:01

Yes, yeah. I think that I was very happy. I got some a lot of great response from from Jim's kids. And one of the things that they were very happy about was that their mom was getting some real credit for this.

Jeff Dwoskin 49:16

You did Jane good you did Jim God Santa friends, good practices. It's amazing book. Everyone needs to go get it. Share the website and all that kind of stuff. So where people appreciate it.

Craig Shemin 49:28

Yeah, if you're looking for it, you can go to bear Manor media.com It's all one word together bear manner media, you can go to salmon friends book.com. If you get a copy of the book, and send a go to salmon friends book.com. You can send me a picture of you with the book and I will send you an autographed book plate and a bookmark and the sticker and all that stuff. And if you you can also find it online, wherever other books are sold Barnes and noble.com amazon.com and a lot of other places.

Jeff Dwoskin 50:00

Awesome. Thanks for hanging out with me and sharing all these great stories.

Craig Shemin 50:03

I had a great time, Jeff. I'm happy to come back anytime.

Jeff Dwoskin 50:07

Yeah, we can talk more Muppets. I can do that. Yeah, absolutely. Dive into the movies. It'll be great. We'll do it. Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, everyone. How amazing was Chris Sherman. So amazing. You definitely have to check out his book, salmon friends, the story of Jim Henson's first television show links in the show notes to everything, including the YouTube of salmon friends, so you can check that out. I'll even throw in my article that I wrote. So you can tell me how amazing that was? Also, I need some attention. Now. I'm just kidding. Another huge thanks to Craig Sherman, for bringing all this Muppet history to the show. Thank you, sir. And of course, thank you to all of you for coming back week after week. It means the world to me, and I'll see you next time.

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