A candid moment between David Bowie and his look-alike stuntman Nick Gillard on the set of ‘Labyrinth.’
 
As Halloween approaches I’ve become more and more convinced that this year will bring a cavalcade of David Bowie fans dressed as various personas developed by the Thin White Duke over his long career. Even yours truly is planning on “becoming Bowie” on October 31st and I’m so committed to my quest to look like Aladdin Sane that I’m planning on dying my hair bright red for the occasion. Now that’s dedication.

My month long homage to all things Halloween also includes watching as many horror films that I can fit into a 31-day period (which isn’t a huge departure as I’m actually a year-round die-hard horror film fan) and this year it seemed fitting to throw one of my favorite films into the mix: David Bowie as the unforgettable villain “Jareth” in the 1986 flick Labyrinth. Originally director Jim Henson was seriously considering at other musicians for the role—Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson and Sting (as well as David Lee Roth and Roger Daltrey)—that would ultimately go to Bowie. Henson also gave thought to the idea that the Goblin King should be played by one of his Muppets. According to folklore it came down to Jackson and Bowie and after receiving a handwritten letter penned from Henson along with an early version of the Labyrinth script Bowie became convinced that he should take the role.

As with other movies that have achieved the cult status that Labyrinth has, there’s a fair amount of great behind-the-scenes legends associated with the film. Such as the use of juggler Michael Moschen who was responsible for helping Bowie make it look easy to twirl a crystal ball, and actor Toby Froud who played adorable infant kidnapping victim “Toby” (and the bane of Jennifer Connelly’s teenage existence). Fround actually grew up to be a puppeteer of sorts himself, a natural move as his father Brian Froud was responsible for contributing to the design of the set and the inhabitants of both Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. 

Of course if you are of a certain age then you may even remember the massive marketing campaign that produced oddities such as Labyrinth-themed bubble gum (tastes like Hoggle?), a talking door knocker, and a bizarre hot pink phone card (released in Japan) with Bowie and Jennifer Connolly on the front. There was even a sweet belt based on the film that sadly never made it past the prototype phase made by Lee Jeans. The 80s were so goddamn weird and wonderful, weren’t they?

And now to the point of this post which is to show you some fantastic behind-the-scenes photos captured during the filming of Labyrinth (which celebrated its 30th anniversary this past summer) especially ones of our departed hero who has perhaps inspired your Halloween costume this year. In other good news, a new nearly 200 page book Labyrinth: The Ultimate Visual History promises to take an exhaustively detailed look at every aspect of the film from rare artwork, concept sketches and equally rare photos taken on the set. You can pre-order it here. So in lieu of what wonders the book will reveal I hope you enjoy looking through the images in this post as well as a video of Bowie as “Jareth” and juggler Michael Moschen trying to make Bowie look like he can do mystical things with crystal balls that follows.
 

David Bowie as ‘Jareth (aka, ‘The Goblin King’ the star of the 1986 film, ‘Labyrinth.
 

Jareth and ‘Baby Toby.’
 

35mm contact sheet from ‘Labyrinth.
 
More after the jump…

 
Although most people would associate “Mah Nà Mah Nà” with The Muppets or Sesame Street, this iconic song that’s been sung by children the world over for nearly half a century actually originates from a racy 1968 Italian softcore “mondo” documentary called Sweden: Heaven and Hell.
 

 
The film, which has scenes of swingers parties, nude beaches, porn films and lesbian nightclubs—and even a scene of drug addicts huffing gasoline and eating shoe polish on bread to get high—used the song in the context of its camera ogling several towel-clad blondes cavorting in a sauna giving the scene a comic “leering” quality when a few of them drop their towels and decide to frolic in the snow (because that’s what nude Swedish ladies apparently used to do back then).
 

 
Italian cinema composer Piero Umiliani’s original soundtrack score—or at least one number—“Mah Nà Mah Nà”—took on a separate life when it became a novelty hit, reaching #55 on the Billboard singles chart in October of 1969. (It would eventually reach #8 on the British singles chart in 1977. It’s been covered by the likes of the Dave Pell Singers, Tom Jones, Giorgio Moroder, Goldie Hawn, Nancy Sinatra in her Vegas act and there’s even a Moog version.)
 

 
The song was also associated with both Benny Hill and Red Skelton, then it was adopted by bearded hippy puppeteer Jim Henson. The beatnik Muppet character who would become known as “Mahna Mahna” debuted on Nov. 30, 1969, on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Read more after the jump….

 
In 1963 Jim Henson‘s resume consisted almost entirely of six years at a Washington, D.C., television show called Sam and Friends. In 1963 that experience paid off, as he roped in a pretty sweet deal for Bell System—or “Ma Bell,” as the nationwide telephone company was known before the Justice Dept. broke it up into regional companies in 1984. Bell commissioned two movies for use at a Bell Data Communications Seminar, which AT&T later described as “elite seminars.”

