Miss Piggy: Biography

rica’s favorite talking sock, Muppet diva Miss Piggy was, depending on the source, the childhood sweetheart of the inimitable Kermit the Frog, or a waitress with show-biz aspirations whom he’d met while en route to Hollywood. Actually, the porcine starlet was an amalgam of two different Muppet characters, introduced on a brace of one-shot television specials. In 1974’s The Muppets Valentine Special, Muppet mentors Jim Henson and Frank Oz introduced an unrequited love interest for host Kermit, a marginally attractive female rodent named Miss Mousey. The following year, the producers unveiled their pilot for The Muppet Show; among the sideline characters was a squat blonde pig with beady black eyes, one of several principals in the quickie movie parody "Return to Beneath the Planet of the Pigs." The girl-pig character returned during the first season of the weekly Muppet Show proper, as the most aggressive and spotlight-hogging member of a barnyard singing contingent called the Muppet Glee Club. By this time, the still-unnamed character had acquired the limpid blue eyes which would soon become internationally famous. As the first Muppet Show season rolled on, it was suggested that Miss Mousey be revived as a recurring character; Frank Oz liked the idea, but felt it would be funnier if hapless series host Kermit was romantically pursued by a pig rather than a mouse. Thus, Miss Piggy graduated from the Muppet Glee Club to become a leading player on the series -- and, thanks to careful marketing and a plum role in 1978’s The Muppet Movie, this loveably supercilious character achieved superstar status. As Miss Piggy grew in prominence, several other endearing character traits were added, among them her fractured French (everything was "Le" this and "Moi" that, regardless of the basic rules of Gallic grammer) and her tendency to settle arguments with a well-aimed karate chop (again, this was a Frank Oz inspiration; originally, Piggy was merely to slap her amour Kermit, but Oz felt that a quickie display of martial arts would get a bigger laugh). The Miss Piggy craze peaked in the 1981 feature film The Great Muppet Caper, wherein our heroine was passionately pursued by human jewel thief Charles Grodin (who, in interviews, blithely played along with the game by referring to his corpulent costar as if she was a living, breathing entity). Miss Piggy has remained a mainstay of the Muppet Organization ever since, though the joke has grown rather thin in the past few years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide