While you may not be familiar with his name, you're probably very familiar with his work.
Odell joined the writing staff of The Muppet Show in it's third season, received a "special thanks" credit on The Muppet Movie, and wrote the screenplay for The Dark Crystal and it's unproduced sequel Power of The Dark Crystal.
He made appearances in the behind the scenes documentaries Of Muppets and Men: The Making of The Muppet Show and Reflections of the Dark Crystal.
Odell's non-Henson credits include the screenplays for Running Scared, Supergirl (1984), Masters of the Universe (1987), and the television series Tales from the Darkside and Monsters. He alsodirected 1990's Martians Go Home. According to his obituary"he often said that Henson was the only true genius he ever worked with."
More sad news as Muppet Show guest Jaye P. Morgan has died.
Born Mary Margaret Morgan, she gained fame for her 1950s hit "That's All I Want from You," as well as judging on The Gong Show.
In 1956, she had her own show, The Jaye P. Morgan Show, and made guest appearances on other variety shows including The Jackie Gleason Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, and The Jack Benny Program.
She guest starred in the second season of The Muppet Show where she performed "Tweedle Dee" and "That Old Black Magic."
Her other credits as herself include appearances on The Odd Couple, The Dating Game (as a celebrity contestant), and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
You can read more about Jaye P. Morgan at Variety.
We lost another legend as Tim Curry has passed away.
Curry memorably played Long John Silver in 1996's Muppet Treasure Island a role he reprised for the CD-ROM game.
It's been said that while Michael Cain treated The Muppets as fellow actors for The Muppet Christmas Carol, Tim Curry considered himself a fellow Muppet forMuppet Treasure Island. At the conclusion of filming, Curry was given a Muppet caricature of himself as a gift, which you can see here.
He also provided voices for a number of characters in the Henson series Dinosaurs.
He also actor contributed a Lemon-Stuffed Roasted Chicken recipe for Miss Piggy's cookbook, "In the Kitchen with Miss Piggy" and narrated A Sesame Street Christmas Carol.
In 1998, Curry starred in Madness Reigns, an unaired pilot produced by the Jim Henson Company, playing an exiled king.
His numerous film credits include The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Annie, Clue, Legend, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Stephen King’s It TV movie, and the 2000 feature film adaptation of Charlie's Angels.
He also provided voices for FernGully: The Last Rainforest, The Rugrats Movie, Rugrats in Paris, and The Wild Thornberrys Movie.
His stage credits range from The Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance to Spamalot.
But to us he'll always be "Professional Pirate" Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island.
Sad news as legendary singer, songwriter, author, and actress Dolly Parton has died.
Parton had many notable hits including “Jolene," "I Will Always Love You," “Here You Come Again,” and “Islands in the Stream” with Kenny Rogers.
In the 80's she expanded into acting with hits movies The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Steel Magnolias, and 9 to 5 - which garnered her both a Golden Globe acting nomination and another hit song.
She opened the Dollywood theme park in her home of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee to create jobs for her friends and neighbors.
In 1986, she received an "Honorary Muppet Award" in Muppet Magazine.
The following year. both Kermit and Miss Piggy appeared on her TV variety show, Dolly.
You can read more about filing these appearances in Jim's Red Book.
In 2012, Kermit and and Dolly reunited on Good Morning America and sang "Islands in the Stream.
Parton was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. She was a National Medal of Arts honoree and a Kennedy Center Honors recipient.
While best remembered by most audiences as Dr. Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park franchise, his career stretched across nearly five decades including standout turns in The Piano, The Hunt for Red October, and Peaky Blinders.
Neill also had a couple of memorable Henson connections. In 1998, he took on the title role in Merlin, the NBC/Hallmark Entertainment miniseries whose creature and visual effects were done by Jim Henson Creature Shop. Neill's performance earned strong reviews and helped the miniseries pull in a staggering 70 million viewers during its original broadcast and earned him both Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for best actor in a miniseries or TV film.
More recently, Neill returned to Henson territory with 2023's The Portable Door, an adventure-comedy produced by The Jim Henson Company starring alongside Christoph Waltz.
Can you read more about Sam Neal’s life at Variety.
Sad news as former Today Show, critic Gene Shalit died over the weekend.
Gene Shalit was one of American television's most recognizable personalities — instantly identifiable by his wild hair, handlebar mustache, vibrant bowties, and an endless appetite for wordplay. For nearly four decades, he served as the beloved film and arts critic on The Today Show, while also lending his voice to publications like TV Guide, The New York Times, and Cosmopolitan.
It's no surprise that the Muppets crossed paths with Shalit more than once over the years, both celebrating and lovingly poking fun at the iconic critic.
The connection goes back to April 3, 1974, when Ernie and Bert made a guest appearance on The Today Show. In classic Muppet fashion, Bert showed up dressed to look uncannily like Shalit himself. Three years later, Shalit hosted the PBS special Sesame Street at Night?
Shalit was spoofed in 1976's The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence as a film critic, performed by Jerry Nelson, who turns into a pig.
In 1980, Shalit sat down with Jim Henson for an interview about a quirky piece of television history: a set of pipes that Henson, Frank Oz, Don Sahlin, and Jerry Juhl had painted backstage while waiting to perform on The Jack Paar Program. During the interview, Shalit quipped that the pipes deserved a place in a museum. In 2010, those very pipes were added to the public tour of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
The fun continued in 1983, when Muppet Magazine featured Shalit in its "Great Muppet Look-Alike Contest," pairing him with none other than the Swedish Chef.
