Did you know that there was a puppet maker, puppeteer, and actor who worked closely with Jim Henson in creating the Muppets and on the Sesame Street TV show, and whose first name was Kermit, but was not the namesake of Kermit the Frog? I’m talking about Kermit Ernest Hollingshead Love, who was born August 7, 1916.
Love was born in New Jersey, and was mostly raised by his grandmother and great-grandmother after his mother passed away when he was just 3. He started working in the theater in 1935 when he got a job as a marionette maker as part of a government Works Progress Administration program during the Great Depression. He began in a theater in Newark, New Jersey, and within about a year made the jump to Broadway as a costume designer. He designed some of the costumes for the Mercury Theatre Troupe led by Orson Welles — but probably didn’t have anything to do with their famous radio presentation, War of the Worlds.
Love mostly worked behind the scenes, but occasionally appeared in bit parts. He became well known in the New York theater world and worked with many of the biggest stars on Broadway and the American Ballet Theater, where he designed a 28-foot-high (8.5m) marionette for a production of Don Quixote. Love met Jim Henson in the early 1960s. Their first collaboration was creating a puppet dragon for advertising the La Choy brand of packaged food. That dragon turned out to be the precursor of the Big Bird puppet/costume for the Muppets.
Love and Henson continued their collaboration as Love built Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster, and Mr. Snuffleupagus. Love concentrated on the Sesame Street show, where he was also the character Willie the hot dog vendor. He also contributed to other productions, including The Muppet Show, The Muppet Movie, and Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird. That last production was a feature film on which Love is credited twice, as “Special Muppet Consultant” as well as Willie.
Even while he was working with the Muppets, Love took on outside projects, including another puppet TV series, The Great Space Coaster. He appeared on the cover of New York magazine three times, in 1982, 1984, and 1985. In each case, it was the magazine’s Christmas issue, and Love was Santa Claus — who he really did resemble.
Love partially retired in the 1990s, but still worked building puppet/costumes for the Joffrey Ballet (especially their annual performances of The Nutcracker), and he designed Aza, the mascot for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Aza might be a bird, but it’s not entirely clear.
Love was born in New Jersey and lived in New York, but often spoke with an English accent. Not all the time, of course. Sometimes he spoke with a French accent. As far as I could find out, he didn’t actually speak French, though. He lived to be 91, and is survived by Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, and, of course, the La Choy Dragon. As for Kermit the Frog, the name is just a coincidence; Henson had already created and named his puppet in 1955, years before he met Kermit Love.
