Michael K. Frith

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Michael K. Frith
Born
Michael Kingsbury Frith

(1941-07-08) 8 July 1941 (age 82)
Hamilton, Bermuda
EducationHarvard College
Occupation(s)director, consultant, designer, producer, creator, writer, illustrator, and technician
SpouseKathryn Mullen[1]

Michael Kingsbury Frith (born 8 July 1941) is a British artist and television producer. He is the former executive vice-president and creative director of The Jim Henson Company. His contributions to Muppet projects[2] have been extensive and varied.[3]

Biography

Frith was born in

Harvard Lampoon parody of James Bond novels.[5] Later he illustrated the front cover of Bored of the Rings, the 1969 Lampoon parody of The Lord of the Rings.[6] According to Frith, he designed the emblem for the Lampoon.[7]

Frith began his career at

Theodor Seuss Geisel
, Dr. Seuss. He was also Dr. Seuss's book editor and close personal friend.

In 1971, when Random House began publishing Sesame Street books, Frith was named editor and art director of the Sesame series. He produced a series of five annual large-format Sesame Street Storybooks, and contributed artwork for four of them: The Sesame Street Storybook (1971), The Sesame Street 1, 2, 3 Storybook (1973), The Sesame Street ABC Storybook (1974), and Big Bird's Busy Book (1975). Appreciating Frith's talents as a designer, Jim Henson brought him on board his creative team. One of Frith's early projects was designing characters for The Land of Gorch, a segment of Saturday Night Live.

Frith recalled his beginnings with the Muppets in The Saturday Evening Post (December 1980): "The first drawings I ever worked on were characters for Saturday Night Live. The Muppets did regular segments for a season featuring characters about as far removed from Sesame Street as you could get. Jim asked me to come over one day to talk about creating Muppet personalities—specifically, strange, mossy, warty creatures. Instead of traditional ones with cartoon eyes—round, white and black—he had become fascinated with taxidermist eyes: cow, camel and tiger eyes. Around this simple concept of a different eye evolved a whole new concept which led to the creation of the crazy-eyed loonies we enjoy today."[citation needed]

He joined

Henson Associates full-time as Art Director in 1975. He was named vice-president in 1978, and executive vice-president and director of creative services in 1985. After the success of "The Muppet Show" series Henson wanted Frith, along with two other Muppet Show stalwarts Jerry Juhl, Jocelyn Stevenson (both writers) and newcomer to the Henson productions Duncan Kenworthy (producer), to create a new children's show which would appeal to a much wider international audience."Fraggle Rock" is the new show which emerged and subsequently ran for 4 seasons totaling 96 episodes between January 10, 1983 and March 30, 1987. This new show centered on "Muppet" creatures known as Fraggles, who live underground along with several other species of creature such as Doozers and Gorgs. He designed many of the creatures and settings which existed in this universe. He explains that he drew on two major parts of his background when creating the "look" of the show, the first his many years in working with Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss) on several children's books and the second being his growing up in Bermuda.[8]

In October 1995, Frith left Henson Productions to start a new company, Sirius Thinking, Ltd., with

PBS, in 2000. Frith served as the executive producer, creative director, conceptual designer and co-creator of the show.[citation needed
]

Frith, along with his wife, Muppet performer

land mines. In the film, "The Story of the Little Carpet Boy", one puppet loses several limbs before he learns to avoid land mines completely. Since the first film, No Strings has gone on to create films for children in need in areas including Africa, Haiti, Madagascar, Sudan, and Syria. In 2016 No Strings was awarded the 2016 Adela Dwyer-St. Thomas of Villanova Peace Award from Villanova University.[9]

Frith's projects and credits

Film and television

Books written or illustrated

Animals Do the Strangest Things – series of Random House Step-Up Books written by Leonora Hornblow and

Arthur Hornblow
, illustrated by Frith

References

  1. ^ "WEDDINGS; Richard Quinn Jr. and Christina Frith". The New York Times. 26 July 1993. Retrieved 6 April 2023.
  2. ^ Stetler, Carrie (31 January 1987). "IMAGINE THAT FOR THE FIRST TIME, THE MUPPET BABIES TAKE THEIR CREATIVE FANTASY TO THE STAGE". Morning Call. p. A47. Retrieved 28 June 2011. ...says Michael Frith, Muppet designer and vice president of Henson Associates. ...
  3. ^ The Bermudian magazine, October, 2001, Page 13. Profile, by Rosemary Jones: READING BETWEEN THE LIONS. Bermudian Michael Frith takes his passion for learning to TV.
  4. ^ Colleen Walsh (21 July 2016). "Smirk Central". News.harvard.edu. Retrieved 12 February 2018.
  5. ^ "Alligator (A Harvard Lampoon Parody)". Bookseller product display. Amazon.com. Retrieved 2015-09-23.
  6. ^ a b Bored of the Rings title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved 2015-09-23.
  7. ^ Michael K. Frith: Edmund March Wheelwright and the Harvard Lampoon Castle (3 of 7), retrieved 28 December 2023
  8. YouTube
    Video Interview: 00:34; retrieved 10 October 2012.
  9. ^ "2016 Adela Dwyer-St. Thomas of Villanova Peace Award to be Presented to Puppetry Group No Strings International". Archived from the original on 4 October 2022. Retrieved 8 January 2018.

External links

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