Jerry Juhl

Although he would eventually become head writer of The Muppet Show, Jerry Juhl was hired to replace Jane Henson as a performer and general factotum. "I met Jim Henson in 1961. By then, the Muppets already had a cult following with a reputation for bizarre, slightly dangerous comedy. Yet Jim seemed so utterly normal. He had driven across the country in a shiny new station wagon with his wife, Jane, and baby Lisa. They looked as average and suburban as actors in a Chevrolet commercial.
After a while, Jim asked me to come see his puppets. We walked out to the station wagon. He unlocked the tailgate and opened a large black box. The things he brought out of that box seemed to me to be magical presences, like totums-but funnier: an angry creature whose whole body was a rounded triangle; a purple skull named Yorick; a green froglike thing. One after the other, Jim pulled them from the box, put them on his hand, and brought them to life. Who was this Henson guy? These things weren't even puppets-not as I had ever seen or defined them. This guy was like a sailor who had studied the cumpass and found that there was a fifth direction in which one could sail. When he offered me a berth on the ship, I signed on."

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