The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson is a one-hour special that aired on CBS on November 21, 1990. The program was a tribute to Muppet creator Jim Henson, who had died earlier in 1990 due to toxic shock syndrome caused by a streptococcus infection, and featured characters from "The Muppet Show", "Fraggle Rock", and "Sesame Street". It marked Steve Whitmire's first onscreen performance as Kermit the Frog. This was also one of Richard Hunt's final puppetry works before his death in 1992. Kermit the Frog is away traveling, leaving Fozzie Bear and the other Muppets in
The Muppets Jimmy Dean on "The Jimmy Dean Show". In 1966, Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett began developing an educational television program targeted towards children and approached Henson to design several Muppet characters for the program. Produced by the Children's Television Workshop, the program debuted as "Sesame Street" in 1969. Henson and his creative team performed and created several characters for "Sesame Street" during the years that followed; Henson waived his performance fee in exchange for retaining ownership rights to the Muppet characters created for the program. "Sesame Street" received critical acclaim, and the Muppets' involvement in the series was touted