Funny Boy: The Richard Hunt Biography

Stein, an English lecturer at Hunter College, traces in her affectionate debut biography the life and work of Richard Hunt (1951–1992), one of the “Original Five” performers who propelled the Muppets to international acclaim in the 1970s and ’80s. Growing up in post-WWII New York and New Jersey, Hunt was part of a large, boisterous family who encouraged his love of performing. Success during his teenage years as a children’s birthday party puppeteer hinted at his future career, which began when he cold-called Muppets creator Jim Henson’s entertainment company, “bounded like a big puppy into his June 1970 audition,” and was hired as a puppeteer for The Muppets, then a bare-bones enterprise with segments on such TV shows as Sesame Street. Hunt began by operating the right hands of puppets voiced by Jim Henson and his longtime creative partner Frank Oz, but soon started developing and voicing his own characters, including Janice, the hippie singer in the Electric Mayhem band, and Beaker, the long-suffering assistant to Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. Mining interviews with Hunt’s friends, colleagues, and family, Stein perceptively captures how the puppeteer’s edgy energy and unique, irreverent humor proved instrumental to the show’s success, particularly as The Muppets transitioned toward more adult-centered programming in the 1970s. The result is a nuanced and meticulously detailed tribute to the artist once described by Jim Henson as “the most sensational, perpetual teenager in the world.” (Mar.)