Street Gang (55 page)

This occurred after his first wife left him, with the three Spinney children in tow. “She done run off,” Spinney said. “She hated that I was in television, even after I got Big Bird and accomplished just what I had dreamed of doing as a kid. I was on the best children’s show on television, just as I had predicted to my mother so long ago. But [my wife] used to say, ‘I wish to God you weren’t in show business.’ I embarrassed her. When she left, I was devastated. My little boy Ben was just a year old, and I had a bad, bad spell living without my children.”

But at an album recording session in 1973, Spinney spied a young woman from the CTW research department who had been enlisted to watch over some children called in to sing. It wasn’t the first time that he had been attracted to her, and twice before he had asked Debra out—once at her desk at CTW, another time at a CTW Christmas party—only to learn she was married. The third time, it was Debra who approached Spinney, who re-created the scene in his 2003 memoir. “She seemed to know me, though I didn’t know how. She told me that since her marriage had recently ended, she was living with her family on Long Island. I was about to go on tour for the show, but I promised to call her when I got back. Three months later I met her [at CTW] and we walked toward Central Park. We held hands on our way to the Tavern on the Green. Before we finished dinner, we both knew in our hearts that we would be married. Thirteen days after our first date, we were walking down Broadway when, at Sixty-second Street, I was completely overpowered with the most fantastic, wonderful feeling. I stopped and blurted out, ‘You will marry me, won’t you?’ And she said ‘Y-y-y-yes.’ I spun her around and kissed her. I was already more in love than I’d ever been in my life. And it’s been that way ever since.”
⁷

 

Bernie Brillstein had the misfortune of being listed next in the memorial service order after Big Bird. “Jim told me to never follow the Bird,” he said, to a ripple of laughter and applause. He then began in earnest.

“In a business where the one who shouts the loudest usually gets the most attention, Jim Henson rarely spoke above a whisper. You had to lean in to hear him most of the time, but it was always worth the effort. David Lazer and I knew how loud his whisper was. He was a man with a vision, and though his greatest appeal was the simplest of human emotions, the purest of ideas, he was not above using advanced technological means to achieve his goals. My friend Jim was by most definitions a genius, but not like Edison suggested. Edison said genius was one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. With Jim, I think it was about fifty-fifty. His ability to create whole worlds of people and things is well documented, and we’ll have that legacy forever. But after coming up with the concept, he’d work tirelessly on every phase of the process to see that it was the best that it could possibly be.

“As a rule, perfectionists are a real pain. They drive the people around them crazy in their single-minded search for excellence. But Jim inspired people to be better than they thought they could be, to be more creative, more daring, more outrageous, and, ultimately, more successful. And he did it without raising his voice. That whisper will stay with us for a long time. Now we’ll just have to listen a little harder.”

 

The five Henson children stood in a semicircle around their mother, a good ten paces behind. The Henson daughters and sons were informally dressed in shades of blue, green, and tan, intentionally eschewing somber colors. Jane Henson wore a draped, muted monochromatic outfit consisting of a full-length taupe skirt topped by a long-sleeve, softly patterned blouse and vestlike duster, a flowing, multilayered ensemble. Without introducing herself, she began her remarks with a sentence that seemed like the answer to an unasked question. “I did ask for a lot of flowers,” she said. “They came from Connie, our corner florist.”

Addressing the congregation without notes, Jane Henson was at once grounded and a bit floaty, her remarks vaguely spiritual, but not in a traditional sense.

“Each flower is chosen because it’s a perfect flower, designed by a perfect maker,” she said. “Each flower holds a complete message that Jim would want to share with you, its beauty, its perfection, its differences, its beginning and its end. I don’t want to pretend that I know what happens after this life, or that Jim knew what would happen after this life, but he had great plans.”

Her observation elicited knowing laughter from those who were aware of Jim Henson’s fascination with mediums, psychics, and astrologers, and his belief that it is entirely possible for the earthbound to receive messages from the next world. He consulted seers and considered their prognostications.

