Kermit the Frog throws a glamorous party at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub to celebrate the premiere of the Muppets' first feature film The Muppet Movie. Hosts Dick van Dyke and Rita Moreno in... Read allKermit the Frog throws a glamorous party at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub to celebrate the premiere of the Muppets' first feature film The Muppet Movie. Hosts Dick van Dyke and Rita Moreno interview the wide array of celebrities and Muppets.Kermit the Frog throws a glamorous party at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub to celebrate the premiere of the Muppets' first feature film The Muppet Movie. Hosts Dick van Dyke and Rita Moreno interview the wide array of celebrities and Muppets.
- Nominated for 3 Primetime Emmys
- 4 nominations total
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- Floyd Pepper
- (voice)
- Janice
- (voice)
- …
- Pig
- (voice)
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- Self
- (voice)
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- Self - Announcer
- (voice)
- Self
- (uncredited)
- Self
- (uncredited)
- Self
- (uncredited)
- Self
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- Quotes
Man in audience: Hey, look, it's really Kermit the Frog! And look who's with him! Uh... uh... what's his name, uh, the dog that plays the piano?
Fozzie Bear: No, no, no, I'm what's his name, the bear who tells the jokes.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Of Muppets and Men: The Making of 'The Muppet Show' (1981)
- SoundtracksHooray for Hollywood
(uncredited)
Music by Richard A. Whiting (uncredited)
Lyrics by Johnny Mercer (uncredited)
Performed by The Muppet Monsters
Latecomers Kermit and Fozzie show up just in time for the Frog to introduce the first performance: the Muppet Monsters (the same line up seen at the start of each Muppet Show) perform a disco version of "Hooray for Hollywood". Later on Piggy makes the grandest entrance of her life, carried on a dias by Egyptian bodybuilders, (check out 'Of Muppets and Men: The Making of 'The Muppet Show' to see how they did it) only to sing "Baby Face" in her usual of key manner. When Johnny Mathis takes the stage to sing Piggy's number from the Muppet Movie ("Never before.. and never again") he turns it into a really beautiful ballad. Being accustomed to the movie version, I was surprised how well it suited his style.
In between musical numbers the guests are encouraged to get up and disco, so if you ever dreamed of seeing Raquel Welch, Cheryl Ladd and Miss Piggy vamping it up on the dance floor, this is it! Moments later, Piggy ditches Superman Chris Reeve for Muppet villain Charles Durning, while Janice is dancing up a storm with Geordi La Forge (then better known as Kunta Kinte). Meanwhile, Dick and Rita are still hob-nobbing around the room and introducing some prerecorded Muppet interviews that lead into clips from The Movie. Both Van Dyke and Moreno get to do a musical number of their own, and Rita's medley segues into a conga line that clears the theater rather abruptly. Luckilly you can always count on a coda from the Muppets.
This special represents Jim Henson's Muppets at the top of their game. The show was still in the middle of production, their most successful big screen outing was about to be released and all of the hard to find television specials from that era are gems in their own right. Add to this the cooperation of all the most glamorous and beautiful stars (plus Liberace), who in this case only showed up to have fun and look good. All the while, Kermit tries to downplay the fact that they are promoting a film (even though they also sneak in a surreptitious plug for the "Miss Piggy Cover Girl Fantasy Calendar 1981"). As of this writing, this special is available to see on Youtube in 5 parts, so go and find it before the Henson people tell them to pull it, like they did with some classic Sam and Friends clips.
9 out of 10
- Chip_douglas
- Aug 2, 2006
- Permalink
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- Also known as
- Die Muppets in Hollywood
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- See more company credits at IMDbPro