Jim Henson had a Washington, D.C. public access five-minute television show called Sam and Friends. The show ran from 1955 to 1961. Five minutes is really, really short. I'm having a hard time coming up with an equivalent in today's viewing. I saw an interview with Henson who said it took about half a day to film each show. These shows feature an early Kermit. He's missing his jagged collar, but otherwise looks just like him.
There a full episode of Sam and Friends here(the original poster does not allow embedding in blog posts - harrumph).
I like the news anchor sketch. Obviously, they just took a clip of the actual news anchor introducing himself and then edited it to fit the questions. Particularly clever was the way they took "New York" and turned it into "Yorick." And check out Kermit's noticeably southern accent. Henson was from Mississippi, so this is to be expected, but it makes me smile to think of Kermit as a good old southern frog.
This next sketch was shown at the Smithsonian exhibit. It features Kermit again and a character called Harry the Hipster (whose voice sounds a lot like Rowlf the Dog).
A later version of this sketch appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. This time, Kermit is the hipster, and instead of jazz, they talk about abstract thinking.
I love Kermit's outfit. Finally, there's one last incarnation of this sketch. This one was on Sesame Street.
Disclaimer: No promises on how long these will be available, as I'm not in control of YouTube.
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