Useless (but still interesting) Muppet trivia!

[Tim]

What's the most useless bit of trivia you know about The Muppets? (The more obscure the better.)

Here's one:

Carl Banas voiced Sweetums in "The Frog Prince". He also voiced the head elf and (I think) Yukon Cornelius in the original "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer". COOL!

[MeepBorkMeep]

This isn't that useless, but Crazy Harry used to be named Crazy Donald. After Don Sahlin.

[minor muppetz]

What's the most useless bit of trivia you know about The Muppets? (The more obscure the better.)

Here's one:

Carl Banas voiced Sweetums in "The Frog Prince". He also voiced the head elf and (I think) Yukon Cornelius in the original "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer". COOL!

I thought that he voiced Charlie-in-the-box and the Spotted Elephant.

Okay, here is some useless trivia....

The spelling of the setting for the muppets on Saturday Night Live was "Gortch", and one characters name was The Mighty Fuvog, but most official sources mispell them as "Gorch" and "Favog".

[ravagefrackle]

ok, well in all honestey , is all trivia(muppet or otherwise), pretty much useless

[Tim]

Not if you can use it to win on a game show!

[GonzoLeaper]

True- by definition all trivia is useless.
But a lot of that useless trivia (redundancy) is the stuff of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" :)

(Here's the definition from dictionary.com - Note the related word!;) )

triv·i·a1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key (trv-)
pl.n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb)
Insignificant or inessential matters; trifles.

[Latin trivia, neuter pl. of trivium, crossroads, gutter (influenced by trivial). See trivium.]


triv·i·um ( P ) Pronunciation Key (trv-m)
n. pl. triv·i·a (--)
The lower division of the seven liberal arts in medieval schools, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.

[GonzoLeaper]

Here's some interesting Muppets trivia- this may be fairly obvious, but Sesame Street is one of the longest, if not the longest running television show ever? (I'm not sure if some of the news or soap operas might beat it out, so I hesitate to say the longest) But Sesame Street is running on 37 years now- beating out such milestones and classics as Doctor Who (26 years- I guess you can add a year or two now with the new series), Gunsmoke (20 years), Bonanza (14 years) and junk like The Simpsons (running on 17 years- I can't believe this has run longer than a classic series like Bonanza!):attitude:

So- Sesame Street is definitely near to or at the top for longevity in TV shows!!!

[Kimp the Shrimp]

Kermit has 11 points on his collar

[The Flying Sheep]

That, according to Jim, Gonzo is a cross between a turkey and a pencil Sharpener

[giovannii]

Gonzo may be bisexual.

In the Leslie Uggams episode, he is singing to Camilla, however falls for Big Bird when he sees him walk past.

This is assuming Big Bird is male. I'm assuming he is seeing Caroll Spinney is male and also he sings "Love Will Keep Us Together" with Leslie Uggams.

[Mickey Moose]

Gonzo may be bisexual.

In the Leslie Uggams episode, he is singing to Camilla, however falls for Big Bird when he sees him walk past.

This is assuming Big Bird is male. I'm assuming he is seeing Caroll Spinney is male and also he sings "Love Will Keep Us Together" with Leslie Uggams.

Even though Big Bird is male, I wouldn't read too much into Gonzo's crush on him. Gonzo probably didn't know he was male.

And when he was auditioning a new act during the Steve Martin episode(I think that was the one), he was dancing with a female cheese, as he told Kermit: "Of course it's a female. You think I would dance with a male cheese? That'd be weird." Or words to that effect.

Then again, he did seem a little affectionate to Kermit when he volunteered to be his dancing partner during the dance marathon for the Carol Burnett episode.

So at best, I would consider Gonzo to be "questioning".

[GonzoLeaper]

Um- I don't think you should read too much at all into Muppets! Come on- it's a children's show (primarily)- Gonzo is NOT bisexual. :concern:

[unclematt]

Um- I don't think you should read too much at all into Muppets! Come on- it's a children's show (primarily)- Gonzo is NOT bisexual. :concern:

I am sorry but I am going to start this again. The Muppet Show was not a Children's Show. It was a Show that kids had a certain attraction to. With alot of the humor on the Muppet Show, it was not and can not be classified as a Children's Show.

[Tim]

We're getting off-topic, but when Kermit and Fozzie were on the "Tonight" show back in '76 promoting their (then) new series, Johnny specifically asked them "Is this a childrens' show?", Kermit kidded "No, it's for frogs." then quickly explained "It's for families."

The anphibian speaks.

[BEAR]

Gonzo may be bisexual.

In the Leslie Uggams episode, he is singing to Camilla, however falls for Big Bird when he sees him walk past.

