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Date of Birth
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08-July-1941
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Place of Birth
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Bermuda
(United Kingdom, with Dependencies and Territories, Americas, DVD Region 1, Atlantic Ocean, North America)
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Nationality
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United Kingdom
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Also know as
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Michael Frith, Michael Kingsbury Frith, Mike Frith
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Profession
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Puppeteer, Technician, Consultant, Writer, Illustrator, Television Producer, Production Designer
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Michael Kingsbury Frith, is the former Executive Vice President and Creative Director for Jim Henson Productions. His contributions to Muppet projects have been extensive and varied.
Frith began his career at Random House in 1963 as a children's book illustrator and editor. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Beginner Books series, the line of books created by 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, The Sesame Street 1, 2, 3 Storybook, The Sesame Street ABC Storybook, and Big Bird's Busy Book.
Appreciating Frith's talents as a designer, Jim Henson brought him on board his creative team. One of Frith's early projects was designing the Land of Gorch characters for Saturday Night Live.
Frith recalled his beginnings with the Muppets in The Saturday Evening Post: "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."
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