2008-12-22

"With Chickens? That Fucked Up!"

Eventually, we all knew The Muppets would grow up. But in a long gone era, they were far more innocent babies, frolicking in their spacious playroom and having make-believe adventures where, as promised in their theme song, they could "go anywhere".

To keep them safe, they had a nanny named Nanny, who was only ever shown from the knees down, possibly in homage to Peanuts creator Charles M. Schultz, who never drew a human older than ten in the fifty-some-odd year run of his comic strip.

There is a single exception to this rule. In one of their adventures, they imagine Nanny as a hideous alien, and after her trademark green- and white-striped stockings transform into ferocious, scaly monster legs, the view pans up and we see that Nanny is something like a cross between Ridley Scott's Alien and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. The Muppet Babies scream in terror, Nanny-Monster chases, and when they're caught the make-believe ends and everything is back to normal.

The reason I bring this up is because Nanny always had a familiar quality to her, above and beyond the matronly care she gave an infantile collection of felt and yarn. Today I find out why: Nanny from Jim Henson's Muppet Babies was voiced by none other than Barbara "I Speak Jive" Billingsley.

I guess you might say she caught me on the rebound with the trivia side.

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