The Walt Disney Family Museum invited Muppet designer Bonnie Erickson to be their special guest for the Happily Ever After Hours virtual event series on Friday, June 5th. Her career with Jim Henson began on The Frog Prince in 1971 and she was the designer of several iconic characters, including Miss Piggy and the curmudgeonly old men, Statler and Waldorf. Here are ten things we learned from Bonnie Erickson.
1. She was discovered by Jim Henson through her work in theater.
“When I was at the University of Minnesota, my major was art and my minor was theater,” Bonnie explained. “I got a job in my sophomore year as the dramatic director for a camp in upstate New York.” She loved New York so much that she didn’t want to return to Minnesota, staying in the Empire State and enrolling in the Art Students League taking freeland jobs making clothing and hats. “I ended up working with Patricia Quinn Stewart and ended up working on Broadway and Off-Broadway shows for seven years.” Her portfolio ended up in the hands of Jim Henson, who recruited her to work for him in 1971.
2. She designed Statler and Waldorf.
“I was a sculptor student in college, but I had never worked with soft foam,” Patricia shared about the first iconic puppet she designed, Statler. She was an innovator in the medium, finding scissors hard to work with on the material and trying it out with a belt sander, allowing her to make smooth corners. As for the idea behind the characters, she was inspired by a frequent sight she would see after working late into the night where she got a peek into the Yale Club at Grand Central Station. “It gave me the idea of doing the sketches of the two old men. I pictured them sitting in the Yale Club.” She gave the sketches to Jim Henson, who never threw anything away. About a year later, he resurrected the idea. “There was a piece being written for I think Muppets End to Sex and Violence and he said now we can do those two old men…. We had a customer who was in the shop who was a tailor who built those beautiful suits for my drawings… Those men wouldn’t be who they are today if they didn’t have those lovely suits to wear.” Their characters were fleshed out by puppeteers Richard Hunt and Jim Henson, who also gave them their voices.
3. She received a request from Jim Henson one day to design three pigs.
“He came to me one day, obviously he had a script we could use and it was going to be called ‘Return from Beneath the Planet of the Pigs’… So he said ‘We need three pigs.’” Bonnie began looking at books to better understand the anatomy of a pig, one of whom would be female. “At the time, I called her Miss Piggy Lee. That was shortened because they were afraid she would be upset.” Bonnie was a huge fan of singer Peggy Lee and wonders what the musical legend would’ve thought about her original idea. “It was his idea to come and have them built and made primarily for this ‘Beneath the Planet of the Pigs’” As fate would have it, that project never got off the ground in large part because The Muppet Show received its financial backing to be filmed in London. The original puppet was redressed for the show, given a new body to look like a chorus girl, which is why her neck leads into a foam body with a string of pearls to hide the seam. “It really became one of her personalities as she went forward and when she went to England to be on The Muppet Show, she went as a chorus girl. She wasn’t the diva yet.” Frank Oz’s magic is what really made her work.
4. The evolution of Piggy
“The interesting story about Ms. Piggy is she was performed by many people before she got to Frank,” Bonnie shared about the character’s gradual evolution. She debuted with The Muppet Show as a chorus girl in the opening credits. “Lots of people had their hands in that lady, but eventually it was Frank Oz who gave her voice.” Despite designing the character, Bonnie doesn’t take credit for her. “My job was to give a vehicle that was as easy to express and manipulate as I possibly could and to make her as appealing as I could.” Miss Piggy’s appeal is undeniable.
5. The difference between Sesame Street and Muppets puppets.
“When it comes to building a puppet that’s manipulable, Sesame Street is very different,” Bonnie shared about the difference in approach between characters for the two shows. “They’re pretty much just an open and close palette,” she added about the hard-mouthed Sesame Street puppets. Many of the Muppets, including Miss Piggy, use a soft foam, which shows every hand movement. “I remember Frank had to tone it down a bit because he was used to doing these big movements and a more subtle movement is required with that medium.”
6. Moving to London for The Muppet Show.
When The Muppet Show was picked up with a stipulation that it must be filmed in London, Bonnie Erickson was part of the team that went with it. However, she had a son and the change was difficult for her family. As the first year came to an end, she told Jim Henson that she wouldn’t be able to stay.
7. Jim Henson was very supportive of her decision to leave and start her own company
“Jim said to me, ‘we’re not going to lose touch,’” Bonnie explained about her boss’ response to her decision. “It was hard to leave because I loved everybody there and I have to say Jim set a high bar for how to run a business. He was good about the finances, he was very clever about the rights issues… he was really a renaissance man and I took a lot of information from him when I went to start my own company and Wade [Harrison] and I are very grateful for the support.” Jim Henson even recommended her new company to other companies where clients included McDonalds, Nutella, and Saturday Night Live. But she continued to work for Jim Henson and his company over the years, even designing characters for Fraggle Rock.
8. Her favorite memory of Jim Henson.
“All I can tell you is that the best time any of us ever had was when we could crack him up because he would laugh so hard he would cry,” Bonnie shared. Another fond memory was being on set collecting vegetables tossed around by the Swedish Chef, who was puppeted by Frank and Jim. “He was very funny, had a very funny sense of humor. He would give some really funny gifts to people.” She recounted a danish that went back and forth throughout the studio as a gift. “The playfulness was something that Jim really valued. He would come in and he loved that he saw people experimenting because play is how a lot of people solve problems.”
9. Losing Jim Henson
Jim Henson died unexpectedly at the age of 53 in 1990 from pneumonia. “It was devastating for us. You can only imagine what it would do for the family and the fact that they all took up the mantle and continued. I give them great credit for being able to do that and have it all still living today. It was not an easy thing to do.”
10. Playing a Part in the Creation of Tickle Me Elmo
“I did not create Tickle Me Elmo,” Bonnie shared about the Tyco toy that couldn’t keep up with the overwhelming demand in 1996. “I was creative director at Sesame Street overseeing all of these products with licensees,” she explained. “The idea was to take this character, because it was a licensed character to Mattel from Sesame Workshop, and to put it into a toy that would be appealing.” The shaking device inside the toy was given to her by Tyco and she confessed that it was a challenge to fit an adorable Elmo plush around it. “It became the hottest selling toy ever and my job was to make it look as good and as cute as it could as Elmo given the fact that it had this mechanical device inside.”
Fans can see the full schedule of Walt Disney Family Museum virtual events, including the Happily Ever After Hours speaker series, at waltdisney.org/calendar.