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The Fantastic Miss Piggy Podcast - Episode 1: In a Pig's Eye · Muppet Fan Podcasts with ToughPigs.com

0:00
I'm Danny Horn and this is a love story.
0:10
What now? My love.
0:13
Now that. You left me how?
0:18
Can I live through another? Day I was five years old when
0:26
The Muppet Show started. I lived outside New York and the
0:29
first show they aired on the New York station was the Rita Moreno
0:32
episode. I was aging out of the course
0:34
Sesame Street demographic, so I was really excited that The
0:37
Muppets had a new show for grown-ups.
0:40
I watched that first episode of The Muppet Show and afterwards I
0:42
was so pumped up by how great it was.
0:44
I remember sitting in my chair and spinning around and around
0:47
and thinking I am going to love this for the rest of my life.
0:52
As you know, plans that you make when you're 5 years old aren't
0:54
usually that durable long term, but this one held up.
0:58
When I got out of college I published A fanzine called
1:00
Muppetzine and then I started a Muppet fan site called Tough
1:03
Pigs. And in 2005 I Co founded the
1:05
Muppet Wiki and here I am, as predicted, still loving The
1:09
Muppets just as much as I ever did.
1:12
Now Miss Piggy is all over that Rita Moreno episode.
1:15
She's in the background in the opening number, she's in
1:17
Veterinarians hospital and at the dance she's in the panel
1:19
discussion. Piggy's in the opening theme in
1:22
the closing curtain call. She is everywhere in that
1:24
episode. But Miss Piggy isn't the star.
1:28
The star of that episode is clearly Animal, the drummer in
1:31
the closing number. Rita Moreno's trying to sing
1:33
Fever and Animals, drumming too loud and interrupting her while
1:36
she's singing. It's a really funny sketch, so
1:38
at five years old, I decided right away that my favorite
1:41
Muppet character was Animal. It wasn't Miss Piggy.
1:44
Why would it be? Miss Piggy wasn't anybody's
1:46
favorite character. Not yet.
1:49
I can't give you anything but love, baby.
1:57
That's the only thing I have plenty of, baby.
2:04
Kissy, kissy and welcome to the first episode of the fantastic
2:07
Miss Piggy podcast. I'm Danny Horn, and this podcast
2:10
chronicles my journey to learn everything there is to know
2:13
about that divine swine, the incomparable Miss Piggy.
2:17
You might ask, why would somebody make a podcast about
2:19
just one Muppet? And the answer is because Miss
2:23
Piggy would demand one. And that is actually the point.
2:26
Miss Piggy as a fictional character makes demands on the
2:29
world and for the most part, the world eagerly responded to those
2:32
requests, creating a superstar because a make believe pig
2:36
willed herself into existence. So it actually seems a little
2:39
late in the day to have a podcast devoted to this amazing
2:42
character. Now, the main thing about Miss
2:44
Piggy is that she feels things very deeply and she expresses
2:48
her feelings very passionately. Whether it's Kermit or her
2:51
career or her wardrobe or a midnight snack, she is in it all
2:55
the way. So this podcast is about loving
2:58
something so much that it needs to be expressed in the biggest
3:01
possible way. Where Miss Piggy's concerned,
3:03
too far is actually the appropriate amount of FAR.
3:08
Usually on the show I'll have guests to talk to.
3:10
You know, like a podcast. You've heard podcast before.
3:12
But for this first episode I want to tell you about her
3:15
original name, Miss Piggy Lee, which it's possible she never
3:19
actually had. It's 1974, and Jim Henson is
3:24
trying to sell a television pilot called The Muppet Show Sex
3:27
and violence. They're planning to do a science
3:29
fiction spoof on the show called Return to Beneath the Planet of
3:31
the Pigs. So they need some pigs.
3:35
Bonnie Erickson is a designer and puppet builder who was
3:37
working for The Muppets and for these pig puppets.
3:39
She was trying out a new technique before this.
3:42
The Muppets have been made from patterns on foam that were put
3:45
together and covered with fleece.
