BOOK REVIEW: The Sam and Friends Script Book

This review of Craig Shemin’s new book, The Sam and Friends Script Book: A Collection of Sketches from Jim Henson’s First Television Show, has a foreword by Dave Goelz.

… Okay, no it doesn’t.  But you know what does? Craig Shemin’s new book, The Sam and Friends Script Book: A Collection of Sketches from Jim Henson’s First Television Show. Which is the perfect way to ease you into a wonderful book filled with chaos from 1955-1961.  Dave’s foreword is brief, but it exudes his love for Jim and the world he created, the beginnings of which are on display in this book.

If you’re one of those Muppet fans living under a rock (say hello to the Fraggles for me), you may not know that Craig Shemin, President of The Jim Henson Legacy and previous Muppet writer, wrote a book in 2022 exploring the early days of Jim Henson’s career, Sam and Friends: The Story of Jim Henson’s First Television Show.  With this new book, Craig returns to give some more context and present actual scripts from a show that is, unfortunately, almost entirely lost to time.

If you’re reading ToughPigs, you’ll forgive me for assuming you know what Sam and Friends is, but for those who have no idea (Hi, Mum!) allow me to quickly explain.  As the book title suggests, it was Jim Henson’s first television show, starring the very first Kermit (not yet a frog) and a cast of characters, led by Sam.  It aired twice a day live in Washington before the news, featuring puppets singing and doing comedy bits for 5 minutes at a time (Muppets doing comedy sketches? That would never work now!)  Shemin does a lot of the leg work for you though, briefly introducing the characters and the concepts so that you can just jump in.

While doing research for his previous book, Shemin found boxes of yellowing pages, filled with scripts written by Jim Henson (and later, briefly, Jerry Juhl) and has spent the last couple of years working to get them edited and annotated for us Muppet fans to enjoy.  The book is filled with notes to give the readers context, or to explain choices made within the scripts.

The book is broken up into Chapters, the first being ‘GETTING TO KNOW THE CHARACTERS’, giving readers more time to familiarise themselves with the team of misfits they’re about to encounter.  As we go through, chapters include ‘THE WORLD OF POLITICS’, ‘PARODIES’ and ‘TECHNICAL STUFF’, each with short introductions to provide more insight.  While all these scripts are pretty funny, I laughed out loud multiple times during the chapter ‘MUPPETY STUFF’, because it really felt like old school Muppet humour.

Scripts begin with scanned images of Jim’s scratchings, on notepads and flyers and anything else that could be written on.  Craig then gives a little more background about what may have been going on with the show, or with the world, at the time, which helps contextualise what you’re going to read.  The annotations are usually pretty insightful, although more than once I did think to myself ‘I’m not sure that required a footnote’, such as when in the first script we stop for a second to learn about Hamlet’s Yorick.  That said, 99.9% of the other annotations were great at providing more information about Jim’s work and the show as a whole.

The release of these scripts feels like a large part of the history of The Muppets has been restored.  Besides 5 of them, none of the other 57 scripts presented here have ever been seen before.  Because the tapes are long gone, so much of Sam and Friends has felt like lost media, so Shemin’s hard work really feels like a gift.  Here we’re given pages and pages of what almost feels like brand new Jim Henson content, which, during The Muppets 70th anniversary, is a true treat for all of us.

I know technically The Jim Henson Company still owns these scripts, but my hope is now that they’re released, we see some of you guys building some puppets and giving them a go yourselves!  I’d love to see fans pick up a camera and a few puppets and try out ‘Frisbee and the Joke Book Nook’, or someone like Richard Gomez take on some of the fun musical sketches they did.  I think that sort of thing is exactly in the spirit of Sam and Friends, fun experimental puppetry, everyone just having a go and having a good time.

The Sam and Friends Script Book: A Collection of Sketches from Jim Henson’s First Television Show is well worth you checking out.  Craig Shemin’s tireless work keeping the legacy of Jim Henson’s memory alive is in overdrive here, and we all owe him a lot.  You can pay him back by ordering his book right here!  I got given a digital review copy and I’m STILL going to buy a physical one!  That’s how much I loved this!

By Jarrod Fairclough – [email protected]

Click here to be brought to you by Esskay on the ToughPigs Discord!