Beyond Yoda - The Work And Life Of Frank Oz

Even casual Star Wars fans are familiar with Frank Oz, the puppeteer who brought Master Yoda to life in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Stuart Freeborn created the Yoda's appearance (partially based on his own features), but Oz was responsible for the personality and movements of the "little green friend," as Darth Sidious called him, and for his backward speaking manner.

In an interview with Men's Journal, Mark Hamill had the following to say about the man with whom he has spent quite some time on the sets of Episodes V and VI:

"The pleasure of having Frank Oz perform Yoda will always be a favorite memory for me, because I had loved The Muppets since I was a little kid. Getting to find out what a genuinely nice and kind person Frank is, beside him being so inventive, was a dream. Since then we have formed a true friendship that has lasted to this day."

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Oz reprised the role of Yoda in The Phantom Menace and The Last Jedi and provided the Jedi Master's voice in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Tom Kane was the voice of Yoda in The Clone Wars, but Dave Filoni brought Oz back for 3 episodes of Star Wars Rebels.

But Oz's career goes far beyond being the man steering the Yoda puppet, as he is also one of the masterminds behind The Muppets and a voice artist, director, and even actor.

Frank Richard Oznowicz was born on May 25 (what a coincidence!) 1944 in Hereford, Herefordshire, England, as the son of Frances and Isidore Oznowicz, who were also puppeteers. The family moved to Oakland, California, when Frank was five. As a teenager, he worked as an apprentice puppeteer at the amusement park Children's Fairyland of Oakland, where he met Jim Henson in 1961. When Frank was 19, he studied journalism when he met Henson again, who asked him to follow him to New York.

Oz's first duty after joining Henson was to control the right arm of Rowlf the Dog in The Jimmy Dean Show. This was also when he got his stage name, as Dean apparently couldn't pronounce Oznowicz and just uttered "Oz."

When a new children's program called Sesame Street came out in 1969, Oz invented the characters of Bert, Grover, and the Cookie Monster and performed them for many years. Then, getting concerned that their work would be typecast as just children's entertainment Henson and Oz joined Saturday Night Live, where they provided their puppetries in sketches called Land of Gorch in 1975 and 1976. But after the first season, some of the actors felt the puppets were getting too much attention, and following creative differences Henson and Oz dropped out of the show.

Henson wanted more creative freedom over his work and started to create his own show based on his puppets. After being rejected by American TV networks, he and Frank moved to the United Kingdom, where they started The Muppet Show in 1976. Oz created and played the iconic characters of Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, Sam Eagle, Animal, Marvin Suggs, and George the Janitor and was – according to Henson "probably the person most responsible for the Muppets being funny."

The Muppet Show aired until 1981, but 2 years earlier, Henson's and Oz's first feature film, The Muppet Movie, was released, and Henson started to move away from the small screen to concentrate on cinema. Still, Oz performed and/or voiced "his" Muppet characters for many years to come, the last time in 1999 in Muppets from Space.

When George Lucas asked Henson to perform Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, he refused but suggested that Oz should play the part.

The same year that Episode V came out, Oz also had his acting debut without a puppet on his hands, as a correction officer in The Blues Brothers, alongside Carrie Fisher. During the 1980s, Oz had larger and smaller roles in movies like An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places, Spies Like Us, and Labyrinth, acting alongside Hollywood A-listers such as Chey Chase, Dan Aykroyd, and Eddie Murphy. By that time, Oz also embraced his wish to work behind the camera and direct others to fulfill his creative vision. So, he co-directed The Dark Crystal with Henson (1982), the most sophisticated puppet movie at the time.

His first movie as a solo director was the musical comedy Little Shop of Horrors (1986) with Rick Moranis, Steve Martin, Bill Murray, and John Candy. His further directing gigs include Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988 with Steve Martin and Michael Caine), Housesitter (1992, again with Martin and Goldie Hawn), In & Out (1997 with Kevin Kline), Bowfinger (1999, again with Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy), The Stepford Wives (2004, with Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler, and Glen Close) and Death at a Funeral (2007 with Peter Dinklage).

In 2001 Oz semi-retired from performing the Muppet characters, claiming that 30 years would be enough, and as a father of four kids, he wanted to do other things in life.

While he has handed over the baton for his Muppet characters to Eric Jacobson, he is still very protective of Yoda. Though he seldomly appears at conventions, he refuses to let anyone else play the puppet and, to this day, takes his responsibility for this iconic character very seriously.

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Written by Gerald Petschk

Source(s): Men's Journal, TV Guide, IMDB

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