3:46
But for these pigs, Erickson carved the puppets directly out
3:50
of a block of foam. They needed several pigs for the
3:52
sex and violence Pilot the king of the pigs would be a big ugly
3:55
warthog, and they needed a scientist pig who would
3:58
eventually evolve into Doctor Julia Strange Pork.
4:00
There was kind of a basic background pig, and then there
4:03
was the female pig, and there, like Aphrodite, Miss Piggy
4:08
emerged from the foam, a love goddess waiting for her cue.
4:13
Now there are two kinds of Muppet pigs.
4:16
Most of them have these little black dot eyes that don't give
4:18
him a lot of personality, But some of the pigs have muppet
4:21
eyes, including an iris and a pupil and eyelids.
4:24
Those are the pigs that become featured characters like Link
4:27
Hogthrob and Annie Sue. The female pig.
4:29
That Bonnie Erickson car for Planet of the Pigs got those
4:31
little black beady eyes, so she was clearly intended to be
4:34
nothing special. But then she got her big break
4:37
on The Tonight Show. It's May 24th, 1974.
4:52
Jim Henson is booked to appear on The Tonight Show with Johnny
4:54
Carson. The bulk of the appearance is
4:56
Henson sitting on the couch with Kermit talking to Carson.
4:59
But they also do a Muppet sketch at the beginning before Henson
5:01
sits down. It's an old sketch from the
5:03
first Jim Henson show, Sam and Friends, and it's called That
5:06
Old Black Magic. Oh, black magic, oh, black magic
5:15
that you wish so well, right? Two fingers up and down my
5:23
spine. The same old witchcraft when
5:26
your eyes meet mine. This bit is familiar to anyone
5:30
who's even heard of Sam and friends.
5:31
It's one of the surviving clips that they always play in
5:33
documentaries. As an example of what the show
5:35
was like, it's a male puppet and a female puppet, lip syncing to
5:39
Louie, Prima and Keely Smith's 1958 hit That Old Black Magic.
5:43
They're just kind of dancing around and acting funny.
5:46
In the original sketch, the guy is Sam, the title character from
5:48
Sam and Friends, and the female character is Kermit, wearing a
5:51
wig, who they called Kermina. It was a popular bit on Sam and
5:55
Friends and Henson wanted to do it on The Tonight Show, but they
5:57
couldn't bring Sam and Kermina. By 1974, the old Sam puppet
6:01
wasn't usable and Kermit wasn't doing drag acts anymore, so they
6:05
needed a male puppet and a female puppet, and the ones that
6:08
were around were these pigs that Bonnie Erickson had built for
6:11
sex and violence. So they took the warthog and the
6:14
girl pig that would become Miss Piggy.
6:16
Now you don't go singing for late night legends and you're
6:18
returned beneath the Planet of the Pigs costumes.
6:20
So they gave the warthog a brown velvet suit and did a complete
6:24
makeover for the female puppet. She was supposed to be a
6:26
glamorous gal singer, and she couldn't do that with those
6:28
beady little dot eyes. So at the Muppet Workshop,
6:32
Bonnie Erickson went to the eyes drawer and she selected 2 blue
6:35
eyes with big lashes and purple eyelids and she replaced the
6:38
pig's little black eyes. Erickson dressed the pig in a
6:41
silver satin dress cut low in the front and to disguise the
6:44
place where the neck of the puppet was exposed, she tied on
6:47
a vivid blue scarf which was also attached to the pig's left
6:50
hand. Then she gave the puppet long
6:52
evening gloves in the same silver satin.
6:54
So they dressed her up and they sent her out on stage to dazzle
6:58
the late night Johnny Carson audience.
7:21
It gets some laughs, but to be honest, this sketch is not great
7:24
for 1974. The bit is 16 years old, and it
7:27
plays differently on The Tonight Show stage.
7:30
The original old black magic sketch with Sam and Kermina was
7:33
amazing because the comedy of it is that the characters are
7:36
crammed into the dimensions of a 1950s television screen.
