Jim Henson

James Maury Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer, creative producer, filmmaker and director who achieved worldwide notability as the creator of the Muppets. Henson was also well known for creating Fraggle Rock (1983–1987) and as the director of The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986), as well as creating the Muppets for Sesame Street (1969–present).

Born in Greenville, Mississippi, and raised in both Leland, Mississippi, and University Park, Maryland, Henson began developing puppets in high school. He created Sam and Friends (1955–1961), a short-form comedy television program on WRC-TV, while he was a freshman at the University of Maryland, College Park, in collaboration with fellow student Jane Nebel. Henson and Nebel co-founded Muppets, Inc. – now The Jim Henson Company – in 1958, and married less than a year later in 1959. Henson graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in home economics.

In 1969, Henson joined the children's television program Sesame Street (1969–present) where he helped to develop Muppet characters for the series. He and his creative team also appeared on the first season of the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (1975–present). He produced the sketch comedy television series The Muppet Show (1976–1981) during this period. Henson revolutionized the way puppetry is captured and presented in video media, and he won fame for his characters – particularly Kermit the Frog, Rowlf the Dog, and the characters on Sesame Street. During the later years of his life, he founded the Jim Henson Foundation and Jim Henson's Creature Shop. He won the Emmy Award twice for his involvement in The Storyteller (1987–1988) and The Jim Henson Hour (1989).

Henson died in New York City from toxic shock syndrome caused by Streptococcus pyogenes. At the time of his death, he was in negotiations to sell his company to The Walt Disney Company, but talks fell through after his death. He was posthumously awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1991, and was named a Disney Legend in 2011.

James Maury Henson was born on September 24, 1936, in Greenville, Mississippi, the younger of two children of Betty Marcella (née Brown, 1904–1972) and Paul Ransom Henson Sr. (1904–1994), an agronomist for the United States Department of Agriculture. His elder brother, Paul, Jr, died in a car crash on April 15, 1956. Jim was raised as a Christian Scientist and spent his early childhood in nearby Leland, Mississippi, before moving with his family to University Park, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., in the late 1940s and later to Bethesda, Maryland. He remembered the arrival of the family's first television as "the biggest event of his adolescence", being heavily influenced by radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and the early television puppets of Burr Tillstrom on Kukla, Fran and Ollie and Bil and Cora Baird. He remained a Christian Scientist at least into his twenties, when he taught Sunday school, but he wrote to a Christian Science church in the early 1970s to inform them that he was no longer a practicing member.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia.