ESSENTIALS [Frank Oz Edition]

Frank Oz
AKA Richard Frank Oznowicz

Born: 25-May-1944
Birthplace: Hereford, England

Occupation: Actor, Film Director
Father: Isidore Oznowicz (puppeteer)
Mother: Frances Oznowicz (puppeteer)
Wife: Robin Garsen (m. 12-Dec-1979, two children

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Yoda, Miss Piggy, and The Stepford Wives

Frank Oz is a puppeteer and motion picture director. He created many of the voices and operated "Muppets" for Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, and he has directed movies such as Little Shop of Horrors and The Stepford Wives. He was born to puppeteer parents in England, who emigrated to the United States when he was five years old. Oz played with puppets from a very early age, started staging his own puppet shows at 12, and was an accomplished amateur puppeteer by high school.

Jim Henson met Oz at a California convention of puppeteers, and hired Oz in 1963. They worked together for decades. Oz performed an early version of the Cookie Monster for Our Place, a children's show that aired on CBS in 1967, and Henson, Oz, and the Muppets became cornerstones of Western culture with the debut of Sesame Street in 1969, followed by The Muppet Show and later a series of Muppet movies. Oz's Muppet characters include Bert, Grover, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, the Cookie Monster, Sam the Eagle, Swedish Chef, and most famously, Yoda, the oracle of wisdom in the Star Wars movies. Producer George Lucas gave Oz a great deal of leeway in designing Yoda's appearance, and the character's reversed grammar was Oz's idea.

In 1982, Henson and Oz co-directed The Dark Crystal, a fantasy told through puppetry. Oz alone directed The Muppets Take Manhattan, and later Little Shop of Horrors, where more than two dozen puppeteers operated an enormous man-eating plant-puppet. But Little Shop was mostly a live-action film, and its success made Oz a bankable Hollywood director, puppets or no puppets. As a director, Oz's credits include Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob?, HouseSitter, In & Out, Bowfinger, and The Stepford Wives. Oz has also appeared in cameo roles in several films. He's the corrections officer who hands John Belushi his possessions as he's discharged from Joliet Prison in The Blues Brothers, and he's the cop who takes Dan Aykroyd's stuff when he's jailed in Trading Places.




ESSENTIALS [Frank Oz Edition]
Bert - Doin’ The Pigeon
Cookie Monster – C is for Cookie
Grover – I Am Blue
Miss Piggy - Snackercise
Fozzie Bear – Movin’ Right Along
Bert - La La La
Miss Piggy & Rudolf Nureyev - Baby It's Cold Outside
Grover – Near And Far
Bert - Paper Clip
Muppets - People In Your Neighborhood
Animal – Wipe Out
Cookie Monster - One Of These Things
John Williams – Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme)