And now, here's Kermit the Frog

May 22, 2021 6:43 PM

The Tonight Show with guest host Kermit the Frog and guests Vincent Price, Bernadette Peters, Leo Sayer, Dr Michael Fox and lots and lots of Muppets. Commercials included. (SLYT)
posted by pyramid termite (13 comments total)

Frank Oz is a genius. Jim Henson is too, of course. But when the two of them shared a stage together they made one of the best comedy duos of all time.
posted by Catblack at 7:01 PM on May 22, 2021 [10 favorites]

The video falls out of sync, but the Tiny Dancer channel on youtube uploaded Sesame Street episode 900, which is the live version of the Bert & Ernie Sing Along album. Ernie drags a piano into the bathroom while Bert is taking a bath and then everyone joins them. Grover plays banjo!
posted by Catblack at 7:24 PM on May 22, 2021 [4 favorites]

Seeing Vincent Price being interviewed live makes me realize how good Maurice LaMarche's Vincent Price impression really is.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 7:57 PM on May 22, 2021 [3 favorites]

This is good, but not I think "Animal Vs. Buddy Rich" good (or "Animal With Rita Moreno" good, for that matter).
posted by mhoye at 8:49 PM on May 22, 2021 [5 favorites]

I actually watched this video earlier tonight! It’s one of my favorites. Striking how similar Kermit and Johnny were in their hosting style.

This is another of my favorites, when Jim was a guest on the Tonight Show. Best moment is around 4:00 when Johnny asks Kermit about his love life. “Listen, I work on Sesame Street! You don’t ask a frog questions like that! Would you ask Captain Kangaroo about his sex life?”
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:25 PM on May 22, 2021 [3 favorites]

when the two of them shared a stage together they made one of the best comedy duos of all time.

Several of the best comedy duos of all time, really.

I like to imagine that the Ernie and Bert sketches are basically documentaries of what it would be like if Jim and Frank shared a small apartment in New York.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:27 PM on May 22, 2021 [7 favorites]

I may have mentioned this elsewhere, but I recently read Brian Jay Jones’s biography of Jim Henson, and I highly recommend it.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:29 PM on May 22, 2021 [2 favorites]

Wow, thanks for sharing this, quite the nostalgia bomb for me. I would have been 12 and had a huge crush on Bernadette Peters.
posted by calamari kid at 9:42 AM on May 23, 2021

Is anything "Animal vs Rita Moreno" good? I'm drawing a blank on examples (aside from the bus-stop scene in My Neighbor Totoro of course, but since that's not Muppets it's not relevant here).
posted by Quasirandom at 8:12 AM on May 24, 2021 [2 favorites]

It’s Frank Oz’s birthday today.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:32 AM on May 25, 2021

Did anyone else think the interview with Vincent Price just went really awkward and uncomfortable towards the end? The muppets are just too kind and innocent to talk about murder and blood, even as a joke.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 11:46 AM on May 25, 2021

Another nugget from the biography: the Swedish Chef was originally a mock-German chef Jim and Frank developed for a show at the US Department of Agriculture pavilion at a world’s fair in Germany. (Jim’s father worked for the USDA.) Brian Henson remembers Jim practicing his mock Swedish in the car on the morning commute to the studio, until they would both break up laughing.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:23 PM on May 26, 2021

Swedish Chef - Popcorn

That's ... pretty close to being as good as "Animal vs Rita Moreno". Pretty darn cløøse.
posted by Quasirandom at 8:12 AM on May 27, 2021 [1 favorite]