How Christ­mas Saved The Mup­pets – The Mup­pet Christ­mas Car­ol at 30

At this point, it’s hard to get through the fes­tive peri­od with­out see­ing The Mup­pet Christ­mas Car­ol at least once. Thanks to its cosy vibes, heart­warm­ing songs and near-con­stant sea­son­al repeats, this beloved Mup­pet movie has become as inte­gral to Christ­mas as gorg­ing on Qual­i­ty Street or drink­ing an unac­cept­able amount of Bailey’s before mid­day. In fact, the film has become so syn­ony­mous with that warm, fuzzy fes­tive feel­ing that it’s hard to imag­ine its very cre­ation was actu­al­ly the result of one of the dark­est moments in Mup­pet history.

When Jim Hen­son died from severe pneu­mo­nia fol­low­ing a rare infec­tion in May 1990, the future of his com­pa­ny and its char­ac­ters were sud­den­ly left in lim­bo. While those close to him mourned the unex­pect­ed loss of their friend and leader, his son Bri­an – sud­den­ly the new head of The Hen­son Com­pa­ny – gath­ered its fam­i­ly-like troupe of per­form­ers for an emer­gency meet­ing. After some tears and talk, he quick­ly dis­cov­ered that if they could, they’d very much like to con­tin­ue with what had, by that point, become their life’s work – but the ques­tion lin­gered: what next?

“I’d worked with Jim for about a dozen years before he passed away and most of the oth­er core per­form­ers had worked with him much longer than that,” reveals Steve Whit­mire, the for­mer Mup­pet actor tasked with tak­ing over Ker­mit The Frog fol­low­ing Jim’s death. ​“It was dev­as­tat­ing and unex­pect­ed. He died in a very short peri­od of time and was oth­er­wise very healthy. 53 is not that old,” he adds. ​“We were reel­ing and mourn­ing, and the ques­tion around this film was: ​‘Can the Mup­pets con­tin­ue to go on?’ We had decid­ed that we want­ed to make a go of it but I don’t think we real­ly knew for sure if it was possible.”

Join­ing the Hen­son Com­pa­ny in 1978, Whit­mire was faced with the tricky job of inher­it­ing the Mup­pets’ icon­ic green leader upon the request of Jim’s son Bri­an. Writ­ten by long-time Mup­pet writer and col­lab­o­ra­tor Jer­ry Juhl and direct­ed by Hen­son Jr, The Mup­pet Christ­mas Car­ol marked the first time Whit­mire would per­form Ker­mit to the world at large – and he con­tin­ued to play the char­ac­ter until leav­ing the com­pa­ny back in 2017.

“Jerry’s script was essen­tial­ly straight out of the book. It real­ly is Charles Dick­ens’ words,” remem­bers Whit­mire. By cast­ing Gonzo (Dave Goelz) as Dick­ens him­self, Juhl was able to inject a sur­pris­ing amount of Dick­ens’ prose into this Mup­pety take on a lit­er­ary clas­sic. ​“Jer­ry was Jim’s head writer on many projects and he added lots of lit­tle touch­es, like Gonzo and Rizzo’s silli­ness. It was Jer­ry who came up with the idea of Gonzo play­ing Charles Dick­ens nar­rat­ing the sto­ry. I think that’s why it’s con­sid­ered such a faith­ful version.”

Mean­while, Henson’s deci­sion to cast his pup­pet per­form­ers as key Christ­mas Car­ol char­ac­ters (Ker­mit became Bob Cratchit, Fozzie Bear Scrooge’s boss Fozzi­wig, Statler and Wal­dorf played dou­bled up as Mar­ley & Mar­ley) swapped typ­i­cal Mup­pet par­o­dy for unex­pect­ed integri­ty. To top things off, screen icon Michael Caine kept things frosty as the cold-heart­ed Ebe­neez­er Scrooge, with his ded­i­ca­tion to play­ing it dead­ly seri­ous per­fect­ly coun­ter­bal­anc­ing all the Mup­pet zani­ness. Still, for Whit­mire, the task of becom­ing Ker­mit still loomed large in his mind.

“It was daunt­ing,” he read­i­ly admits. ​“I’d done so many projects with the mup­pets for so many years, we were like this reper­to­ry com­pa­ny and very fam­i­ly-like. The oth­er per­form­ers were there as I was try­ing to do this and most didn’t real­ly give me a lot of point­ers; they under­stood the pres­sure of try­ing to take on this real­ly well-known char­ac­ter – they sort of sat on the side­lines and let me learn it,” recalls Whit­mire. ​“One very valu­able piece of advice I got was from Frank Oz. He was still per­form­ing Miss Pig­gy, Fozzie Bear and all the char­ac­ters he always did. He said: ​‘You already know how to be a pup­peteer and you’ve done your own char­ac­ters but when you’re try­ing to be Ker­mit, you first have to be Jim.’”