7:39
Sam's dance is bursting with energy, he's jitterbugging
7:42
around the back of the set and then bolting forward when he's
7:44
got a line. And meanwhile, Kermina is very
7:47
still and composed as a comic contrast to Sam.
7:51
There isn't a joke in the sketch, it's just two characters
7:53
lip syncing to a familiar recording.
7:55
The thing that's funny is that they're filling up the entire
7:57
space on the screen with this wild energy.
8:00
That's not happening in The Tonight Show version.
8:02
The two pigs are standing on stage in front of a sparkly gold
8:05
curtain, and it's a wide shot. So the puppets are just taking
8:08
up the bottom half of the screen, and frankly, it doesn't
8:12
look that great. They're trying, though.
8:14
Henson's Warthog is bouncing around like crazy and Frank Oz
8:18
playing the girl pig, he's introducing a little storyline
8:20
into the bit. Instead of just standing there
8:23
singing like Karmina did in the original, the pig is trying to
8:25
put across a performance. When she's got a line, she looks
8:29
off to stage right and she puts her heart into it, and then she
8:32
gets a little shock when Hamilton bursts in with his
8:34
explosive interruptions, she doesn't get mad at him.
8:36
It's not that strong of a storyline, but she does a couple
8:39
takes to the audience that are like a little shrug.
8:42
There's also some choreography around the lines in a spin.
8:44
Pow. Loving that spin.
8:45
I'm in pow. And that's about all the
8:49
plussing they're able to do with this sketch.
8:52
When the sketch is over, Henson grabs Kermit and he walks over
8:54
and sits down on Carson's couch, still out of breath from his
8:57
performance. Now Carson's got an eye for
9:00
talent, and he is curious about these pigs.
9:02
What? What are the pigs?
9:03
That wears me off, I can imagine.
9:05
I think I work harder than Louis Prima.
9:07
What? What?
9:07
What are the pigs names? Do you have names for the pigs?
9:10
That was Piggy Lee. Piggy Lee.
9:12
Piggy Lee. The other one is just Hamilton
9:15
Pig. Just Hamilton Pig.
9:17
And you've got your friend Kermit here with you tonight,
9:18
huh? Yes, I brought whole Kermit on
9:20
Kermit. I love Kermit.
9:22
Carson moves on. He talks to Kermit for a while,
9:24
but that was it, the crucial moment that determines the fate
9:27
of this puppet. If they'd gone with a different
9:30
sketch on Carson that night, if they hadn't specifically needed
9:33
a glamorous girl singer at that particular moment, that puppet
9:37
would have just been the female pig from the Beneath the Planet
9:39
of the Pig sketch, just part of the crowd of pigs and frogs and
9:42
chickens that populated the Muppet troop here on the cusp of
9:45
The Muppet Show. But they needed a singer, and
9:48
the pun was just sitting right there.
9:50
Piggy Lee. It's been a minute since Peggy
10:22
Lee has been at the forefront of the American public
10:24
consciousness, so you might not be familiar with the name.
10:27
Peggy Lee was a beloved jazz and pop singer starting in the
10:30
1940s. Her first major hit in 1943 was
10:34
Why Don't You Do Right, which I'm sorry to do this.
10:37
I'd love to be more classy than this, which was the song Jessica
10:40
Rabbit sings in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
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So yeah, you've heard of Peggy Lee song.
10:45
She recorded her first album, Rendezvous with Peggy Lee in
10:48
1948, and Billboard named her the nation's number one
10:51
vocalist. By 1949, she was being
10:54
introduced on radio as Miss Peggy Lee as a sign of respect
10:58
if you need another cartoon in order to place her.
11:01
In 1955, she Co wrote the songs for Lady and the Tramp.
11:04
She plays Pegg, the Pekingese that Lady meets at the #, and
11:07
she sings he's a tramp. In 1958, Peggy Lee recorded her
11:11
signature song, which was Fever, but with a better behaved
11:15
drummer. Her career lasted for decades,
11:18
and in 1969 she reached number one on the Billboard Adult
11:21
Contemporary chart for the song Is That All There Is?