“I sure hope that somebody [up there] knows we are doing this down here because [Jim] is probably pretty busy,” Jane Henson said, offering thoughts on who in the afterworld might be available to work on an ethereal project. She included Don Sahlin, the inventive prankster who designed Bert and Ernie; puppeteer Burr Tillstrom, the television pioneer and entertainment businessman who knew enough to own the trademark to Kukla and Ollie; Bil Baird, who proved early on—with no less a figure than Walter Cronkite on the
CBS Morning Show
—that television provides such a suspension of disbelief for viewers, it allows people and puppets to engage in parody, satire, and commentary; and Rufus Rose, the marionette builder who sculpted the original Howdy Doody. With a single flourish, she offered a short history of puppets in twentieth-century pop culture.

“Maybe more than anything else,” she continued, Jim would want to reconnect with his mother, his brother, and his grandmother, Dear, “who he always credited as being his greatest inspiration.”
⁸

Looking briefly toward her now adult children, she said, “He stayed with us long enough to have given us certainly everything we need . . . if we are strong enough to carry on. Mostly,” she added, “I just think now that it’s only us, his family. These are only his kids, I’m only his wife. They had messy rooms, I burned the dinner. He didn’t come home. The dog died. Whatever . . . all this stuff. It’s only us.”

After a brief pause, she got back on track. “Sometimes, because everyone else was working, I would be used for interviews,” she said. “The press would ask did you ever have any idea it would get this big? And what I didn’t know is that it had
gotten
this big. I just didn’t know.”

There she stood, thirty-plus years removed from the
Sam and Friends
days when she performed on her knees at WRC.

The University of Maryland coed who had long ago caught Jim Henson’s eye could have grown as a performer but left the Muppets to raise their children in Connecticut, and her role in life became decidedly maternal. At some point in her marriage, what was once a fully entwined relationship unraveled. Jane was left abandoned in the suburbs while Jim Henson circumnavigated the globe. For reasons known only to husband and wife, they opted to remain legally separated for a long spell. At the time of Jim Henson’s death, though, divorce seemed a certainty. Henson had already bought out her half of the business.

Why Henson called for her when he was so desperately ill is a mystery. “One of the biggest puzzles of my life has been why Jim sent for Jane at the end when he was trying to get a divorce from her,” Joan Cooney said. “I guess when he was that sick he kind of wanted mommy or something. But he had no use for her, for years, and he certainly wanted out. Sending for her allowed Jane to become the widow Henson. That was the most unforgivable thing. It gave her an identity that she hadn’t had in years.”

Jane Henson had alternately reasserted her role as wife and caretaker, and then later, as cofounder of the Muppets and keeper of the flame. That was something that none of the women Henson dated could claim.

Looking out into the grandeur of the packed cathedral, a scene reminiscent of a state funeral, she expressed gratitude for the turnout. “The reason you’re touched is because Jim touched some special place in you that knows all of the light and all the truth and all the love that there is to know. And I hope that you will take whatever it is he has given you to let it help you to enjoy life to the fullest. Because he
always
did, but
always
with a little pain and a little sorrow that gave it richness.”

 

By eerie coincidence, tributes to two patriarchs of
Sesame Street
occurred within days of each other, one before a convocation of thousands, the other before a television audience in the hundreds of thousands. It had been fifteen months since composer, arranger, and lyricist Joseph G. Raposo died from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, cancer of the immune system, at Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, New York, just three days shy of his fifty-second birthday.

Unbeknownst to nearly everyone, including those in his circle, Raposo had been living with the disease for ten years and had secretly undergone chemotherapy. “The diagnosis came while I was about a month pregnant with our son Andrew,” said Pat Collins, a genial television presence in New York who reviews theater and film. “Joe had some lumps under his arms and in the groin, so he went to his doctor, who referred him to a specialist. I remember that day of that appointment vividly, sitting across from the doctor’s desk. When he said it was non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, our first question was ‘What does that mean?’ You could immediately read from the doctor’s face it was not something you want.

“Joe said, ‘Pat is pregnant. Will I live to see this child graduate high school or college?’ The doctor didn’t respond, and Joe said, ‘I really want an answer.’

