Videos

Photo Courtesy of The Jim Henson Company

Stu’s Show: New Year’s Eve with Stu & Jeanine

Stu Shostak hosted Craig on his special New Year's Eve show on December 31, 2022 to discuss the Sam and Friends book. It was a one-time broadcast and while the entire show is not archived on the Stu’s show website, Stu has allowed us to share Craig’s segment, which we’ve edited to remove the New Year celebration and an expired discount code. Check out Stu’s show at https://www.stusshow.com.

NYCC Panel

Our friends at ToughPigs.com hosted a “Jim Henson: The Early Years” panel focusing on Sam and Friends: The Story of Jim Henson’s First Television Show at the 2022 New York ComicCon. Moderator Joe Hennes hosted author Craig Shemin, Muppet performer Ryan Dillon, Henson archivist Susie Tofte and the book’s cover and promo item artist, Dave Hulteen, Jr. Now you can see what the capacity crowd enjoyed back in October, 2022.

WRC-TV Report

In October, 2022, WRC-TV, the home of Sam and Friends broadcast a feature about the book including interviews with author Craig Shemin and Jim Henson’s daughter (and CEO of The Jim Henson Company), Lisa Henson.

Jim in Germany

Jim Henson and Jerry Juhl’s performance for the USDA Food Fair in 1961 is mentioned in the book. Here is some home movie footage from that trip to Germany.

Wilkins Spots

During the the run of Sam and Friends, Jim and Jane Henson created a series of short commercials for Wilkins Coffee, a local D.C. company. The spots were an opportunity for Jim to become comfortable using his own voice for the Muppets. As Jim developed his voices, Sam and Friends, which had primarily consisted of lip sync performances to records, added more elaborate dialogue sketches to its repertoire.