The first movie, “Robot,” clocks in at a tidy 3 minutes and 18 seconds and focuses exclusively on the eponymous and humorous automaton, which Tara McGinley, in one of my favorite DM headlines, called an “angry, flatulent robot.” Spot on.

Typical of the movie’s humor is this introductory statement made by the robot:

“The machine possesses supreme intelligence, a faultless memory, and a beautiful soul. Correction: the machine does not have a soul. It has no bothersome emotions. While mere mortals wallow in a sea of emotionalism, the machine is busy digesting vast oceans of information in a single, all-encompassing gulp.”

The second movie, “Charlie Magnetico,” is twice as long and, I daresay, twice as funny. “Charlie Magnetico” uses the same robot used in “Robot” (albeit in a less flatulent mode) while also branching out to include comic footage of a rocket ship exploding as well as entire family of employees called the Magneticos—the humor here residing mainly in the idea that an entire multi-continental supply chain could be administered from a single shack in the woods. Playing Charlie Magnetico as well as his mother was Henson’s first hire, Jerry Juhl, whom Henson later credited with “developing much of the humor and character of his Muppets.”

More after the jump…

 
Before breaking into the big time with Sesame Street, Jim Henson was an aspiring art house weirdo who counted among his early work, Time Piece, a brilliant surrealist, Oscar-nominated short and Youth 68 a probing documentary on 60’s youth culture featuring such high profile names as The Mamas and the Papas and Jefferson Airplane. Perhaps most unexpectedly, Henson also took a crack at experimental theater (as director, co-writer and producer) with the psychologically intense teleplay The Cube, in 1969. The hour-long performance was featured on NBC Experiment in Television, and ran only a few months before Sesame Street took over his career.

The Cube centers on an unnamed man who is inexplicably trapped in a white room with a grid overlay, from which there is no obvious escape. Despite this, a nonsensical assortment of characters keep making entrances and exits, providing little to no information or sympathy for the man’s predicament, (perhaps most cynically, a holy man who bestows upon him a useless religious relic). After being subjected to a parade of increasingly surreal characters (at some point gorilla suits make an appearance—a trope also explored in Time Piece), our protagonist becomes desperate and attempts suicide.

Suddenly he is escorted from his maddening prison and in a heart-breaking attempt at solipsistic reasoning, he believes that even in this nightmare world, he knows he exists. An accidental cut with a knife however, produces only strawberry jam for blood (jam is a theme throughout the play), and the man is suddenly back in his psychological prison. Disheartened, he sits back down, apparently defeated by the Cube.

The Cube stars veteran character actor Dick Schaal, a face seen frequently on 70s television, especially shows produced by Mary Tyler Moore’s MTM production company (he was married to Rhoda‘s Valerie Harper for many years). Schaal played “Chuckles the Clown” in one of the most famous episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show—the one where she starts laughing at his funeral—and was a Second City alum. He died last month at the age of 86.
 

 
On Thanksgiving Day 1971—that would have been November 25—Dick Cavett featured Jim Henson and the Muppets on his ABC talk show. Indeed, they very nearly took the show over. The Muppets had recently become famous through the popular PBS educational program Sesame Street, but Henson wasn’t well known at this time; Cavett and Henson both remark on this. So it’s quite possible that this 90-minute show represented Henson’s proper introduction to the American people.
 

Kermit the Frog and Jim Henson
 
For anyone who is fond of the Muppets, the show is simply a delight. Henson is there, as is Frank Oz, Jerry Nelson and Caroll Spinney as the puppeteers and voice actors. More to the point, all of your favorite Sesame Street characters are there, including Kermit, Grover, Ernie & Bert, Cookie Monster, Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, as well as a whole bunch of other ones that are more ad hoc. The gang was there to promote The Muppet Alphabet Album as well as a TV special called The Frog Prince.

If you’ve ever wanted to see Henson and Oz show exactly how modular these puppets are by putting one through his paces (he becomes at least three different characters in just a few moments through the manipulation of eyes and headwear, Mr. Potato-style), this is the video for you. Kermit sings a song in drag (I swear to god this is true); well, just like any true drag queen, Kermit lipsyncs, in this case to Rosemary Clooney’s rendition of Lerner and Loewe’s “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face” from My Fair Lady. Actually, that number turns out to be a little bit gruesome!
 

Kermit and some of his relatives
 
We get to meet a few Fraggles and a huge muppet named Thog. The Cookie Monster devours one of Cavett’s boom mics and then says, “The microphones on the Carson show—blech!” Grover tries to read the cue card to segue to an impending commercial but then admits he can’t actually read. My favorite bit of all involves Ernie and Bert. Ernie convinces Bert to talk more like a know-it-all hepcat because after all, they’re not on educational TV anymore, they’ve hit the big time of national TV on ABC! So of course by the time Cavett is ready for them, Ernie has shed his shades and beret and Bert is left looking like an insincere phony, which irks Bert no end. We also get a nice rendition of the “Mahna Mahna” song.
 

