It looks like a hippie’s headband: a worn strip of fabric with a wire jutting out of it and a little microphone at the end. Then you see the frog perched beside it and a photo of Jim Henson wearing that very headset with that same frog on his hand, and suddenly you realize: “That’s how Kermit came to life!”
It’s just one “ohhh” moment among many in “The Jim Henson Exhibition,” the new, permanent show opening Saturday at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria.
Here, along with 47 puppets, including Miss Piggy in full bridal regalia, are props, videos, photos and more culled from “The Muppet Show,” “Sesame Street,” “Fraggle Rock,” “The Dark Crystal” and “Labyrinth,” that last starring David Bowie in what looks like Tina Turner’s worst wig.
Though Henson was born in Mississippi and raised in Maryland, museum director Carl Goodman calls this “a New York story”: Not only was the puppeteer’s wife, Jane, raised in Queens, but “Sesame Street” is just around the corner, at Kaufman Astoria Studios, while the then-Muppet Workshop that hatched Big Bird and friends was located in Manhattan before relocating to Long Island City (where it is now the Jim Henson Creature Shop).
Still, it’s a story that extends beyond one man and his Muppets, giving us glimpses of the people who worked with him in a career that embraced commercials, experimental films and, at around the time Henson died in 1990, 3D animation. Look closely at that last section and you’ll see a photo of a young Steve Whitmire, Henson’s successor in manipulating Kermit, who was fired in October for what Henson’s children this week claimed was un-Kermitlike hubris.
All told, it’s quite a story, and it’s not for kids only.
“We could have just put a bunch of puppets for you to see up there,” says curator Barbara Miller, “but we wanted to pull back a curtain and see what the creative processes were.”
And so we get early photos of a sensitive-looking young Henson, who’s nearly unrecognizable without his beard, and a replica of the small black-and-white TV set he bugged his parents to buy, so he could watch the 1950s puppet show “Kukla, Fran and Ollie.”
“I’m gonna sit here and cry for 45 minutes,” says Louie Pearlman, 36, a writer for the Muppet-fan Web site ToughPigs.com. What made him verklempt was seeing the “Puppet Theatre Handbook” that Henson studied before auditioning for a local TV show. (And yes, Henson got the gig.)
The Muppet amateurs among us will be thrilled just coming face to face with Big Bird, Statler and Waldorf and the Swedish Chef, that last with scarily realistic silicone hands, modeled on puppeteer Frank Oz’s own.
And then there’s Rowlf, one of several puppets Henson built and voiced for his pre-Muppet career in commercials. Rowlf, the shaggy spokesman for Purina, appeared regularly on TV’s “The Jimmy Dean Show,” where he stole steal his scenes from under the sausage king’s nose.
Speaking of noses: You can design your own Muppet here, too, choosing from an array of googly eyes, wigs and other features, and Velcro-ing them all together at one of the exhibit’s interactive corners. In another, you can try your hand at puppeteering: It’s a lot harder than it looks, and it helps to have long arms.
There are oddities, too, such as the Frankenstein’s Monsterlike platform boots female puppeteer Fran Brill wore so she’d be as tall as the men she worked with, plus clips from Henson’s experimental films. One of them, 1968’s flower-child documentary, “Youth 68,” incited an angry letter from one viewer demanding Henson make “a public apology [and] undo some of the great damage you have done to our children.” Wonder if that viewer, his name deleted here, ever caught “Sesame Street”?
And then are the fan letters. Luckily, Henson kept copies of all his correspondence.
“I’m worried that by the time I grow up, the Muppets will be gone — dissipeared [sic],” 11-year-old Jay Fosgitt, an aspiring cartoonist from Saginaw, Mich., wrote in 1986. Alongside his letter hangs Henson’s reply, assuring him that the Muppets would still be there, and that he should keep drawing and touch base down the road.
But the road ended too quickly: Henson died four years later, of toxic-shock syndrome. He was 53.
And Jay Fosgitt? He followed Henson’s advice and kept drawing. After being a writer and artist for “Sesame Street” comics, he’s now working for companies such as Marvel Comics.
“Jim’s positive response to my art and letter gave me more encouragement than words could convey,” Fosgitt tells The Post. “All kids should be as fortunate as I was to get such a reply from their heroes. It changes your life.”
Kermit would be proud.
“The Jim Henson Exhibition” is at the Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Ave., Astoria; MovingImage.us