11:24
And she won a Grammy for it. So by 1974 she was still very
11:28
much in the public eye. Back to 1974 and The Muppets.
11:31
It is five months later. They haven't shot the sex and
11:34
violence pilot yet, but they need that pig again for another
11:37
variety show appearance. This time it's a TV special for
11:40
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
12:00
Herb Alpert is a famous trumpet player, which is not really a
12:03
job description that people have any more.
12:06
His first big hit was The Lonely Bull in 1962, which hit number
12:09
six on the singles chart. In 1966 he had the number one
12:13
album, which was called Whipped Cream and Other Delights, and
12:15
that same year he also had the number three album and the
12:18
number five album. In 1967, there was an animated
12:22
film built around a Herb Alpert song and it won an Academy
12:25
Award. You would not believe how famous
12:28
a trumpet player could become in the 1960s.
12:31
Albert took some time off in 1969, took a four year break
12:34
from music, so this television special in 1974 was part of his
12:37
comeback. Now if you're going to go on
12:39
television and all you're going to do is play the trumpet, you
12:42
need some kind of visual hook to give people something to look
12:45
at. So they brought in The Muppets
12:47
for a guest appearance. The special has a number of
12:49
Muppet sketches they do the Snurfs dancing to in the little
12:52
Spanish town and they've got the boss men dancing to Spanish
12:54
flee. And then there's this there.
12:58
Are certain moments in music that definitely need a woman's
13:02
touch. It's about time.
13:03
And I've got just the one you've been looking for.
13:05
Herbie. I'm.
13:06
I'm Hoggie Morris. Here's my card, Talon agent.
13:08
Here's my card, Herbie. I'm found Asian extraordinaire.
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I'm with, I'm with you 100% less. 10% for me, naturally.
13:16
Listen, I got just a chick. You've been looking for her.
13:18
I mean, she's got, she's got great pipes, she's got a sweet
13:21
personality. She she's got a a exotic figure.
13:24
She's a pretty foxy looking young lady, you know what I
13:28
mean? RV Piggy.
13:29
Come on in here, Piggy. Hoggy Marsh is played by Jim
13:33
Henson. He's the same Warthog puppet
13:35
that played Hamilton Pig on The Tonight Show, and he brings
13:38
Piggy out on stage. She's the same pig puppet with
13:41
the satin dress and gloves and the blue scarf attached to her
13:43
hand. She's got pearls now for this
13:45
appearance, which she didn't have on The Tonight Show.
13:48
She looks weird in this appearance because her eyes are
13:50
really close together. They're practically touching
13:52
each other, which makes her look younger and a bit cross eyed.
13:56
But you don't actually see her face full on very much, because
13:58
she spends most of the next two minutes turned away from the
14:01
audience and just rubbing herself on a very famous trumpet
14:04
player. I'd like to meet the Piggy Piggy
14:07
Doll. This is perpy, baby.
14:08
This is your letter to success, Piggy Doll.
14:10
I've been telling him all about you.
14:12
Hello, Mr. Alfred. Beautiful, beautiful.
14:15
She doesn't just say how little, she oozes it out.
14:19
Isn't that something? Excuse me?
14:21
As you can hear, mostly this sketch is Jim Henson doing this
14:23
funny talent agent bit. Jerry Nelson is playing Piggy
14:26
and this is her big moment. Piggy.
14:29
Hey Piggy, you got your bit worked out with the band back
14:31
here. OK, go ahead.
14:34
This is for you Herbie. I can't give it all away.
14:45
They got the message. And besides that, I think we got
14:47
a deal. Now the most interesting thing
14:50
about Piggy in this sketch is she can't keep herself off her.
14:54
As soon as she comes on stage, she snuggles up to him, nuzzling
14:57
against him and rubbing on his chest.
14:58
She keeps this up for a full minute and 1/2 with just that 5
15:02
second intermission. When she's singing, she hardly
15:04
looks in our direction at all the entire sketch, and this is
15:08
something that Piggy does and will always do.
15:11
She stretches the boundaries of acceptable social behavior and
15:14
she creates new forms of personal expression that make
15:17
the world more interesting. This is related to camp, and I'm
15:20
going to have a lot more to say about that later on.
15:22
I'm just going to put a pin in this for now, but we will be
15:25
coming back to this later on in the podcast.
15:28
What I can tell you right now is that Piggy sexually harasses
15:30
Herb Alpert on television for 90 seconds, and then she submits
15:34
her list of demands. Herbie, here's my terms.
15:37
Here's my terms, Herbie. Now dig this.
15:39
She gets, she gets top dollar. Now she gets an equal
15:42
percentage. She's got equal sharing billing
15:45
with the group. You know, she gets a round trip,
15:47
first class transportation for two, She's gets a two-bedroom
15:50
suite and she's got her own hairdresser and the right to
15:53
select her own song. Now you just have to sign this
15:55
thing at the bottom. Herbie baby, you know how Pig
15:58
Town. Come on, piggy dolls, get out of
16:00
here. And then it's time to shoot the
16:05
sex and violence. Pilot Piggy loses the beautiful
16:08
blue eyes and the satin dress. They put the beady little black
16:11
eyes back on, and she goes back to being a background pig like
16:14
she was originally supposed to be.
16:16
They shot sex and violence in December 1974, and they aired it
16:19
on ABC in March 1975. The pilot takes place more or
16:23
less in a television studio, and this sketch is the most direct
16:27
television spoof that they do welcome to films in.
16:30
Focus And now for this week's film Colossal Pictures, as just
16:36
released, return to Beneath the Planet of the Pigs.
16:42
This is a Muppet film reviewer who looks like Gene Shalit
16:44
sitting behind a desk introducing clips from a science
16:47
fiction movie. The hero is an astronaut who
16:51
visits a strange planet and finds himself in a curious
16:55
situation. Human, human, human.
17:00
Eat. I can't eat this junk.
17:03
I'm a. Scientist from Earth.
17:05
Listen, it's speaking pickish. You're right.
17:08
Let's take him to the great Doctor not a.
17:11
Dr. not a Dr. not a He's. Brilliant.
17:15
He'll drill a hole in the top of your head so we can look inside.
17:22
That's Fran Brill performing the female pig in this sketch,
17:24
because for one night and one night only, they treat Piggy
17:28
like she's a female character rather than a drag performance,
17:30
which is what she actually is. The female puppets also used in
17:34
another clip later on where she's the queen of the planet.
17:37
We'll have the old fish heads, the black banana peel and the
17:42
cold boiled coffee with a cigarette.
17:44
Butt floating in it. Very good, Madame Oink Oink as
17:49
we pick so. And that's it.
17:52
It's not very impactful when people say that sex and violence
17:56
was Piggy's first appearance. This is not the version of Piggy
17:59
that endures, but the name. I told you I'd get to the name
18:03
it is 1976. The sex and violence pilot
18:06
didn't get picked up by ABC, but Lou Grade agreed to finance The
18:09
Muppet Show, and Henson and his troupe start filming in 1976.
18:14
The new show set in a vaudeville theater, so they need a cast of
18:16
stage performers, and one of the characters they have now is that
18:19
girl singer who Can't Sing Piggy Lee.
18:23
So they put the Big Blue eyes and the satin dress back on the
18:25
female pig. She walks right on set, no
18:27
questions asked. At some point, they decide that
18:31
they shouldn't call her Piggy Lee anymore because it's kind of
18:33
a mean joke insulting a legendary performer.
18:36
Also, that's just not the kind of humor that they're doing.
18:38
Kind of a Mad Magazine celebrity spoof.
18:41
Nobody else in the cast has a name like that, so they're going
18:43
to drop Lee from the name and just keep Piggy.
