(1918–2013)
Puppeteer • Engineer • Special Effects Designer • Innovator
Franz “Faz” Fazakas (1918–2013) was a puppeteer, engineer, and special effects designer best known for his work with the Muppets. Fozzie Bear was named after him, since Faz designed the bear’s signature ear-wiggling. He also
created the electronic inner workings of Big Bird and served as director of electronic and mechanical design for Fraggle Rock.
Faz developed the Henson Performance Control System, a radio-control technology that freed Muppets from hand manipulation. The system, which won a 1992 Scientific and Engineering Academy Award, enabled scenes like Kermit riding a bicycle and Emmet Otter rowing a boat, and was used in Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. Jim Henson once called Fazakas “one of the true geniuses of the world.”
Born in East Orange, New Jersey, Franz was the son of Arpad Edward Fazakas, a pipe organ builder, and Donelda Krotz Fazakas, a church organist and educator. He left high school early to work with his father building and installing organs, first in Orange and later in Nutley. In 1941, they relocated John Ringling’s massive Berkshire Valley organ to St. Andrew the Apostle Church in Allwood, where it remains. While serving in the U.S. Army, Franz married Eleanor Louise Jewett of Nutley in 1944. They had two children, Matthew and Stephanie.
After World War II, with organ building in decline, Franz answered a newspaper ad for a puppeteer with the Berkeley Marionettes. He prepared for his audition with a crash lesson from Nutley friend Delmar Molarsky, whose family ran a traveling puppet show. That small step launched his show business career.
By the 1950s, Franz was performing with Bill Baird’s renowned New York–based marionette company, creating and manipulating complex shows such as Davy Jones’ Locker, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and L’Histoire du Soldat. With Baird, he toured internationally as part of a U.S. cultural exchange program in the early 1960s, performing in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union.
Faz joined the Muppets in the 1970s, beginning with the “Tales from Muppetland” specials. Soon recognized as a mechanical genius, he was appointed head of the Muppet Workshop’s electromechanical department. Over the years, he devised eye mechanisms for Big Bird and Sweetums, rod and cable systems for smaller characters like Rizzo the Rat and the Doozers, and radio-controlled facial mechanics for larger characters such as the Gorgs in Fraggle Rock.
Despite his technical brilliance, Faz was remembered by friends and colleagues as a gifted storyteller, mentor, and charmer. Muppeteer Rob Mills described him as “an avid piano player and a bottomless pit of stories,” recalling hours in the workshop watching him build, tinker, joke, and explain how his intricate designs came alive only in the puppeteer’s hands: “And that’s when the magic happens. Sometimes.”
To many, Franz Fazakas remained a kind of Peter Pan figure—a boy who never quite grew up. Long after he left Nutley for New York City, locals still shared stories of the inimitable Faz.