Main performers of silent characters

[minor muppetz]

Has anybody ever noticed that there have been quite a few minor Muppet characters who talk a lot (whenever they do appear), but don't have any consistent performers, yet there are also a lot of characters who are normally quiet, and their performers are pretty much consistent (at least if the performer isn't busy performing somebody else)? I don't know if there were ever any rules that restricted others from performing these characters who rarely talk, but among these quiet characters with regular performers are:
*Rizzo the Rat (during his Muppet Show days)
*Lips
*Foo-Foo
*Muppy
*Gaffer
*Nigel (I guess he would count as a normally silent character, even back when John Lovelady was his performer)
*Sully
*Barkley
*Wolfgang the Seal
*Bruno
*Slimey (who didn't talk until the late 1990s)

I wonder what this deal is. Normally, if any of these characters are not performed by their performer, it's during big crowd sceens that feature as many Muppet characters as possible. Dave Goelz is often officially listed as Muppy's performer, but in the Twiggy episode, Mupy and Gonzo both appear together. At first I thought Dave might have been performing both characters at once, but then Gonzo did move one of his arms in that scene (unless another performer was operating Gonzo's arm while Dave performed two bodies).

It seems like it's rare for Rizzo, Lips, and Foo-Foo to even be seen togetehr. In the Gene Kely episode, Rizzo and Foo-Foo are both seen backstage. Foo-Foo was on Gafer's usual perch, while Rizzo was on the bottom floor. I don't think Steve Whitmire would have been able to perform both characters at the same time under these circumstances (unless his arms are really long). And in The Great Mupet Caper, there are at least two shots where Lips and Rizzo both appear in a big group scene. One is at the end of the Happiness Hotel song, the other is when Miss Piggy crashes her motorcycle into the Mallory Gallery and defeats Nicky. In both scene, Lips is in the back while Rizzo is up front. It would be hard for one person to perform both characters in such a scene, unless he had long arms and was able to stretch out his arms among many other puppeteer arms and have the two characters well-balanced instead of looking crooked. Interestingly, at the end of The Great Mupet Caper, when the characters are on the airplane, Lips is sitting right next to a rat, but it's a generic rat, not Rizzo.

 

[Skekayuk]

I think some of it, at least where Lips, Foo Foo, Rizzo, and Gaffer are concerned might be something to do with both how experienced their regular performers were at the time, and whether they were actually comfortable with speaking parts.
How many of the "quiet" characters had regular performers who were lacking in experience? and how many of the major speaking characters are in the hands of longstanding performers?

It is quite well documented, in an interview somewhere (I can't remember where) that in his early days Steve Whitmire was quite shy, and although already a brilliant puppeteer, he found doing speaking roles quite hard, perhaps a lack of confidence in doing them.
Kathyrn Mullen was quite an inexperienced puppeteer at that time, even if she was one of TMS Eight, and thus Gaffer might have been more a character to give her experience of puppeteering a regular character. You may note that similarly, Annie Sue, although she does have a few speaking scenes, most of her vocal moments are when she is singing. This perhaps is also partly a reflection on Louise Gold's inexperience as a puppeteer (except that Louise is such a great singer, they just HAD to make use of her singing talents).

 

[Punch'n'Judy]

It is quite well documented, in an interview somewhere (I can't remember where) that in his early days Steve Whitmire was quite shy, and although already a brilliant puppeteer, he found doing speaking roles quite hard, perhaps a lack of confidence in doing them.

Jim said the same about Frank Oz.

 

[minor muppetz]

It's odd that Louise Gold would have more singing roles than puppeteering roles. By 1977 I don't think Jim Henson would have hired somebody for the Muppets who only performed voices of Muppets.

I wonder when Richard Hunt started to become really comfortable/ experienced with speaking parts. Sully was introduced in 1973, and Richard Hunt first performed with the Muppets in the 1970 special The Great Santa Claus Switch (and even performed some voices), but didn't become a regular performer until a few years later (Jim Henson: The Works says that he first joiend the company in 1972, which is the year where he was first credited on Sesame Street). I wonder if Sully's silence was because of Richard's inexperience.

Barkley has been performed by multiple performers, but only one of them, Brian Muehl, had other recurring characters. The others pretty much only performed Barkley, and probably some background stuff. Fred "Garbo" Garver's page at Muppet Wiki has a redlink for another Sesame Street character he performed, Garbo Gorillia, but I don't know anything about him. I asked about that character on Fred "Garbo" Garver's talk page, but I don't think anybody's provided any answers yet on how the character is even known.

 

[Skekayuk]

It's odd that Louise Gold would have more singing roles than puppeteering roles. By 1977 I don't think Jim Henson would have hired somebody for the Muppets who only performed voices of Muppets.

