Kermit Love dies at 91

Blinky_Fish

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Kermit created his visions with his glue, string, cloth and feathers – He also opened our minds with the ability to communicate through the characters he helped create. Being on the older end of the Sesame generations, I know what he has accomplished in my time here. Just imagine what things we missed from such a brilliant creator. We all may never know what he has done for us all. But he chose to help us imagine through his creations, and he harvested the need to be good to one another through a bunch of socks with glitter and feathers.

Thank You Kermit Love for your wonderful imagination and devotion to puppetry and childhood imagination. Thank you for the opening of creative minds, like Kevin Clash , Rick Lyons and so many others. Your teachings that will be handed down to keep the craft alive.


Safe Journey Sir.
 

Brooklyn

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Would love to see if there is a way to pay tribute to him on the MuppetCast.....hint, hint.
 

dwayne1115

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We need to make a thread or somthing where people can pay there respects here on Muppet Centeral as well. I think that the thread that we found out about it is just not the right place to really cellebreat the man.
 

Brooklyn

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Kermit Love - NYT Obit

Kermit Love, Costume Creator, Dies at 91

By DENNIS HEVESI, NEW YORK TIMES

Kermit Love, the costume designer for some of ballet’s most renowned choreographers whose greatest fame came as a creator, with Jim Henson, of the beloved “Sesame Street” characters Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus, died on Saturday in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was 91 and lived in Stanfordville, N.Y.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said Christopher Lyall, Mr. Love’s partner of 50 years.


Although Mr. Love collaborated with luminaries of dance like George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Robert Joffrey, Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp, it was the 8-foot-2, yellow-feathered Big Bird and his 7-foot, woolly mammoth-like friend Mr. Snuffleupagus — both perennially 6 years old — that brought him global attention.


“For Kermit, the costume was just the beginning,” said Kevin Clash, who is now senior puppet coordinator for “Sesame Street” and considers Mr. Love his mentor. “He taught how to create the character out of the costume.”


Caroll Spinney, 74, the man inside the bird since “Sesame Street” was first telecast in 1969, said, “We traveled the world doing shows for kids, sometimes with Big Bird conducting orchestras.”


In 1973, Mr. Spinney said, he and Mr. Love and a “big, hooped sack” containing Big Bird flew to Beijing to perform, a year after President Richard M. Nixon’s diplomatic breakthrough with Communist China. He said that Mr. Love was “was very picky about how the bird was handled.”


Big Bird had his own seat, Mr. Spinney said, adding, “They gave us a half-priced ticket because he was only 6 years old.”
Mr. Henson, the creator of “Sesame Street,” who died in 1990, did the original sketches of Big Bird. Mr. Love built the bird, with its manhole-sized orange foam feet. He added feathers (with some designed to fall off) to make the creature cuter. Inside, Mr. Spinney controlled Big Bird’s mouth with his hand and the eyes with a lever attached to his pinky finger. A television monitor inside the puppet allowed Mr. Spinney to see the set.
Mr. Love, who, with his Santa Claus-like beard played Willy the Hot Dog Man on the show, also helped design Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster; he insisted he was not the namesake of the famous frog. He created characters for 22 foreign versions of “Sesame Street.”


It was Mr. Love’s work fashioning costumes and masks for dance that brought him to the attention of Mr. Henson. He had also worked in film and theater, including doing costumes for Broadway shows like “One Touch of Venus” in 1943 with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Ogden Nash; Mary Martin was the star.


A 1998 Dance magazine profile of Mr. Love said, “Regardless of the genre in which he works, each of his costumes is special because he seems to know a character’s personality and history and gives every detail a reason for being, historically as well as aesthetically.”


Mr. Love worked on . de Mille’s “Rodeo” in 1942 and, two years later, on Robbins’s first ballet, “Fancy Free.”


Mr. Love worked with Balanchine for more than 40 years. In 1965, he built the 28-foot-high marionette for the Balanchine production of “Don Quixote.” A decade later, they collaborated on “L’Enfant et les Sortilèges” (“The Spellbound Child”), a one-act opera that tells the tale of a bratty boy who tears up his house and tortures his cat and squirrel, but is then taught lessons by objects that come to life. For the 1981 television production of the work, Mr. Love created settings and costumes, including dancing chairs, a clock that spins away from a wall and life-size owls, frogs and dragonflies that flutter about the boy.