As a result, the years Whit­mire had spent watch­ing Hen­son work became an invalu­able tool that he could call upon when try­ing to embody this very famil­iar frog. ​“I was always there when Jim was doing Ker­mit. There was a cer­tain stance he took when he did the char­ac­ter and a face that he made when he did Ker­mit. He’d frown when he talked and Ker­mit start­ed to come out. Know­ing what parts of Jim he put into Ker­mit and what parts real­ly weren’t in Ker­mit was key. I always say Ker­mit was the most opti­mistic, ide­al­is­tic and best part of Jim.” All this came in handy, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing his debut per­for­mance was Ker­mit play­ing anoth­er char­ac­ter: ​“It’s me, try­ing to be faith­ful to Jim being Ker­mit, being Bob Cratchit,” he chuck­les. ​“There’s three or four dif­fer­ent lay­ers to it.”

Of course, hav­ing Michael Caine act oppo­site helped: ​“He’s one of the most accom­plished actors on the plan­et and a ter­rif­ic, approach­able per­son to work with. I was in my ear­ly 30s and had been doing pup­petry for around 14 years but to real­ly sink my teeth into the per­for­mance of Jim being Ker­mit being Cratchit against Michael Caine was amaz­ing,” smiles Whit­mire. ​“The way he played it so straight came into play with how I tried to bring this world to Ker­mit. Kermit’s play­ing the role very straight as well. He’s not being sil­ly – he’s just Kermit.”

As with any Mup­pet movie, the film con­tained a num­ber of scenes designed to push the artistry of pup­petry to new lev­els. ​“One of the big scenes was Ker­mit walk­ing down the street singing with his nephew Robin on his shoul­der. That was extreme­ly com­pli­cat­ed yet sim­ple in the way it had to be done,” explains Whit­mire. ​“To see Kem­rit believ­ably tak­ing steps down the road as a prac­ti­cal pup­pet, we had to build this spe­cial rig which was a giant drum. That was the ground, and we used blue screens – because you can’t use Ker­mit on green,” he laughs. ​“As the feet are tak­ing steps, the wheel is turn­ing so it looks like he’s walk­ing down the street. The guy turn­ing the drum had to be exact­ly in time with Ker­mit so if he does a lit­tle dance step, it had to stop a lit­tle bit. It’s sim­ple but com­pli­cat­ed to fig­ure out. These days you could prob­a­bly do it in Final Cut Pro on your com­put­er – but it was very com­pli­cat­ed at the time.”

For the movie’s many mem­o­rable songs, Hen­son returned to Paul Williams, the com­pos­er respon­si­ble for some of the Mup­pets most icon­ic musi­cal num­bers, includ­ing Rain­bow Con­nec­tion. ​“Paul had worked with Jim back in the ear­ly days and real­ly got a sense of Jim’s influ­ence and how to keep that a part of their char­ac­ters through the lyrics they’re singing.”

Work­ing with Paul dur­ing the pre-record of these tracks also helped Whit­mire per­fect his take on Ker­mit: ​“When it’s just the bare voice, it’s got to be the best it can be. My voice was nev­er exact­ly Jim’s but it was based strong­ly on it and Paul was real­ly instru­men­tal in dialling that in for me which set me up to feel great about going in to do dia­logue on set. I’m glad I had that expe­ri­ence and I think the music is just won­der­ful,” smiles Whit­mire. “‘One More Sleep ​‘Till Christ­mas’ is all based around Paul and his chil­dren. He’s a very inno­cent fel­low and it worked well with the depth of these characters.”

Pro­duc­tion aside, being back on a Mup­pet movie proved to be a restora­tive process for a tal­ent­ed crew whose unusu­al day jobs had helped to forge close-knit, fam­i­ly-like bonds. With Bri­an Hen­son guid­ing the ship, there was a dis­tinct feel­ing of hope under­pin­ning the whole process — with his father’s pres­ence felt every step of the way. ​“It was joy­ful,” smiles Whit­mire, warm­ly remem­ber­ing the expe­ri­ence. ​“It was the group back togeth­er and it was a hope­ful time. Some­thing that I’ve always loved about my time with the Mup­pets was the cama­raderie. We real­ly were a team of peo­ple who cared about each oth­er and the work.”

While the absence of their leader was sore­ly felt, at times, pro­duc­tion on The Mup­pet Christ­mas Car­ol almost felt like a ther­a­peu­tic process for those involved: ​“The scene with Bob Cratchit and his fam­i­ly around the table talk­ing about Tiny Tim? All that emo­tion­al stuff played into where we were with the griev­ing process with Jim,” he reveals. ​“It was less than two years after his death and here we were. When­ev­er Ker­mit was on screen, we all thought of Jim. It was bit­ter­sweet and because we could feel the emo­tion of that, it gave us all the con­fi­dence that what we were doing was working.”

Thir­ty years lat­er, the love that fuelled the cre­ation of The Mup­pet Christ­mas Car­ol is clear­ly vis­i­ble with every fes­tive revis­it and sea­son­al repeat. ​“I’ve heard so many peo­ple say that it got them through some real­ly tough times in their lives,” reveals Whit­mire, pon­der­ing the film’s cul­tur­al impact. ​“The sto­ry itself is just as impor­tant and poignant as ever. It’s about the impor­tance of treat­ing peo­ple as you’d like to be treat­ed,” he says. ​“In many ways, this film was proof to us all that we could con­tin­ue the Mup­pets with­out Jim being here.”