Here's an episode of CBS Summer Playhouse, which was a series back in 1987 that played off unsold pilots. There are two here, hosted by Tim Reid and Daphne Maxwell Reid, who were about to star in a new series (i.e., a sold pilot) called Frank's Place.
The first of the two unsold ones is Puppetman, a situation comedy from Jim Henson's company, all about backstage at a TV show not unlike Sesame Street. Fred Newman stars as the lead puppeteer. Fred specializes in odd voices and sounds and had done some work with Henson at the time, I believe. The other puppeteer is played by Richard Hunt, who was one of the key Muppeteers, handling — among others — Scooter, Beaker, Janice and Statler. Also in the cast were Julie Payne and Jack Burns. Burns had worked with Henson as a writer on The Muppet Show.
I've worked with Julie Payne for years on Garfield cartoons — she plays Jon's girlfriend Liz among other roles — so I called her and asked her to write down what she recalled of it. Here's what she sent me…
My being cast may have been thanks to Jeremy Stevens, one of the writer-producers. He was a childhood friend of my husband, in Brooklyn. The idea of working with Jim Henson and doing scenes with his puppets was a bit of heaven. I looked forward to working with him and getting to know him, but that didn't really happen; he was busy with the puppeting aspects, and we actors were working on scenes. Very friendly cast. But the week was a bit of a blur. I got the flu and sat through the rehearsal days with my head on the table, getting up only to run through my scenes. Someone on the crew told me to take two of her favorite antihistamines — big mistake. I remember driving home on the freeway at about 30 miles per hour.
The other pilot in the half-hour is called Sawdust and it was created and written by Gary Markowitz, who worked on a lot of good shows (like Larry Gelbart's United States) in the seventies and eighties. It's a fun, interesting show about circus performers and while it seems a bit too unusual for CBS at the time, I enjoyed it…and hey, it even had a small role in it played by the unofficial Stooge, Mousie Garner…
