Whenever I attend a special presentation at the Museum of the Moving Image by the Jim Henson Legacy, my hope is to see at least one clip I’ve never seen before. Well, the odds were in my favor this weekend, because this month’s event, “Inside the Henson Vault,” promised material never publicly screened before, and sure enough, a lot of it was stuff I had never seen or even heard of.
The afternoon was hosted by Henson Legacy President Craig Shemin, who certainly knows his way around the “vault.” I put that in quotes because Craig made it very clear we were not actually going into any Henson vault, just a metaphorical one. The event really should have been called “Craig Shemin’s Muppet Fun-Time Jamboree Inside the Redstone Theater Inside the Museum of the Moving Image,” but that probably wouldn’t fit on the ticket.
The event really turned out to be a big tribute to a little-known arm of the Henson Legacy – the JHC Video Library, which was developed in 2002 as a way of preserving Jim’s film and video works in one place. Since then, the Library has expanded with the cooperation and contributions of many different companies, estates, organizations, and other sources that specialize in preserving older media, making sure the Legacy has copies of interesting things like the clips we saw that day.
The program kicked off with a minor detour into the Ryan Dillon Collection (visually represented by the vault from Raiders of the Lost Ark). You know Ryan Dillon, right? He plays Felix the Chicken on Sesame Street! But Ryan, like us, is a fan and a collector, and acquired some rare Henson films off of eBay that the Henson Legacy collection was missing, and he made sure they got copies. What a mensch!
First up was several minutes of the 1969 IBM film “Rowlf-In,” a send-up of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In where all the jokes are about typewriters. Before showing the film, Craig presented some brief highlights from Laugh-In that are directly spoofed in the piece, and defined various IBM terms so the audience knew what the heck was going on. Despite being pretty inside baseball, some jokes were just broad enough that the museum crowd could laugh at them. You can watch the full 25-minute version on YouTube!
Ryan’s collection also included a 1969 advertisement for Sprint Chocolate Wafers (which you might recognize today as a Kit-Kat bar), starring a bunch of random humanoid Muppets (including guys we’d later call Guy Smiley and Grump).
Now came the “Henson Vault” part, first showcasing material originating from the Henson archive. Another 1960s IBM film was shown where Rowlf, the only one left in his office, answers a call to repair a typewriter in the data processing department. While he does a poor job (using Scotch tape and such), he overhears two workers talking in various data processing jargon, one of whom was played by Jerry Juhl! Like seeing that guy! Rowlf tries to fit in and spouts some jargon back at them of what data to input, which causes everything to explode. Whoopsies!
Next was something I’d never heard of – an incomplete proposal film to be used in a World’s Fair-type exposition in Miami called Interama. The plan was to have a presentation by the Muppets that integrated film and live elements. Rowlf would appear live in the venue while interacting with a film introducing the concept of Muppets, some of their characters, and Jim Henson. Oh, and Splurge was there too! It’s wild that it’s 2025 and we’re still learning about new/old, wacky Jim ventures.
A series of rare commercials followed next. These included Rowlf inventing a machine that produced Esskay meats, Scoop and Skip in a series of ads for both Briggs Meat Weiners and Wilson’s Meats, the misadventures of the Southern Colonel for Southern Bread, and a brief PSA on healthy eating for the Ad Council starring the Cookie Monster. Whoops, sorry, I mean the Veggie Monster.
Criag now shifted to showcasing material acquired from those previously-mentioned external sources. He made sure to credit the original sources of all the material from here on, and we probably should too. It’s only polite.
First were highlights from the 1968 special The Pied Piper of Astroworld, procured from the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The special starred Soupy Sales as the titular piper trying to find all his lost kids in the titular Houston theme park. Highlights presented included Rowlf welcoming Soupy and the kids by singing “Consider Yourself,” a performance of “Java” in a cave, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition singing “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” while Rufus rides a bunch of rides, Soupy singing “I’d Do Anything” (from Oliver!) with a Muppet girl, and everybody (including guest Lesley Gore) singing a reprise of “Consider Yourself.” Craig also quizzed the crowd by highlighting a clip of a young unknown, who turned out to be a then 17 year-old Brent Spiner.
Next were excerpts from the 1973 special Keep US Beautiful, found by an organization called Obsolete Video. The variety special touched on various environmental issues, and the audience got a huge laugh from the presented sponsor of the show – a gas company. The first clip was the opening medley, where the various celebrity stars of the program, along with Kermit, sang short, mediocre versions of famous songs with new lyrics about how polluted the world is. Then came the Muppets’ big featured spot, where a quartet of Muppets made out of trash sang a spoof of “Hey, Look Me Over,” celebrating their impending domination of the Earth. You can see that on YouTube too!
Then, we saw segments from 1968’s The Wonderful Night of Hercules Brown, a film commissioned by the United States Information Agency for reasons unclear to anybody. It centers around Hercules Brown (duh doy), whose dreams are presented as various puppet acts poorly segued to by Barnaby, a leprechaun character played by Linn Sheldon (who was apparently a local TV character). The Muppet segments included the old standbys of “Glo-Worm” and “Beautiful Day,” as well as an encounter with Rowlf about the mundane lives of dogs. It was not unlike a Jimmy Dean bit, only with jokes that weren’t so funny. The full film also features the work of other puppet acts, such as Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop and the Ritz Puppets. This is also something you can watch on a certain tube-site (as restored by the National Archives).
Then came the final clip package, but it was really the main attraction (and the main justification for having this event, it turns out). Not too long ago, the Henson Legacy was in contact with Ed Sullivan’s granddaughter to arrange a different screening, when she revealed that a special discovery had been made in the CBS vaults – all 10 episodes of the rare 1967 series Our Place! The series was the summer replacement for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, but produced by the team behind The Ed Sullivan Show. Rowlf served as the emcee for the show, which featured celebrity guests, comedy routines with Jack Burns and Avery Schrieber, and songs by the Doodletown Pipers.
The Henson Legacy previously only had one and a half episodes of the show, in black-and-white kinescope form procured off of eBay many moons ago. The show was presumed lost until this recent discovery. Some brief excerpts were shown from these copies to demonstrate the remarkable difference between them and the original masters, which were in full color! Rowlf never looked more brown-grayer. Credit must go to the Retro Video company for providing the Legacy with these new masters.
We were treated to highlights from across the entire run of the show. These included Rowlf singing with special guests like Nipsey Russell, Eddie Albert, and Joel Grey, an appearance by his nephew Ronald the Wonder Pup (a live puppy), and Rowlf learning to play the ukulele with the help of Arthur Godfrey. Apparently, even though the show did well in the ratings, it never came back after that summer, and it is my understanding that Rowlf never appeared in anything else again either. I think. Or maybe I was too busy scribbling notes to pay attention.
Something this screening really put into perspective was how much Rowlf truly was the main star of the Muppets back then. It’s easy to just think of him as being on The Jimmy Dean Show and maybe a commercial here and there, but he was the focal point of so much of this footage, while Kermit was barely in anything. Even in that Interama piece, it’s Rowlf who is the face of the Muppets and Kermit is presented as being virtually on the same level as a nameless, malfunctioning robot character. It’s really wild to think about how within a couple of years of this stuff, the dynamic would completely flip around.
Once again, Mr. Shemin and the museum put on another wonderful event; it’s always great when they find an excuse to break out special things from the archives like this. I’m sure there’s even more goodies they’ve yet to screen, and I look forward to whenever that may be. I’ll go consult my local Zoltar machine to get an exact date to start plan accordingly, and so should you!
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By Shane Keating