On July 10, 1984. Gene interviewed Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog about their new feature film The Muppets Take Manhattan.
After Henson's untimely passing in 1990, Shalit interviewed Frank Oz.
And in 1996, he made a deliciously unexpected contribution to In the Kitchen with Miss Piggy, submitting his very own "Movie Crumb Cake" recipe to the diva's cookbook.
Gene Shalit's relationship with the Muppets was as warm, witty, and wonderfully bizarre as the man himself.
Sad news as veteran Creature Shop sculptor Lyle Conway has died.
Conway began his career at the Henson Company in the Muppet Workshop on The Muppet Show.
He was later asked design the creatures and be the fabrication supervisor on The Dark Crystal sculpting many Skeksis, Urskeks, and Aughra.
On Dreamchild he oversaw the entire shop making sure The Mad Hatter, March Hare, and Lewis Carrol's other creatures looked as close as possible to the book's descriptions and illustrations. After Dreamchild, he freelanced for other films and returned to The Creature Shop to work on Where the Wild Thigs Are.
"Designer Lyle Conway, having followed The Dark Crystal with work on the film Return to Oz, was tapped by Jim to oversee the shop for Dreamchild. Conway’s experience paid off and the build exploited everything he and the team had learned, using it in a much more efficient fashion. The budget was tight and, as Conway described, it “…turned out to be one fourth the work [of The Dark Crystal] at ten times the speed. We had 14 weeks to build everything, which is no time at all for us, and I think we stayed that much fresher as a result.” The film opened in summer 1985 to generally positive reviews, particularly for Coral Browne’s performance as Alice, and the writers made much of the creatures from Jim’s shop. The review in The Guardian noted, “The realization by Jim Henson and his team of the fabled creatures of Lewis Carroll’s imagination is beguilingly original.”
A few of Conway's non-Creature Shop work included 1988's The Blob and Return to Oz, in which he not only worked on the creatures, but also performed the voice and face of the Gump. His most notable post-Henson credit was on Frank Oz's Little Shop of Horrors designing Audrey II in each different phase, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects.
We are sad to share that Arthur Novell, founding board member of The Jim Henson Legacy has passed away.
For 19 years Arthur’s firm, Markham/Novell Communications, served as the public relations agency for The Jim Henson Company.
On Muppets Tonight, he served as the liaison for the guest stars, a role performed by David Lazer on The Muppet Show. He was responsible for explaining to the guests how to walk on the elevated sets, speak to the Muppets, not the puppeteers, and make sure they were comfortable with the production.
Arthur was featured as Muppet caricature "Arthur Modell" a contestant on "Swift
"Swift Wits", the UK Spot in the Pierce Brosnan episode.
He was among the trusted colleagues selected by Jane Henson to form the founding Board of Trustees of The Jim Henson Legacy.
The Jim Henson Legacy Board in 2013
Arthur went on to serve as the organization’s Executive Director for nine years, remained an active board member, and attended many legacy events.
Sad news as acclaimed civil rights leader Reverend Jesse Jackson has died.
Jackson was a politician, activist, and Baptist minister, who in 1984 became the second African-American to declare candidacy for the office of President of the United States.
Muppet fans may recognize Jackson from his 1971 appearance on Sesame Street where he recited three of his poems "I Am - Somebody", "I Can Do", and "Nation Time." According to Muppet wiki, of them, only the first clip is known to survive.
"I Am - Somebody" was included as a bonus segment Sesame Street Old School: Volume 1 DVD, and was sung as song a few other times on the show.
That same year, Jackson founded Operation PUSH, which stood for People United to Save Humanity. Its initial membership list included Apollo Theatre manager Peter Long, and his wife Lorretta Long, who played Sesame Street's Susan. The organization is now known as Rainbow/PUSH.
Over the years Jackson helped negotiate the release of several detained and captured Americans around the world and in part due to these efforts, in 2000, Jackson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President Bill Clinton.
You can read more about Jesse Jackson's life at Time.
Sad news as comedic actress Catherine O'Hara has died.
O'Hara first gained fame starring and writing on SCTV, for which she won an Emmy. She starred in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, it's sequel, voiced Sally The Nightmare Before Christmas and multiple characters in Frankenweenie.
She played Kate McAllister in both Home Alone it's sequel, and in four of Christopher Guest's mockumentary films.
From 2015 to 2020, she starred in the sitcom Schitt's Creek for which she won another Emmy. O'Hara worked with The Jim Henson Company voicing Judith in 2009's Where the Wild Things Are and as the Leader of the Lost Fraggle in Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock
Drew Struzan, the legendary poster artist behind many of the the Muppet theatrical films died yesterday.
Struzan created the artwork for The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper.
A letter from Jim Henson posted on Drew Struzan’s website compliments him on his work:
We wanted to take a moment to let you know how knocked out we are with the painting for The Great Muppet Caper! You captured the essence of the Muppets and the excitement of the film and we congratulate you.
He also illustrated The Muppet Show Colorforms, the Muppet Home Video logo, the Tales from Muppetland VHS, BETA, Laser disc and CED covers, a set of McDonald' s Great Muppet Caper posters, and the Fisher-Price Muppet tray puzzles.
Drew went on to illustrate the posters for The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Muppet Treasure Island as well.
Struzan was also known for creating the iconic posters for Star Wars, Blade Runner,The Thing, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future and countless others.
Earlier this year his wife revealed that he had been living with Alzheimer’s disease for an unspecified amount of time.
The documentary Drew: The Man Behind the Poster included a 4-minute segment focused entirely on Struzan's work with the Muppets and Jim Henson which you can see below.