18:46
The interesting thing for me is it's hard to say exactly when
18:50
that happens. She's definitely still Piggy Lee
18:52
in 1976, and I'll tell you how I know that I've got an LA Times
18:57
article from March 1976 when there was a presentation for the
19:00
National Association of Television Program Executives in
19:03
San Francisco. This is a yearly conference
19:05
where the TV folks get together and people pitch their
19:08
syndicated series directly to program executives to put on the
19:11
air In the LA Times. They reported on the 1976
19:14
presentation and they say another ITC Hotcake was a new
19:17
prime time access show featuring Jim Henson's Muppets already
19:20
into 74 markets and starring new Henson Creations like singer
19:24
Piggy Lee as well as the familiar gargoyles, and all the
19:27
pre publicity mentions that name as well.
19:30
In August 1976, there's a wire service article called New Pals
19:33
Join Muppets for Fall Season, which says Kermit's cronies will
19:37
include Piggy Lee, a valuable songstress who's crazy about
19:40
Kermit in September 1976 Tampa Bay Times.
19:43
This format calls for some new characters like songstress Piggy
19:46
Lee, and In the Indiana Gazette, among the various theatrical
19:50
types who will entertain you on the series, Piggy Lee, a torch
19:53
singer who carries a torch for Kermit.
19:55
So that name, Piggy Lee, is out there as the first season The
19:58
Muppet Show begins, but they only use it on the show once.
20:02
In the earliest Muppet Show episodes, Kermit just calls her
20:04
Piggy, like here in episode one O 1.
20:07
Piggy honey, you can take the solo.
20:10
Yes, my love, Here we. Go and in episode one O 4.
20:16
Oh well, I got my life. Oh my.
20:19
Heart at last We are alone. At last you are alone, Piggy.
20:24
I'm about to go on stage in front of 1000 people.
20:27
The name Piggy Lee does appear in the scripts for these
20:29
episodes. For example here in episode 104.
20:32
This is the scene where Piggy delivers her first karate chop.
20:36
The backstage plot for this episode is that Scooter has a
20:38
robot TV show host that looks just like Kermit with a big wind
20:41
up key in his back. And in this scene, the
20:44
mischievous robot whispers sweet nothings in Piggy's ear, which
20:47
she does not appreciate. And when Kermit walks into the
20:50
room, well in the script it says Piggy Lee decks Kermit with a
20:54
single blow. He falls out of frame.
20:56
Famously, in rehearsal, Frank Oz turned that punch into a karate
21:00
chop. Piggy piggy.
21:03
Let me explain explain this. And doing it as a karate chop
21:14
instead of a punch was so funny that Frank Oz knew there was
21:18
something special here. Everyone agrees that this is the
21:21
pivotal moment that made Miss Piggy into a real character that
21:23
they were interested in developing.
21:25
But she wasn't Miss Piggy yet the script is still calling her
21:28
Piggy Lee the first time she's called Miss Piggy on the show.
21:32
It's a guest star who does it, and it's a very complicated
21:35
moment because Jim Nabors says Miss Piggy and Kermit
21:38
immediately says Piggy Lee. This is episode 106.
21:42
I'm sort of an old country boy and I feel right at home with
21:45
all these chickens and Roosters and pigs, especially that Miss
21:48
Piggy. I just love her.
21:50
Oh, Piggy Lee. Hey, Miss Piggy.
21:53
So that is both the first time anyone says Miss Piggy on The
21:56
Muppet Show and the only time anyone says Piggy Lee.
22:00
So that's where the handoff takes place.
22:03
At this point in the sketch, Piggy rushes in and kind of
22:05
throws herself at James because now she's in love with him.
22:08
And by the end of the sketch, Kermit's gone and Piggy is
22:11
swooning over another celebrity. Well, he.
22:13
Doesn't appreciate classical. Music chains, but it drives.
22:18
Me bananas. Now, because we've got both
22:27
names in play at the same time here, naturally it would be
22:29
helpful to know what they call her in the script for the
22:31
sketch. But in the script that I've
22:33
seen, Miss Piggy isn't actually in the scene at all.
22:37
In the shooting script for episode 106, the talk spot
22:39
sketch is just Jim Neighbors talking to Kermit about having a
22:42
pet frog when he was a kid. The joke is that Kermit's
22:45
offended by the idea of owning a pet frog, especially when the
22:48
conversation turns to biology class.
