The Muppets Show introduced characters like Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, and Gonzo, all of whom were soon starring in major feature-length films. The parting was fortuitous, since meanwhile Henson had been developing his own show that, unable to find an American backer, had to be produced in England. The SNL writers resented having to write for "felt," as one of them put it, and the Muppets weren't asked back for the second season. For the show's first season, the Muppets were billed before the other performers on the show's opening credits, but their segments were never successful. Henson, though, had always imagined his Muppets could have an audience far broader than just little kids, and he booked them a gig on another new show, this one called Saturday Night Live. Ernie, as well as Kermit, was performed by Henson himself. Henson agreed, creating his famous characters Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and Bert and Ernie. Finally, Henson was approached by a producer about adding some Muppets to the cast of a children's show in the works, to be called Sesame Street. As their popularity grew, they, and he, were asked to appear on a number of variety and talk shows like The Ed Sullivan Show. Henson continued making puppets, which he called Muppets, for commercials. The show, called Sam and Friends, introduced him to two of the most important figures in his life: His collaborator became his wife, and one of his puppets, a turquoise lizard-like creature that Henson made from his mom's old coat and a dissected ping-pong ball became Kermit the Frog.
#Brown penny by william butler yeats tv#
In college, he majored in home ec so he could take craft and textile courses, and parlayed his early TV experience into his own five-minute show, which he produced daily with another college student.
Henson started his puppeteering career when he was in high school, performing for a children's show on a local TV station. It's the birthday of Muppets creator Jim Henson, born James Maury Henson in Greenville, Mississippi (1936). Walpole would probably call it serendipity. Walpole had done his best to shun the body politic, but the physical structure was rebuilt in the Gothic style after a massive fire destroyed most of it in 1834. Like, for example, the Houses of Parliament. In direct contrast to the austere neoclassical buildings popular at the time - including his own father's estate - Walpole's house slowly inspired the construction of other fanciful creations, buildings that looked ancient even when brand new. Utterly unique at the time, like his novel, the home kicked off a whole architectural movement: Gothic Revival. His renovations were so attention-getting that the home became a tourist destination, and Walpole opened it as a museum even while he still occupied it. For 45 years he groomed his showpiece, creating a Gothic castle complete with an enormous oak front door, cloistered courtyard, and a huge stone-gray library. It was named "Chopp'd Straw Hall" when he bought it, but Walpole quickly dubbed it the more romantic "Strawberry Hill" and set about expanding and decorating it in the classic medieval style. Indeed, his book was inspired by his life's true focus: his house. His other major literary achievement was the book The Castle of Otranto, which combined horror and romance in the first-ever Gothic novel, a genre that quickly became hugely popular.īut Walpole's obsession with Gothic wasn't limited to literature. It may not have, had Walpole not distinguished himself beyond letter writing. But Walpole's word slowly made its way into the lexicon.
It was in a letter to a friend that Walpole referenced a happy, accidental discovery, calling it "serendipity." The word was made up, created, he said, from the title of a fairy tale, "The Three Princes of Serendip." Serendip was the former name of Sri Lanka in the story, Walpole explained, the princes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of." This particular letter and its serendipitous revelation were of no particular historical consequence. Walpole's father was Britain's first and longest-running prime minister, and although he himself became a member of Parliament, Walpole avoided engaging in politics for the most part, preferring to spend his time writing thousands of letters to his friends and remodeling his "little play-thing-house." Through these two seemingly frivolous occupations, Walpole made his most lasting contributions.
It's the birthday of Gothic writer Horace Walpole ( books by this author), born in London (1717).
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