Sixty-seven years ago today, on November 20, 1958, two young puppeteers in their early twenties formally incorporated Muppets, Inc. in New York City. Jim Henson, a 22-year-old University of Maryland graduate who had already been performing puppets on local Washington, D.C. television since high school, partnered with his creative and romantic collaborator Jane Nebel (whom he would marry in 1959) to turn their side hustle into an official company. What began as a small operation run out of apartments and borrowed studio space would eventually become The Jim Henson Company, one of the most influential entertainment enterprises of the 20th and 21st centuries.
You can find the Muppets on Amazon HERE.
The early years were modest. Henson and Nebel (later Jane Henson) built puppets and performed five-second commercials for products such as Wilkins Coffee and IBM computers. Their characters were irreverent, fast-paced, and unmistakably alive, a style Henson called “Muppets” (a word he coined by blending “marionette” and “puppet”). By 1963 the company had relocated to Los Angeles briefly, then settled permanently back in New York, where a growing team created the first Muppet stars that appeared regularly on The Jimmy Dean Show and later The Ed Sullivan Show.
The breakthrough came in 1969 when the Children’s Television Workshop invited Henson to bring puppets to a revolutionary new educational program. Sesame Street introduced Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Ernie, Bert, Cookie Monster, and Kermit the Frog (who had debuted in 1955 on a local show called Sam and Friends) to millions of households. Overnight, the Muppets became global icons of learning and laughter.
In 1976, Henson launched The Muppet Show, a primetime syndicated variety series filmed in London that ran for five seasons and 120 episodes. Starring Kermit as the harried host, the program featured guest stars from Elton John to Steve Martin and cemented the Muppets as a mainstream comedy franchise. Feature films followed: The Muppet Movie (1979), The Great Muppet Caper (1981), and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984).
After Jim Henson’s sudden death from streptococcal toxic shock syndrome in May 1990 at age 53, his children Lisa, Cheryl, Brian, John, and Heather took the helm. The company was sold to the Walt Disney Company in 2004, but the Henson family repurchased it in 2000 after a 2003 deal fell apart, and later sold the classic Muppet characters (Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, etc.) to Disney while retaining rights to darker, more experimental properties such as The Dark Crystal (1982), Labyrinth (1986), and the Creature Shop’s groundbreaking animatronics work on films ranging from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Where the Wild Things Are.
Today, The Jim Henson Company operates from its historic Charlie Chaplin Studios lot on La Brea Avenue in Hollywood (purchased in 2000 and designated a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument). It continues to produce television (The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Earth to Ned), feature films, and cutting-edge creature effects while preserving its founder’s archives and legacy through the Jim Henson Legacy foundation.
From a two-person puppet act in 1958 to a company that has touched generations, the little enterprise that Jim and Jane Henson started on this date continues to prove that felt, foam, and imagination can change the world.
You can find the Muppets on Amazon HERE.
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