Dick Cavett and Thog
 
In addition to everything else, Cavett provided Henson with a forum to show off a fair number of his non-Muppet pieces, including “Youth 68” and a handful of Sesame Street shorts. Here’s a rough list of the segments; these are taken from the YouTube “About” sections but I’ve pruned the commercials away from the list:
 

1. Intro, Dick is comforted by Thog.

2. “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face,” interview with Jim Henson, scenes from The Frog Prince
3. interview with Jim Henson, scenes from The Frog Prince
4. “Mahna Mahna,” more chat with Jim Henson and Muppets, Thog sings “Three Little Fishies”

5. Cookie Monster interview
6. Big Bird sings “Very Special Letter” (about the letter V)

7. Puppeteers interview, P Is My Favorite Letter, Oscar interview

8. Bert and Ernie
9. Grover interview

10. Demonstration of an anything Muppet, Sesame Street inserts, Bossman
11. Kermit Love interview

12. Visual Thinking

13. Jim Henson talks about film editing and shows a scene from Youth 68
14. Jim Henson shows a clip called “Susanne” and a scene from “Time Piece”

15. Glow Worm, Jim Henson talks about how Muppets work

16. Sesame Street merch plug, credits

 
The episode is broken up into six different videos—we’ve embedded the first, the other five shouldn’t be hard to find.
 

 
via Classic Television Showbiz
 

 
In this clip from Jim Henson’s short-lived 1989 series, The Ghost of Faffner Hall—about a music conservatory run by a man who hates music—Thomas Dolby tries explaining how a synthesizer works with the help of a matchbox and a very dizzy fly.
 

 
Jim Henson made “Wheels That Go” for a film contest at Montreal’s Expo ‘67 featuring his three-year-old son Brian and a wild electronic score by the great Raymond Scott (who is credited here as “Ramond” due to a bummer of a typo).

The short film explores motion, basically. In cars, across bridges, in NYC, on trains… Brian looks at wheels, rides on them and plays with them. I don’t know what else to say about it. It’s only a minute long. Just hit play.
 

Bert & Ernie, together since 1969

The Jim Henson Company has severed their partnership with fast food chain Chick-Fil-A. The company’s “Creature Shop” toys are being given away with kid’s meals, but that’s coming to an end, due to Chick-Fil-A’s conservative Christian President-CEO Dan Cathy’s anti-gay public statements.

The Jim Henson Company posted this statement to their Facebook page:

The Jim Henson Company has celebrated and embraced diversity and inclusiveness for over fifty years and we have notified Chick-Fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors. Lisa Henson, our CEO is personally a strong supporter of gay marriage and has directed us to donate the payment we received from Chick-Fil-A to GLAAD.

The comments are fascinating.

Meanwhile Boston mayor Tom Menino has publicly stated his opposition to a Chick-Fil-A opening in Beantown. It’s not like a mayor can single-handedly decree something like this, but Menino can make damn sure that opening the Boston branch of Chick-Fil-A is a very, very slow and expensive process for Dan Cathy and his crew.

Not eating at a Chick-Fil-A is an easy way to send a message that this kind of thing won’t be tolerated in your community, either. Why give Truett and Dan Cathy your money to fight marriage equality? Bigotry = bad business. It’s time Chick-Fil-A’s stockholders and franchise owners realize this and kick Dan Cathy to the curb. He’s a PR disaster.

 
Another curio from the Jim Henson vaults, this time the audition tape of a 14-year-old Jennifer Connelly for the 1986 cult classic Labyrinth. You gotta admit Connelly totally nails this audition, selling the action with her own reactions when there is literally nothing there. When he speaks near the end, you can tell Jim Henson is impressed:
 

 
An interesting curio from the back catalog of the Jim Henson estate here - the first ever (pilot) episode of The Muppet Show, which was recorded late in 1974 for broadcast in 1975. From the Muppets wikia:

The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence aired on ABC on March 19, 1975, and was shot on December 10-16, 1974.

It was one of the two pilots produced for The Muppet Show. The other pilot, The Muppets Valentine Show, aired in 1974.

In this half-hour variety special, the Muppets parody the proliferation of sex and violence on television.

Subtitled “An End to Sex & Violence,” this first ever episode of the world’s favourite puppet theatre seems a bit racy for a supposed family audience. However, watching this pilot it’s clear that Henson and co. were aiming for a more adult-orientated, risqué edge to the material, akin to the sketches they provided in the very early years of Saturday Night Live (and which were deemed, in the end, not to work.)

