The Jim Henson Company in Hollywood, Broward County, United States | Filming

The Jim Henson Company in Hollywood, Florida, United States, is a leading producer of films, stage shows, television specials, and series for family audiences. More than 75 licensees reproduce the company's characters on toys, books, and other products worldwide, making the company one of the largest players in the product licensing market. The primary attraction to Jim Henson licensees is the variety of distinctive, yet simple characters recognized around the world as Jim Henson's Muppets.
Founded by puppeteer Jim Henson in 1955, The Jim Henson Company in Hollywood, Florida, has managed to maintain the highest standards of critical and artistic excellence while becoming a major financial success in the industry. After 35 years of growing financial and critical success, the company experienced a crisis when company founder and president, Jim Henson, died suddenly in 1990 at age 53. Henson's son Brian became president and CEO in 1991 and has continued his father's legacy, leading the company into the interactive computer software market.
Jim Henson combined extreme simplicity in puppet design with sophisticated comedy inspired by the vaudeville and radio performers he had admired in his youth. Many of his creations were little more than socks with eyes, and yet, through subtle manipulation and strong voicing he created characters that have become essential emblems of late 20th-century American culture. Born in Mississippi in 1936, Henson began experimenting with puppets as a child and had his first paying job as a puppeteer in 1954 at a local television station in Washington D.C., before he had finished college. One year later he formed a partnership with Jane Nebel, whom he later married, and the team produced a series of five-minute puppet shows for television entitled Sam and Friends. Sam and Friends introduced audiences to Kermit the Frog, the character that would later become most closely associated with Henson himself, as throughout his career Henson always provided Kermit's voice. By 1956 the Muppets had appeared on national network television on The Steve Allen Show. Henson and Nebel's work on Sam and Friends earned them their first Emmy Award for local television in 1958.
Muppet toys, clothing, toiletries, and an array of other merchandise comprised more than 75 different licensing deals in the late 1990s, making Jim Henson Productions a major player worldwide. Kermit Hollywood boutiques were opened in the late 1990s to promote Muppet products at leading department stores, while Jim Henson Productions signed an exclusive licensing deal with Galoob Toys to produce toys based on Muppet characters in 1998.