The Englishman behind the Muppets
Media mogul brought the original show — among many other hits — to television
The Muppets are back. Exactly 65 years since Jim Henson’s furry funsters made their TV debut, Henson’s beloved creatures return with a new Disney series, Muppets Now.
Admittedly, it’s a slightly hohum return, with lots of Zoom calls and Youtube trimmings to appeal to a younger audience.
It’s certainly a far cry from the glorious highs of The Muppet Show (1976-81), the acme of popular entertainment that was adored by adults and children alike. That particular success was thanks to a Jewish Russian immigrant from the slums of London’s East End — Lew Grade, the media mogul, impresario and all-around cigar-chomping inventor of popular TV.
“The Muppet Show was a huge risk,” recalls Anita Land, Grade’s niece and a leading TV talent agent.
“There hadn’t been anything like it before, but Uncle Lew took a punt and it became his pet project. Broadcasters simply don’t take gambles like that any more.”
In 1975, Grade approached Henson, the American puppeteer, to help realize his dream. He had noticed that the Muppets had been popping up on other shows and knew they deserved a vehicle of their own.
“Jim Henson and Frank Oz got on with Uncle Lew like a house on fire,” recalls Land.
“The Muppets appealed to him on every level — it was transatlantic, it was for families, it was funny, it had music, dance and big stars. Out of all his many programs, it sums up Uncle Lew’s approach to TV best.”
Grade persuaded Henson to make the show at his studios and let him syndicate it internationally. Richard Holloway, the former Thames TV and Fremantle Media boss whose prolific production credits include Simon Cowell’s talent shows, began his career aged 17 in Grade’s mailroom. “Every day at 7 a.m., we’d smell Lew coming down the corridor,” he recalls. He’d tip out the mail sacks and look for anything with an American stamp because it might be a letter from Jim Henson or one of Lew’s other Hollywood contacts.”
Grade promoted him rapidly and Holloway spent five years working with the Muppets.
“I made all 120 shows,” says Holloway. “The genius of it was the puppets, obviously, but also the writing. It could be childlike but also sophisticated. Some of the humour went way over the kids’ heads. It was The Simpsons of its day in that way.”
Grade first experienced show business from the performance side. He was crowned world Charleston champion at the Royal Albert Hall in 1926, with no less than Fred Astaire among the judges. He turned professional and was signed up by Joe Collins, the talent agent father of Jackie and Joan. Nicknamed The Dancer with Humorous Feet, his trademark routine was an ultrafast Charleston danced on a small, precarious table.
After the war, he went into business with youngest brother, Leslie. By 1948, the Grade Organization had become Britain’s biggest talent agency. After bidding for a broadcast franchise, Grade became the managing director of Associated Television (ATV), the country’s first commercially financed TV company.
He first cracked the U.S. market with The Adventures of Robin Hood, which cannily utilized scriptwriters who had been blacklisted under Mccarthyism. This was followed by Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation shows such as Thunderbirds, then live-action dramas The Saint, The Avengers and The Prisoner — thrilling, tongue-in-cheek adventures that were larger-than-life, just like Grade himself.
Against all odds and via sheer force of personality, the boy born Louis Winogradsky had become the dominant figure in British independent TV. He was knighted in 1969 and made a life peer in 1976. His philosophy was “to give people pleasure after a hard day’s work,” adding proudly: “My tastes are the tastes of the average person throughout the world.”
He died in 1998, days short of his 92nd birthday.
“Uncle Lew was the last of a breed but he left an amazing legacy,” Land said. “Nobody else had that longevity or versatility. People still talk about him, still talk about his shows. His fingerprints can be seen all over the TV schedules.”