This is assuming Big Bird is male. I'm assuming he is seeing Caroll Spinney is male

But in that episode, how does he know immediately if Big Bird is a male? And what would Carol Spinney have to do with it? Carroll Spinney isn't there. Big Bird is.

[Barry Lee]

Exactly BEAR, Frank Oz played Miss Piggy, does that make Miss Piggy a male? :smirk:

[The Flying Sheep]

Yeah, but BB has been referred to as he in Sesame Street material like beneath the pavement.

[G-MAN]

What does that have to do with anything, Carol Spinney is also a he.

[Gonzo14]

Here's some interesting Muppets trivia- this may be fairly obvious, but Sesame Street is one of the longest, if not the longest running television show ever? (I'm not sure if some of the news or soap operas might beat it out, so I hesitate to say the longest) But Sesame Street is running on 37 years now- beating out such milestones and classics as Doctor Who (26 years- I guess you can add a year or two now with the new series), Gunsmoke (20 years), Bonanza (14 years) and junk like The Simpsons (running on 17 years- I can't believe this has run longer than a classic series like Bonanza!):attitude:

So- Sesame Street is definitely near to or at the top for longevity in TV shows!!!

Yeah, I like making lists, I have a list of the casts of shows that I like (or even sort of like), Out of the 98 shows currently on my list, Sesame Street is the longest currently running show, the only other show on my list that has a regular cast that comes close to that is the simpsons. There's also SNL since 1975, but they change the cast all the time and America's Funniest Home Videos and All they need is a host, and there's been 4 since it started.

[JJandJanice]

Well let me talk about two different things since that's what seemed to have happened in this thread.

Frist off, Gonzo being bisexual, ok you're talking about a character that falls for chickens most of the time. Other than Miss. Piggy and a few other guests. Plus to be honset, with the whole having a crush on Big Brid thing, I would be more worried about the fact that Big Brid is suppoesed to be a little boy about six or so over him being a male :concern: . But let's not read into that much into the whole thing, it was just a little joke on that episode of the Muppet Show.

Now back to the useless trivia thing. When Kermit was frist made, he wasn't thought of as a frog at all, he was known as a Lizard like creature. :)

[muppet maniac]

I am sorry but I am going to start this again. The Muppet Show was not a Children's Show. It was a Show that kids had a certain attraction to. With alot of the humor on the Muppet Show, it was not and can not be classified as a Children's Show.

True. Plus, he originally wanted to do it for adults, but then decided to do it for family audiences. Also remember that there had been some adult things on the show: the song Peter Sellers sings and beats the drum to about smoking, drinking and women; countless explosions and Muppets getting eaten by monsters---you wouldn't see that type of thing on Sesame Street now wouldn't you?

Remember in the pitch film made to sell the series, Leo states that "adults will enjoy the humor and children will enjoy the colorful characters"

Even the commercials the Muppets made in the sixties had a lot of adult humor(well, not all of them, but most of them did, like the ads for Wilkins coffee).

[Bill Bubble Guy]

I used to think that if Jim had been alive to work on Muppets Tonight he would not have approved of all the adult oriented jokes included in it. Now having read this I'm no longer so sure.

[minor muppetz]

When I first saw the Leslie Uggams episode, I didn't realise that Gonzo had fallen for Big Bird. I didn't realise this untill many years later.

[heralde]

I used to think that if Jim had been alive to work on Muppets Tonight he would not have approved of all the adult oriented jokes included in it. Now having read this I'm no longer so sure.

Jim obviously approved of adult-oriented humor. But there is a difference between subtle, witty and well-written adult humor and...um...not so well-written adult humor. I think the difference is pretty clear when comparing classic Muppet projects to more recent ones.

[minor muppetz]

Another interesting piece of trivia that seems both useless and useful: unofficial sources seem to be more accurate than official ones. Of course, unofficial sources are sometimes wrong as well, especially if some official source (or sources) was wrong and the fans believed it.

[Ruahnna]

I used to think that if Jim had been alive to work on Muppets Tonight he would not have approved of all the adult oriented jokes included in it. Now having read this I'm no longer so sure.

I would have to say, Marty, that Jim was not offended "per se" by grown-up humor. (I always object to calling peruile sesxual humor "adult humor," and prefer to call more sophisticated humor grown-up humor.) In TMM, Kermit and Piggy share an obviously romantic dinner and drink champagne (albeit with straws)--not the sort of thing that children are into, typically, but dead-on for romantically aspiring teen-age girls--I know because I was one when the movie came out, and that part of it positively slayed me. Also, after Piggy abandons their romantic date, Kermit goes into a bar and orders a grasshopper (funny, and grown-up). Rowlf mentions drinking beer. Kermit and Rowlf proceed to complain about women in a very grown-up way, and one of the lines is "the little feet of tadpoles," implying a lot more than smooching.

