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 breakout roles in "The Muppet Show" (1976–1981), a primetime television series that garnered four Primetime Emmy Award wins and twenty-one nominations during its five-year run. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Muppets diversified into theatrical feature films, including "The Muppet Movie" (1979); "The Great Muppet Caper" (1981); and "The Muppets Take Manhattan" (1984). The Walt Disney Company began involvement with the Muppets in the late 1980s, during which Henson entered negotiations to sell the Jim Henson Company. The Muppets continued their media presence in the 1990s with television series "The Jim Henson Hour" (1989) and "Muppets Tonight" (1996–98), both of