“The doctor said, ‘No, you won’t.’

“Joe pressed him. ‘Will I live to see him be in the first grade?’

“And the doctor just said, ‘Joe, this is a very tough thing.’

“That was the moment we decided to move forward. It was Joe’s desire and wish from day one that no one know about the diagnosis. We decided that our business manager, the guy who paid the bills, had to know, but that was it. We were living in Bronxville, and I went to elaborate lengths of establishing an account at a pharmacy near Carnegie Hall, where our offices were. We filled prescriptions there because Bronxville’s a little place where people talk, including pharmacists. I thought if we really wanted to keep a lid on this, we’d have to be smart and cover our bases.

“Joe’s words were ‘I do not want to be seen as a patient.’ Anyone who has had a relative, a dear friend, or a pal involved in a battle with a disease recognizes how the world thinks: ‘There goes so-and-so. Isn’t it terrible that he has cancer?’ And then they either cut you more slack or start treating you differently. Joe said, ‘I’m having none of that.’ After everyone learns you have a disease and says all the appropriate things about how terrible it is, they think, ‘Is he going to be able to finish the season? Will he finish this album or movie? Is he going to be alive when we perform this at Lincoln Center?’ Joe’s a great guy and we’re gonna miss him, but we can’t use him because by the time
X
is going to happen he might not still be here.’ Pretty soon everyone is done working with you. Joe wanted to make sure that he could keep going and not be marginalized. No matter how many days you have left, you want to make every one of them count, and Joe was not a person who would crawl into bed, pull up the quilt, and never come out again.

“He used to go in for chemo really early in the morning at a place on the East Side, before too many people were around. Most people going through it lose weight and look gaunt. Joe, who struggled with weight issues all his life, used to say to me, ‘I’m the only son of a bitch on chemo who is not losing weight. You’d think I’d at least get that out of it.’

“Near the end of Joe’s life, Jim Henson got me aside and said, ‘There’s something very wrong with Joe. You’ve got to tell me what it is.’

“I said, ‘I love you, Jim, but no, I don’t. You’re right that he does have some issues, but you’ve got to ask him. You can’t have me tell you.’

“He said, ‘I can’t.’

“I said, ‘Well, I don’t know, then. It’s kind of a standoff, isn’t it? All I can tell you is he’s obviously living with what he’s got. That’s all I can tell ya, babe.’ And that was it.

“People did know he had something, but no one would cross that line to ask him. The only person he ever told was Walter Cronkite. They would go sailing a lot and one day when he came back from one of their little trips on the
Winnie,
he said ‘I told Walter because I just had to tell someone. If you can’t trust America’s most-trusted man, who could you tell your secrets to?”

Cronkite appeared in the PBS tribute to Raposo, a video love letter entitled
Sing: Sesame Street Remembers Joe Raposo.
“He was the first man to kiss me on the cheek,” said Cronkite, who, one imagines, was an unlikely candidate to return the favor. “[Joe] was simply this guy who lived on the very top of life.”

It was jarring at first to see Jim Henson on screen, given that footage of his memorial had just aired on the six o’clock news. Henson said, “I think of Joe as a big warm teddy bear . . . always with a hug and a big smile.”

Liz Smith, the doyenne of gossip columnists, said, “[It] was so typical of him to open his loving arms and give you an expansive hug and self-confidence where you didn’t deserve to have it.”

Raposo took some posthumous, good-natured ribbing, as well. “Joe was such a name-dropper,” Henson said. “He was the only person that could work into the conversation all the important people that he had seen in the last six months . . .
and
Barbra Streisand’s telephone number.”

Such harmless talk kept Raposo’s ego balloon aloft, as Cerf explained: “It was one of these magical gifts, I guess, is that it would be annoying with other people, but with Joe it was just, ‘Oh my god, he’s not going to say it is he?’ And he did! Somehow you loved him for it.

“I got a phone call at maybe one in the morning. It was Joe, incredibly excited. He said, ‘You’ll never guess where I am.’