While speculation continues about the relationship between Ernie and Bert, a former resident of Sesame Street was definitely gay and played Ernie's right-hand man, literally.
In "Funny Boy: The Richard Hunt Biography," Jessica Max Stein intimately covers the professional career and private life of the affable, talented, and friendly man who was quick to make friends in his puppeteer career.
From an early age in suburban, Closter, New Jersey, Richard Hunt was already entertaining neighborhood kids with his own puppet shows. His high school experience involved theater and an early education in the performing arts. He had the desire to travel across the George Washington Bridge to New York City, where he hoped his career would take off.
In its early years, Hunt had seen "Sesame Street," and perhaps Henson's earlier creations on TV back when even Kermit the Frog didn't have a name.
"I had grown up watching the Muppets," Hunt is quoted as saying in an interview. "I'd drop anything to watch them. I thought they were weird."
Just weird enough for Hunt to one day cold-call the Henson workshop from a payphone to snag a job interview at 18.
One of his first duties was operating the right hand of Ernie (performed by Henson), the joke-playing roommate of Bert (performed by Frank Oz). Due in part of their close proximity — one operating the head and body, the other an arm — their relationship quickly grew to earnest friendships with Henson and his fellow creators.
Let's get things started
As the Henson creative outlets expanded, Hunt joined the creators and cast of what was going to be a new show. After a disastrous variety show that was featured a bit too much violence (titled "Sex & Violence"), Henson was hesitant, but was convinced to bring the show to London, where they would begin taping of "The Muppet Show." Why London? British investor Lew Grade had the only deal offered at the time.
Kermit led his wacky crew through a variety show that each week included a special guest. Hunt created and performed the characters of Scooter, the stage manager; Janice, the groovy bass player; Gladys the Cow; Beaker, the scientist's often exploding lab partner; one half of balcony hecklers Statler (Hunt) & Wells; Miss Piggy (for one season) and Sweetums, one of the full-bodied monsters who always seemed to turn out to be nicer than you'd think.
As "The Muppet Show" became a hit in multiple countries, Hunt began to enjoy his life and his healthy paycheck, traversing countries while supporting his family after his father's death. He even bought his mother's home so she wouldn't have to pay the mortgage.
On a return to New York City, Hunt bought a big black taxi cab, perhaps as a souvenir of his previous London days, and would take great joy in tooling his friends around town to restaurants and parties.
Of Hunt's lavish showings of affection to friends, including always insisting on paying restaurant bills, one surviving friend wondered if Hunt's intense desire to be funny, and to be liked, masked a childhood where his alcoholic father continually failed to gain employment. Hunt's need to support and show it others spread widely, anyway.
And while he kept his relationships and occasional hookups private, he gradually began to introduce guys he dated as "a friend." That was until his relationship with Nelson Bird, a painter, became more serious. By that time pretty much everyone in the cast and crew knew that Hunt was gay. They just didn't address it, or care, or judge.
Being green
Jim Henson's empire expanded globally from merchandise to multiple language versions of "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show." But Henson, always itching to find something other projects, spearheaded "The Muppet Movie," the first in a series of successful family flicks with the same sense of humor for the adults to enjoy as well. Others, like "Labyrinth" and "The Dark Crystal," may have been critical pans at the time, but became cult favorites.
After becoming HIV-positive, Hunt began to struggle with his own occasional illnesses, but continued working on a new project, "Fraggle Rock" from 1983 to 1987. In the show, Hunt played multiple characters and even directed an episode.
The multi-species series emphasized harmony between cultures with a witty edge. From the beginning, the show was developed for an international audience, as opposed to merely dubbed later as with previous productions.
Of course, it should come as no surprise that the work environment of such a creative staff would envelop Hunt in empathy. This, of course, is the group that gave us the rainbow connection.
By Chapter 10, it's 1982 and that infamous New York Times article about a disease affecting gay men may have been brushed aside, but it only took a few more months for Hunt's acquaintances, then friends, then even more to succumb to the disease that became known as AIDS. Hunt endured the death of a longtime boyfriend and his own opportunistic infections that took his life in 1992.
But four years before that, Hunt played a major role in creating what is now a pretty much forgotten show, "The Ghost of Faffner Hall" in 1988/9. Similar to "The Muppet Show," the program took on a revue structure set in a London theater doomed for demolition. It only lasted 13 episodes but remains favored among devoted Muppet fans. Another show, "Puppetman," never made it past a pilot.
Biographer Stein writes that throughout the up-and-down of productions and creativity, Hunt was open with friends and staff about his HIV status, which was hard to ignore as more and more friends began to die.
In addition to the predictably heartbreaking later chapters, what remains is the biographer's years of research, interviews with friends, family, and coworkers, and a thorough index. Kudos to Stein's tremendous skill in sharing the vibrant life of the artist that was Richard Hunt, and the joy that he created.
'Funny Boy: The Richard Hunt Biography,' by Jessica Max Stein, Rutgers University Press. $34.95 www.rutgersuniversitypress.org
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