For the Joffrey Ballet’s “Nutcracker,” Mr. Love dressed the mice in suits of armor.


How many “Nutcrackers” had he done? “Oh God, so many ‘Nutcrackers,’ ” he once said.


Despite his assumed English (and sometimes French) accent, Kermit Ernest Hollingshead Love was born in Spring Lake, N.J., on Aug. 7, 1916. His father, Ernest Love, was a decorative plasterer. His mother, Alice, died when he was 3, and he was raised by a grandmother and a great-grandmother.


Young Kermit was first fascinated with Punch-and-Judy puppets at 7. “But what inspired me even more was shadow play,” he told New York magazine in 1985. “I can remember rigging a lantern and casting shadows on the wall.” Thrown by a horse at 12, he suffered serious damage to both legs. Bedridden for three years, he listened to radio dramas and drew pictures of what he imagined the characters looked like.


Mr. Love began making puppets for a federal Works Progress Administration theater in 1935 and soon after was designing costumes for Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater. Then he began working with Barbara Karinska, the costumer for the New York City Ballet.


Mr. Love is survived by Mr. Lyall.


Like a doting father, Mr. Love worried about Big Bird. In 1985, the two rode the Metroliner to Washington for the Easter Egg roll on the White House lawn.


“The grass stained his feet,” Mr. Love complained to New York magazine. “He had to have his soles replaced.”
 

Fragglemuppet

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Thank you for sharing that.

RIP Kermit Love, who, if I may say so, had the coolest name ever!
:smile:
 

travellingpat

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RIP Mr Love....hm isnt that interesting that two very important Kermits died within like 2 weeks.....rip mr love, thanks for all youve done
 

Redsonga

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I remember his face as the hot dog man but I never knew he had such a big part in all of SS :frown:! Gosh, it's like losing a grandfather...We'll miss you Mr. Love ;.;!
 

Traveling Matt

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Sad news indeed. Sesame would not have been the same without him.

RIP Mr. Love.
 

Traveling Matt

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from Yahoo News...

'Big Bird' costume creator Kermit Love dies at 91

Wed Jun 25, 2008 / 11:52 AM ET

POUGHKEEPSIE, NY - Kermit Love, the costume designer who helped puppeteer Jim Henson create Big Bird and other Sesame Street characters, has died. He was 91.

Love died from congestive heart failure Saturday in Poughkeepsie, near his home in Stanfordville, Love's longtime partner Christopher Lyall told The New York Times.

In addition to his work with Henson, Love was a designer for some of ballet's most prominent choreographers, including Twyla Tharp, Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine.

Love also designed costumes and puppets for film and advertising, including the Snuggle bear from the fabric softener commercials.

Sesame Street, public television's groundbreaking effort to use TV to teach preschoolers, premiered in 1969. Henson designed the original sketches of Big Bird, and Love then built the 8-foot, 2-inch yellow-feathered costume.

It was Love's idea to add a few feathers designed to fall off, to create a more realistic feel.

"The most important thing about puppets is that they must project their imagination, and then the audience must open their eyes and imagine," he told The New York Times in 1981.

Love also helped design costumes and puppets for Mr. Snuffleupagus, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster, among other characters. He even appeared on the show himself as Willy, the fantasy neighborhood's resident hot dog vendor.

But Love always insisted Henson's famous frog wasn't named for him, according to The New York Times.

Caroll Spinney, who has played Big Bird since Sesame Street began, said he knew Love was gravely ill but didn't know he'd died until Tuesday.

"Kermit was definitely a totally unique person," 74-year-old Spinney said. "He looked very much like Santa Claus but was a little bit more like the Grinch."

In addition to designing the Big Bird costume, he added, "Kermit really helped me with dramatic coaching, and he was wonderful at that."

Born in 1916, Love began making puppets for a federal Works Progress Administration theater in 1935. He also designed costumes for Orson Welles' Mercury Theater. From there he began working with the New York City Ballet's costumer.

In his 2003 book, The Wisdom of Big Bird (and the Dark Genius of Oscar the Grouch): Lessons From a Life in Feathers, Spinney recalled that after a year on Sesame Street, he felt he couldn't live in New York on his salary.

Love told him to give it a month; the next week, Big Bird was on the cover of Time magazine and Spinney couldn't imagine leaving.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080625/ap_en_tv/obit_love
 
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