Jerry Nelson was the Muppets' utility man: the voice of Floyd Pepper, Robin the Frog, the Count and dozens of pirates, skulls and announcers. The measure of how good he was is how rarely anyone noticed it was the same man.
Fi1m perspective
Find the band in The Muppet Movie (1979) and look at the bass player. Floyd Pepper has his eyes half shut and his shoulders down and delivers every line as if he has just woken up and is not sorry. That is Jerry Nelson, and it is as close as he came to a signature. Our review of the film gave the heavy lifting to Frank Oz and said Nelson and Richard Hunt fill the edges. That is fair, and it is also the job description. Nelson spent the best part of fifty years filling the edges of Jim Henson's pictures, and nobody did it better.
He came to Henson in 1965 as a temporary replacement on The Jimmy Dean Show, after two years with Bil Baird's marionettes, and joined the Muppets properly around 1970. From 1972 he was the Count on Sesame Street, a Bela Lugosi impression aimed at four-year-olds, and he was still doing the voice in 2012. On The Muppet Show (1976–1981) he was Floyd, Robin, Crazy Harry, Lew Zealand, Dr Julius Strangepork and Louis Kazagger. Fraggle Rock (1983–1987) finally handed him a lead, Gobo, and Marjory the Trash Heap besides. The Dark Crystal (1982) took him out of the Muppet world altogether as the dying Emperor.
His method, as he described it, was to move the voice around the mouth and throat to suit the size of the thing he was holding, and to build it on an actor he remembered from films or radio. He said in later life that every character he did was a bad impression of one of his favourite character actors from films and radio, so bad that nobody noticed what he was doing. The not noticing was the point. In Muppet Treasure Island (1996) he is Statler, Blind Pew, Mad Monty, Floyd again, Lew Zealand again, a tomato, some skulls and a screaming cat, and our review did not mention him once. We do not regret that. A film in which you can hear the same man everywhere has gone wrong.
Robin is the one that gets us. Nelson said the small frog stood for his own insecurities, and you can hear it: the voice is high and thin and never asks for anything, and the first time we heard it in The Muppet Movie we were more moved than a green sock has any business managing. It is a performance with no defences in it, which is a rare thing from a man whose trade was disguise.
The cost of being the utility man is that there is no single performance we can send a stranger to. Floyd never carried a film. The Count carries a minute at a time. Gobo led a television series, not a picture. So put on The Muppet Movie tonight for Oz and the frog, as we said before, and then listen for the bass player. Once you can hear Nelson, you will hear him in everything, and the films are better for it.
Biography
Jerry Nelson was an American puppeteer and voice actor. He began working with puppeteer Bil Baird in the early 1960s and joined Jim Henson's team in 1965, later becoming a regular performer on Sesame Street from its second season in 1970.
Nelson created and voiced many Muppet characters, including Count von Count on Sesame Street, Floyd Pepper and Lew Zealand on The Muppet Show, and Gobo Fraggle on Fraggle Rock. He performed in numerous Muppet films and specials, including The Muppet Movie (1979), The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) and Muppet Treasure Island (1996), where he voiced Statler, Blind Pew, Mad Monty, Floyd Pepper, Lew Zealand and additional roles. He died in 2012.
