J.P. Grosse Puppet

J. P. Grosse is a hand-rod puppet originally performed by Jerry Nelson. He is the owner of The Muppet Theatre on The Muppet Show. He only made a few appearances on the show but was mentioned many more times on the show and instilled enough fear in Kermit so that Kermit went along with his requests. In a hand-rod puppet, like J. P. Grosse, the performer’s dominant hand goes into the puppet’s head and operates the mouth and sometimes other facial features. The less dominant hand controls the arm rods, which are thin rods connected to the puppet’s hands.

The Muppet Show is a half-hour long variety show featuring the Muppets that aired for five seasons from 1976 to 1981. The action of the show was generally split evenly between on-stage acts and the chaos going on backstage. Each episode featured a human guest star.