The man behind Miss Piggy and Yoda never wanted to be a puppeteer
Frank Oz gave voice and movement to Miss Piggy, Cookie Monster and Yoda. Yet by his own account he had wanted to be a journalist, and what he really longed for was directing. After three decades with the Muppets he got his wish, making comedies like Little Shop of Horrors and What About Bob?
Born Frank Richard Oznowicz in Hereford, England, on May 25, 1944, he was the son of two puppeteers: a Flemish Catholic mother from Belgium and a Dutch-Polish Jewish father serving with a Dutch brigade. The family lived in Belgium, then moved to the United States in 1951, settling first in Montana and later in Oakland, California. As a teenager Oz worked with the Vagabond Puppets at the Children's Fairyland park, which is where he met Jim Henson.
He joined Henson in New York in 1963, aged 19. Beyond his own characters, including Animal and Sam Eagle on The Muppet Show and Bert on Sesame Street, he became one of the chief shapers of the Muppets, prized for his double acts with Henson, such as Bert opposite Ernie and Miss Piggy opposite Kermit. When George Lucas asked Henson about Yoda, Henson was too busy and suggested Oz, who operated and voiced the Jedi Master starting with The Empire Strikes Back in 1980.
Directing began with The Dark Crystal, made jointly with Henson, followed by The Muppets Take Manhattan in 1984. His first film without Henson, Little Shop of Horrors (1986), featured a giant talking plant that needed as many as 60 puppeteers at full size. Comedies with Steve Martin and Bill Murray followed, though Oz has had tense sets, among them What About Bob? and The Stepford Wives. Seeing Orson Welles's Touch of Evil, he said, showed him how many rules a filmmaker could break.
Some projects slipped away. He left Ghost because he wanted to digitally remove the ghost character's shadow, an idea that would have ballooned the budget, and he abandoned Benjamin Button when he could not crack the story. On stage, his one-man show In and Of Itself with Derek DelGaudio was booked Off-Broadway for 10 weeks in 2017 and stayed for 72. In a 2007 interview he explained leaving the Muppets: four children, constant demands and 30 years in a job he never planned.
Source: Frank Oz