Obviously some more fine tuning was needed on this material before it became the international hit we all know and love. Not least a honing of the format and pacing of the show. This early version is a lot more fast-moving, with quicker cuts between multiple sketches, which we return to numerous times. The show had also yet to make musical numbers its main focus, perhaps explaining the later decision to constrain the sketches to single slots allowed to play out in full.

That’s not the only thing that’s disconcertingly different though: the usual Muppet Show host Kermit is relegated to just a bit part, even though by this stage he had become well known through appearances on Sesame Street. Sam the Eagle has a lot of screen time, and an early variant on Miss Piggy makes a brief appearance.

The main presenting duties go to a humanoid Muppet called Nigel, who is backed up by right hand man by Floyd Pepper, better known as the bass player in Dr Teeth’s Electric Mayhem and the popular character Janice’s main squeeze. The main Muppets’ to-camera addresses are a lot more knowing and audience-literate than Kermit’s let’s-get-this-show-on-the-road style, again hinting at the influence of a more grown-up, hip comedy aesthetic influenced by Lorne Michaels and even Monty Python.

Still, flawed as it may be, this is well worth a watch for Muppet fans and even the more curious viewer. Below is part one, while parts two and three are after the jump:
 

 
The Muppet Show: Sex & Violence Parts 2 & 3 after the jump…

 
These two delightful behind the scenes videos from The Muppet Show were generously posted by an ATV cameraman who worked on the program named John O’Brien.

In the first clip, we see what The Muppet Show would have been like had they used real-life actors—well, at least the crew members—instead of puppets. Not quite the same, is it?

A little bit of fun by the crew recorded at the end of the first series/season of The Muppet Show in 1976 (I joined ATV in 1977 during Season 2) ... I am not sure who was responsible for putting this together (I suspect Peter Harris had an input) but I’m sure someone will tell me.

The cast includes Peter Harris, Richard Holloway, Jim O’Donnell, Brian Grant, Steve Springford, Jerry Hoare, Phil Hawkes, Gerry Elms, John Rook, Martin Baker, Sue Boyers, Francis Essex, Dennis Bassinger, David Chandler, Bryan Holgate, Peter Milic, Claude Walters and the ladies from the Canteen.

 
And then there’s the second video, which is also pretty amazing:

A behind the scenes glimpse of the Muppet Show on it’s last day of recording at the Elstree Television Studios in 1980 on which I was privileged to work as a Cameraman.

Featured is Jim Henson and Frank Oz who were the main inspiration and creative forces behind the show. Narrated by Peter Harris, one of the two directors on the show … it mostly reveals crew and cast having a very silly day as everyone said their final farewells. Richard Holloway (now Executive Producer on “The X Factor”) had been the Senior Floor Manager for the duration and it was probably inevitable that he became the victim of the flan flingers … he took it in great spirits.

This last day in Studio D was the culmination of 5 years work, fun and laughter on what was arguably the most successful Children’s Programme in the world at the time, having been sold to some 110 countries … it was the end of an era for many and the Muppets have gone on to become truly iconic.

 
Via Nerdcore

 
Seldom-seen short film by Jim Henson from the AT&T archives:
 

Jim Henson made this film in 1963 for The Bell System. Specifically, it was made for an elite seminar given for business owners, on the then-brand-new topic — Data Communications.

 
(via Nerdcore and Submitterator )

 
Before there was CGI, there was Jim Henson’s animatronics masterpiece The Dark Crystal. I remember seeing this as a little kid and totally having my mind blown with all the fantastic creatures, detailed sets and elaborate costumes. This 1982 behind-the-scenes documentary on the film shows just how much hard work and dedication was used in making this cult classic.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Cable gets synopsis of ‘The Dark Crystal’ very, very wrong

Parts II and III after the jump…

 
Creepy is an understatement considering there’s a scene where Miss Piggy’s “lifeless” body is poked and prodded in a lake. Here’s little bit about the unaired pilot via Wikipedia:

The Orson Welles Show was an unsold television talk show pilot. It has never been broadcast or released. Filming began in September 1978 and the project was completed around February 1979. […] Welles interviewed Burt Reynolds (taking several questions from the audience,) Jim Henson and Frank Oz, and performed two magic tricks assisted by Angie Dickinson. Several of The Muppets were featured in taped segments, including Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo the Great and Animal.

Update: A Dangerous Minds reader points out the dead Muppet scenes are from a Late Night with Conan O’Brien sketch. Thanks for the heads-up, Meaning_of! 

 
(via Nerdcore)

 
Jim Henson’s test pilot of Johnny Hart’s Wizard of Id strip from 1969. If this was pitched again in 2011, the “class war” humor would be more in tune with the times, eh?
 

 
Via Classic Television Showbiz