Also--and I have to say this because the scene is soooo masterfully done, but when Piggy is singing "Never Before," she is imagining herself and Kermit in a number of romantic settings. In one scene, while embracing, they slip below the viewers sight, fading to black, as it were. But--instead of leaving it at that, we see Kermit reappear, and on his face is wonder, bafflement, uncertainty, until a lavender-gloved hand reaches up to pull him gently back down! Stop now--go watch the scene! It will make you want to go snuggle your honey if you've got a working hormone in your bod. Lovely stuff--and still very chaste. How often on modern television do I wish they did love scenes so tastefully.

Jim wasn't above using Lew Zealand, whose "Just for the Halibut" was not a joke you'd see on Sesame Street.

All this to say that, IMHO, Jim treated the muppet characters like "real people"--some, like Grover, were children, and treated as such, but no one would mistake Piggy, for example, for anything other than a full-grown woman with all that that implies. Although she rebuffs the Kermit-robot's suggestive comments in the first season(which we, thankfully,don't hear), she wants to do more than hold Kermit's hand in the moonlight, and viewers knew it. Still, she was no tart, and her motives--while obvious--were honorable. So, Jim realized it was possible to appeal to the grown-up part of every audience without being overtly child-like or overtly coarse.

Ahh--now I'm nostalgic.

[Bill Bubble Guy]

Very true Catherine. (That is your real name isn't it?) And actually the Liza Minnelli episode is perhaps the most adult episode with a murder mystery play as the plot.

But still as you said the whole series is very tastefully done to be appropriate for family audiences.

[Barry Lee]

Well let me talk about two different things since that's what seemed to have happened in this thread.

Frist off, Gonzo being bisexual, ok you're talking about a character that falls for chickens most of the time. Other than Miss. Piggy and a few other guests. Plus to be honset, with the whole having a crush on Big Brid thing, I would be more worried about the fact that Big Brid is suppoesed to be a little boy about six or so over him being a male :concern: . But let's not read into that much into the whole thing, it was just a little joke on that episode of the Muppet Show.

Now back to the useless trivia thing. When Kermit was frist made, he wasn't thought of as a frog at all, he was known as a Lizard like creature. :)

Actually Kermit along with all the other muppets in "Sam & Friends" were just abstract creatures but Kermit did have a semi-likeness of a lizard.

[Dragon]

now his name will be Gayzo

[Beakerfan]

I used to think that if Jim had been alive to work on Muppets Tonight he would not have approved of all the adult oriented jokes included in it. Now having read this I'm no longer so sure.

I think that Jim possibly would not have approved, because The Muppets Tonight was aired on a televion station geared for children rather than family or adults. Then again, if Jim was around to approve or disapprove, the show would have done much better and most likely been aired on a station like ABC or CBS.

[Speed Tracer]

Even though Big Bird is male, I wouldn't read too much into Gonzo's crush on him. Gonzo probably didn't know he was male.

And when he was auditioning a new act during the Steve Martin episode(I think that was the one), he was dancing with a female cheese, as he told Kermit: "Of course it's a female. You think I would dance with a male cheese? That'd be weird." Or words to that effect.

Then again, he did seem a little affectionate to Kermit when he volunteered to be his dancing partner during the dance marathon for the Carol Burnett episode.

So at best, I would consider Gonzo to be "questioning".

I think he's just confused.

[Ruahnna]

I have to say that Gonzo is just to much of a ladies man to be very confused! Even though he seems dedicated to Camilla all along, he is always a fan of a well-turned ankle, whether that ankle is on a chicken, a women or a pig.

[Gorgon Heap]

Gonzo's attraction to Big Bird is disturbing IF you think about it in certain ways. But, his attraction was based on poultry qualities, so rather than being pedophilic or homosexual, I'd say that instance was poultrysexual.

The rest of Gonzo's love story centers around chickens, Miss Piggy, and a few female guest stars, most notably Madeline Kahn.

David "Gorgon Heap" Ebersole

[Brinatello]

Even though trivia is considered useless, it's still fun to gain knowledge on the things you love! I go to IMDb almost everyday to read up on movies, TV shows, actors, etc., and the first thing I like to go to is the Trivia section. I read up on all sorts of 'did you know' stuff, and even add some of it that I knew! Here's one that I added:

In "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze," the outside building used for April's apartment was the New York location of Jim Henson's Creature Shop.

Isn't that exciting??? :p