That isn't quite what I meant. Of course Louise Gold puppeteers a lot, even in her early days on TMS. Her character's are usually in the musical numbers (and with the notable exception of 'Carbon Paper' she puppeteers them. But it's noticeable that in those Season II and III shows her character's tend to be a bit stiff, compared to the others. She never "only did voices", (despite having never really done it before) she even puppeteered quite a bit even in her audition (I am sure you are right that Jim Henson wouldn't have hired her otherwise). In fact the 'TV Times' 'Look-In' interview in 1978 makes it quite clear that she very quickly progressed from being voices and "just an extra pair of hands" to having her own charcters to puppeteer (particularly Annie Sue). You can often spot her puppeteering )because of her being left-handed) But she was inexperienced, and I reckon that sometimes limited what she was able to do as a puppeteer on TMS. Thus although she performed her own distinct characters, they were often kept very in the background, except sometimes when they were singing. All I'm saying is that the characters she performed on TMS tend to sing more than speak. This would probably have been easier on her, since singing tended to be pre-recorded, so that on set a performer would only have to worry about the actually puppeteering on set, rather than consider the character's lines.
Of course as a puppeteer her work always seems to have thrived on being "thrown in the deep end", first on TMS (where she had to learn her craft on the job), and later on Spitting Image (where she was initially Leading Puppeteer).

 

[minor muppetz]

That makes sense. From what I sometimes read fans say about Louise Gold it sounds as if she's normally only a background/ extra puppeteer or only a vocal performer but never both.

I started to wonder what would have happened if Frank Oz regularly performed a major silent character. If he had a main silent character, would he have stopped performing that character after becomming a busy director, with the character getting a new performer? After all, Henson and Sesame Workshop wouldn't need to go through the trouble of scheduling him to perform somebody who doesn't talk at all.

 

[Skekayuk]

That makes sense. From what I sometimes read fans say about Louise Gold it sounds as if she's normally only a background/ extra puppeteer or only a vocal performer but never both.
l.

She often did both on TMS. It's just that what they usually seem to have done in the musical numbers was have her sing quite a dominant role, but when they filmed it, although she would puppeteer whatever character she was singing, that character wouldn't exactly be dominent movement-wise in the scene. Watch 'Rio', or some of those Pig musical numbers (Pig Calypso, or Hawwiann War Chant). In the latter Annie Sue is often present, but the puppet isn't doing much, apart from singing (quite noticeably). In some ways I think her performances suffered from the fact that she did her best known work as a puppeteer when she was so inexperienced. In her later stuff (Spitting Image, Ghost Of Faffner Hall, Secret Life Of Toys, and, Sesame Street she's very firmly doing both). - In fact on Spitting Image she ended up as rather unusual in being so very definitely both a puppeteer and voice-artiste.

 

[minor muppetz]

Actually, I noticed Annie Sue's movements in Pig Calypso, and found them to actually be good. It didn't look like she was there just to be there. Of course it would have been great if Louise Gold was given more recurring characters, like Gladys, and it would have been great if she (or Kathy Mullen) performed Astoria.

I wonder when Jim Henson chose to stop having regular performers who only performed voices and not puppetry. I've read an interview with Fran Brill where she said that she auditioned for The Great Santa Claus Switch expecting to be able to perform voices but was told by Jim Henson that the performers actually voice their characters, yet after that special he agreed to let Marylin Sokol perform just voices on Sesame Street (I guess she stopped performing Muppet voices around the time that The Muppet Show began), and just a yea rearlier, various human cast members performed voices on Sesame Street. Roosevelt Franklin and his mother were voiced by human cast members and were introduced on Sesame Street before The Great Santa Claus Switch, and a few years later more cast members would perform the voices of Roosevelt's classmates.

 

[Skekayuk]

Actually, I noticed Annie Sue's movements in Pig Calypso,
I wonder when Jim Henson chose to stop having regular performers who only performed voices and not puppetry. I've read an interview with Fran Brill where she said that she auditioned for The Great Santa Claus Switch expecting to be able to perform voices but was told by Jim Henson that the performers actually voice their characters, yet after that special he agreed to let Marylin Sokol perform just voices on Sesame Street (I guess she stopped performing Muppet voices around the time that The Muppet Show began), .

Well when was Pig Calypso? I guess Louise was getting more experienced over time.
From what I've read I thought Jim Henson usually expected his performers to be able to do both, if the possibly could. Certainly with TMS I've read that when he auditioned for Erin Ozker's replacement (i.e. when Louise Gold joined) he didn't mind taking on an inexperienced performer who needed training as a puppeteer, as long as they actually had an aptitude for puppetry. -which performers like Louise Gold and Kathryn Mullen clearly did (even if they were inexperienced)

 

[minor muppetz]

Pig Calypso is from the Bob Hope episode, which I think was the 21st episode from the second season.