Jim Hill
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Strange as it may seem, Brian actually earned his shot at the big chair at Henson Associates. Ever since he was 17, Jim's son had been puppeteering and/or playing a pivotal role in various Henson projects. The first production he officially got to work on was 1981's "The Great Muppet Caper."

However, concerned that -- unless he went out in the world and proved his abilities -- people would always think that the only reason that he ever got the job was because he was Jim Henson's son, Brian left Henson Associates in the early 1980s. And -- just as Brian had hoped -- he soon made a name for himself with his superb puppeteering skills.

Are there any fans out there of that much maligned 1985 Walt Disney Pictures release, "Return to Oz"? The film -- though admittedly a bit on the dark side -- is not without its charms. Among them is the gentle Jack Pumpkinhead, a seven foot talking scarecrow who had a -- you guessed it -- a jack-o-lantern as a head. Brian Henson was principal puppeteer for this whimsical character. He also provided Jack's speaking voice in the finished film.

Brian followed this up by riding herd on the reindeer puppets for 1985's "Santa Claus: The Movie." But perhaps his most impressive non-Muppet assignment was when Henson co-supervised a crew of 40 puppeteers which were used to manipulate the giant man-eating plant, Audrey II, the star of 1986's gruesome musical for Geffen Pictures, "Little Shop of Horror."

Now that Brian felt that he had proved to the world that he wasn't just riding on his father's coat tails, Henson's son was confident enough to return to the Muppet fold. Once he got back to the Creature Shop, Brian's first assignment was to head up the team of puppeteers who were handling Hoggle, a dwarf-like creature that played a prominent role in that Henson Associates / Lucas Film co-production, 1986's "Labyrinth."

Brian followed up his excellent work with Hoggle by taking on the role of the narrator's dog in Henson's Emmy Award winning series, "The Storyteller." He then went on to serve as puppeteer co-ordinator for Nicholas Roeg's film version of Roald Dahl's gruesome fantasy, 1989's "The Witches."

As you can see, inside of a relatively short amount of time, Brian built up a truly impressive body of work as well as clearly demonstrated his abilities to lead & motivate other puppeteers. He also became one of the Muppets' resident experts when it came to using animatronics with puppets. Which is perhaps why Jim's son was awarded the position of chief puppeteer -- in addition to being second unit director -- on New Line Productions' 1989 hit, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

Clearly Brian had the puppeteering talent to follow in his father's footsteps. But -- at the tender age of 27 -- did Henson's son have the business sense to take charge of a multi-million multi-media corporation?

At first, no. Which is why Lazer stayed on in the position of interim president of Jim Henson Productions for a few months as he showed Brian the ropes. Finally, in January of 1990, Jim's son seemed ready to take up the reins. So David gracefully stepped aside as Brian took over as president of Jim Henson Productions.

Clearly, Brian's first priority was to help Jim Henson Productions negotiate its way through the Disney / Henson merger minefield, making sure that all the projects that the two companies had begun work on got completed (I.E. "Jim Henson's MuppetVision 3D" as well as the "Dinosaurs" TV series). But Jim's son also had to find something -- and fast -- that the Muppets could do on their own that would quickly generate some cash flow for the corporation.

The obvious answer here was for the Muppets to quickly line up some new licensing deals. But -- when Henson's marketing people went around and tried to find some interesting buyers -- they kept hearing the same thing over and over: "You don't have the right to sell licenses for the Muppet characters. The Walt Disney Company owns the Muppets now."

And -- if you were to pick up a magazine and/or watch TV in early 1991 -- it really did look like Disney owned the Muppets. WDW's marketing department was in the process of putting on the full court press to try & get people excited about the idea that the Muppets were now appearing at Disney / MGM Studio Theme Park. So there were these full color two page spreads in "Time" & "Newsweek" that clearly showed Kermit, Miss Piggy and the gang getting out of a limo in front of the Chinese Theater.

To Disney's way of thinking, the company was just doing what it had to properly promote a new attraction for their newest Florida theme park. To the Henson way of seeing things, all these images that the Mouse was using to hype the Muppets' appearance at Disney/MGM unintentionally implied that the company actually had a license to use the Henson characters. Which Mickey -- now that the Disney / Henson merger was off -- clearly did not.

So Brian Henson asked the company's legal department to try & get the Mouse to ratchet down its promotional campaign for the Muppets' appearance at Disney/MGM (With the hope that this might make it easier for Henson's own people to start lining up Muppet licensing deals again). Disney ignored Henson's request. Brian asked Henson's lawyers to try once more to get Disney to cut back on its Muppet-related advertising. Disney refused.