22:49
So it's just back and forth between Jim Neighbors and
22:52
Kermit. One possibility is that the
22:55
folks working on The Muppet Show liked the karate chop in episode
22:58
104 so much that they decided they wanted to do more with this
23:01
character. So they rewrote the talk spot in
23:04
106 to spotlight Piggy some more.
23:07
But Kermit still calls her Piggy a lot.
23:09
It actually takes several episodes before you hear them
23:11
use Miss Piggy as her name. She's still called Piggy Lee in
23:15
the script for episode 107, and it's in the script for episode
23:18
108, the Paul Williams episode, that we see the name Miss Piggy
23:21
used in a stage direction for the first time, but they don't
23:24
say it out loud yet. In episode 109, Charles Asanfor
23:28
calls her Mademoiselle Piggy I. Don't follow.
23:31
I will show you. Piggy.
23:33
Mademoiselle. Piggy, would you come here,
23:34
please? She doesn't speak French, I
23:38
suppose. I know she doesn't speak a word
23:40
of French. I'm good.
23:42
And then in episode 112, the Peter Ustinov episode Kermit the
23:45
Frog finally says Miss Piggy out loud for the first time.
23:49
Tonight's panel includes our own Miss Piggy, Kissy Kissy.
23:54
And by episode 116, they really want to make sure we know that's
23:58
her name. Oh dear.
23:59
Nephew of the feature. Owner.
24:01
Well, yes, Miss Piggy. Would you do Miss Piggy a favor?
24:06
There's one more weird example of this handoff, which is the
24:09
1977 Muppet Show annual from the UK, which has some comics pages
24:14
that refer to her as both Miss Piggy and Piggy Lee.
24:17
Now the curious thing is, I haven't yet found an example of
24:21
someone calling her Miss Piggy Lee in the script that just goes
24:24
straight from Piggy Lee to Miss Piggy.
24:27
But this connection to Peggy Lee helps explain what the name Miss
24:30
Piggy actually means. Because sometimes people ask
24:33
what's your full name? And the answer is it's Miss
24:35
Piggy. So is Miss her first name and
24:38
Piggy her last name? Like no, obviously not.
24:41
And there's also the question of why is it Miss Piggy rather than
24:44
Miss Piggy? Or if she marries Kermit, would
24:46
she be Misses Piggy? And again, not the case because
24:50
they didn't call the singer Miss Peggy Lee because they wanted to
24:53
make sure everyone knew she wasn't married.
24:55
She was Peggy Lee was married four times.
24:58
They called her Miss Peggy Lee as a sign of respect.
25:01
It's a title and expression of status, like Duke Ellington and
25:04
Count Basie. When you're really good and
25:07
everyone holds you in high esteem, they give you an
25:09
honorific. Miss Peggy Lee.
25:12
And that's what Miss Piggy stole from Peggy Lee when she wasn't
25:14
looking. She didn't take the name, she
25:17
swiped the title and she never gave it back.
25:20
So that's the end of my story for today and that is the
25:22
amazing and complicated character that we will be
25:24
talking about on this podcast and we are just getting started.
25:28
In the next episode, I'll be talking with Anthony Strand from
25:30
the Muppet Movie Podcast, moving right along about Miss Piggy's
25:33
development in the first season of The Muppet Show.
25:36
So kissy, kissy. And thank you so much for
25:38
listening to this first episode of the Fantastic Miss Piggy
25:41
podcast, brought to you by my friends at toughpigs.com.
25:44
If you have comments or questions or you know stuff
25:47
about Miss Piggy that you'd like to share, you can write to me at
25:50
fantasticmisspiggy@gmail.com. That's fantastic Miss Piggy at
25:54
Gmail. I'm also on X as Fantastic Miss
25:57
P and on Blue Sky as Danny Horn. Thanks everybody.
26:00
I'll see you next time. Gee, I'd like to see you looking
26:06
swell, baby. I'm a bracelet wool worth a
26:12
dozen. Sell, baby, till that lucky day.
26:19
You know that. Well, baby, I can't give you
26:26
anything but love.