LA Times
Jerry Juhl, the Emmy Award-winning former head writer for the Muppets who provided much of the heart and soul to Jim Henson’s iconic troupe of fleece and foam puppets, has died. He was 67.
Juhl, who also co-wrote most of the Muppet feature films and wrote for “Sesame Street” during its early years, died of cancer Sept. 27 in a hospital in San Francisco, said Arthur Novell, executive director of the Jim Henson Legacy. Juhl, who was semiretired, lived in the Northern California town of Caspar.
Juhl co-wrote “The Muppet Movie,” which marked the Muppets’ move to the big screen in 1979. He later wrote the screenplay for “The Muppet Christmas Carol” and co-wrote “The Great Muppet Caper,” “Muppet Treasure Island” and “Muppets From Space.”
He also served as head writer and creative producer on the award-winning “Fraggle Rock,” Henson’s 1983-87 TV series about a race of small creatures that live underground.
“So much of the humor, irreverence, caring and heart that has been central to our work for 50 years began with Jerry Juhl,” Henson’s daughter Lisa, co-chief executive of the Jim Henson Co., said in a statement. “He was — in many ways — the real voice of the Muppets and of every project from the Jim Henson Co.”
Frank Oz, the director and veteran Muppet performer whose characters include Miss Piggy, said Juhl “brought tremendous soul” to the Muppets.
“He was the person responsible really for the heart of the Muppets,” Oz told The Times on Wednesday. “He just knew the characters better than anybody else. He was brilliant because he could be funny but not nasty. He always saw the affection between the characters.
“Nobody else could do that kind of writing…. He was the Muppet writer.”
Born in St. Paul, Minn., in 1938, Juhl fell in love with puppetry at age 9. His passion, which included building his own puppets, creating puppet plays and performing them, continued after his family moved to Menlo Park, Calif., when he was 14.
As a theater arts major at San Jose State University, he was a puppeteer on a local children’s TV show. He also served as director of the Vagabond Puppet Theater, a traveling three-person puppet theater sponsored by the Oakland parks department. There, he was joined by the teenage Oz, a budding puppeteer.
“I looked up to him because I was just a kid and this guy was actually doing the real work,” said Oz, adding that Juhl did not so much have a passion for puppetry “as a sense of fun” for it. “That’s what we had with the Muppets, too.”
In 1961, after he and Oz met Muppet creator Henson and his wife, Jane, at a puppeteer convention in Monterey, Juhl joined the Hensons as a puppeteer and writer on their local TV show in Washington, D.C., “Sam and Friends.”
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 6th, 2005 at 12:00 am and is filed under ODD Guests.
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