Memoirs of a Muppets Writer: (You mean somebody actually writes that stuff?) (9 page)

That’s not to say he’s easy to operate. The puppeteer’s right arm goes up the neck and his hand goes inside the head. And, like other Muppets, his right thumb controls the jaw. His left hand goes into a sleeve and glove to become Big Bird’s left hand. Of course, the puppet’s right arm is a dummy. But, it is attached to an invisible plastic line that runs up through a loop under the puppet’s chin and down to the other hand. This transfers some movement from the operating left hand to the right, which is usually cheated away from the camera.

To add to his height, high heeled boots are concealed inside the legs and feet. The puppet builder, Kermit Love (known in Muppet circles as Kermit the Person), had to go to a transvestite boutique to find high heeled boots big enough to fit a man’s foot.

In the earliest versions of Big Bird’s designs, Jim tried to work it out so the costume would fit backwards, thereby making its knees work backward like a bird’s. That proved impractical. But it’s an insight into Jim Henson’s sense of design.

Inside the puppet, the puppeteer has to keep his chin almost on his chest so as not to ruin the line of Big Bird’s back. Additionally, he wears a leather chest plate which holds his microphone and a one and a half inch wireless television monitor. The monitor is necessary because the puppeteer can’t really see out of the suit. Instead, he watches himself on the monitor.

It’s kind of like that old joke, put your shoulder to the wheel, and your nose to the grindstone. Now, try and get something done in that position.

The man who actually does work in that position and still does an incredible job of acting is Caroll Spinney. For forty years, Caroll has been the voice and personality of the eight foot, two inch canary. Thanks to Caroll’s extraordinary talent, Big Bird sings, dances, roller skates and rides unicycles and motorcycles. He’s been to Japan and China and conducted a symphony orchestra in Sydney, Australia.

Caroll, himself, is as fascinating as the character he performs. To begin with, he’s a great performer, imagine trying to perform that universally loveable character under his working conditions. But Caroll is also a fine artist and cartoonist. His Christmas cards are hand drawn works of art. Some years they run two and three pages, comic book style, relating his and Big Bird’s adventures of the past year. Other Christmases, they’re wonderful illustrations of Caroll, his lovely wife, Debbie, his children, his characters and his home.

Caroll’s home is another work of his art. Years ago, he bought a large plot of land in his native New England. He built a Swiss chalet style house on it. And ever since he has been expanding and improving it, adding additions, ponds and landscaping. It’s called, Deerhaven after the magnificent creatures that nonchalantly wander around it. Deerhaven is also a wonderful reflection of Caroll’s sense of humor and creativity.

It has, thanks to Caroll’s design, a sledding course that is about a half mile in length. It takes you down across a couple of frozen ponds and has an A.T.V. at the bottom to tow you back up the hill. But my two favorite features are available all year long.

The first is a feature Caroll’s incorporated into the house’s original design. When the house was built, Caroll’s children were quite young. So, he had a secret door built into his sons’ room. It leads to a small balcony over looking the kitchen that is disguised as part of the chalet motif. The reason? Solely so the kids can spy on the grown-ups down in the kitchen.

Secondly, the guest room has a rather unique feature. It overlooks a placid pond. On the other side of the pond, a hill rises, covered by a dense stand of birch trees that Caroll had planted over the years. And, the guest bathroom has the same view. It is possible, while sitting on the commode, to view the bucolic pond and forest.

However!
If you know the secret, it gets even better. On the wall, next to the commode is an incongruous light switch. Throwing that switch causes a fully decorated Christmas tree to light upon the other side of the pond. Of course, with Caroll and Debbie it’s Christmas almost all year long. It’s their favorite holiday. It seems like they put their tree up on Labor Day and take it down on opening of the baseball season.

As I am, Caroll is a motorcycle enthusiast, as are many of his friends. Just after Connecticut passed a motorcycle helmet law, I took my ‘66 B.M.W. up to Caroll’s for a weekend. There were several other bikers there, all raving against the new Connecticut helmet law. One, in particular, told me when I returned to New York City through Connecticut, not to wear a helmet. And, he went on, if a trooper stopped me to say that he said it was okay. His name was Rufus Rose, the puppeteer who had operated Howdy Doody.

I imagined myself being stopped by a Connecticut State Trooper for not wearing my helmet and telling him Howdy Doody said it was okay.

As you know, Caroll also performs Oscar The Grouch. And for some reason, whenever Caroll calls and gets my answering machine. It’s always Oscar on the line:
Awright, Bailey, you’re not home! Good! I didn’t want to talk to ya anyway!
G’bye.

Chapter 12

Two Very Short Sesame Street Legends

1
. Around 3:30 one morning, a little boy came screaming into his parent’s bedroom. His parents tried to comfort him. They told him he was just having a bad dream.

“No!”, the little boy replied.

“Is it the monsters under the bed, again?”, the father asked.

“No. No monsters.”

“Well, are you still afraid of the dark?”

“No.”

“Well then, what is it?”, the parents asked.

“My pillow!”, the little boy exclaimed. “It’s a rectangle!!!”

2. A little girl who definitely did not want to be zipped into a snow suit explained to her parents, at the top of her lungs, “I cannot co-operate!!!”

Chapter 13

S.R.O.

I
’m hoping against hope that someone at Sesame Workshop has the foresight to oversee and protect the
Sesame Street
video archives. Over the years, the show has produced some classic television.

One involved teaching the word, “surprise.” Jon Stone commissioned a song called,
Surprise!.
The accompanying video, written by Jon, probably involved more pies-in-the-face in three and a half minutes than the Three Stooges threw in a year.

The word, “Surprise” was used liberally throughout the song. Each time it was, some human cast member or Muppet caught a cream pie square in the kisser - always from an unexpected direction or person. Somewhere between 50 and 60 pies were thrown, mostly by Jon Stone, who had a wonderful time directing it.

At the wrap party, the celebration held after the last show of the season is shot, choice pieces from the season were screened. The last one screened was
Surprise!
Predictably, it was a big hit. And, during the applause at its end, Producer Dulce Singer hit Jon Stone square in the face with a cream pie. Somewhere a still shot of that exists - I hope.

Occasionally,
Sesame Street
would do remote shoots in streets around the studio, which was located at Broadway and West 81
^st
Street. At that time, upper Broadway, where the studio was located, was rife with SRO (Single Room Occupancy) Hotels. They were pretty shabby, basically rooming houses for people on small pensions and down-and-outers. A lot of them were named after states, Hotel California, Hotel Carolina, Hotel Nevada.

One afternoon, while the remote crew was waiting around for props or equipment, Jon Stone spotted an SRO hotel across the street from the location. At the time the
Sesame Street
Studio Manager was a wonderful guy named Chet O’Brien. Chet and his identical twin, Snooks, had been a vaudeville dance act back in the 1930s. Chet was an encyclopedia of vaudeville lore and especially classic vaudeville jokes.

Jon said to Chet, “Go inside the Hotel Wisconsin there. And when I say, “Action!” I want you to come out, look at the camera and tell every small hotel room joke you know.”

Chet entered the Hotel Wisconsin.

“Action!”

Chet exits the hotel, stops and turns to camera.

“I don’t want to say the rooms are small here, but I put my key in the door and broke the window.”

“I wouldn’t say the rooms are small, but the mice are hunchbacked.”

“I don’t want to say the rooms are small. It’s just the wallpaper’s very thick.

“I don’t want to say the rooms are small, but I have to go out in the hall to change my mind”… And on and on.

I hope that classic piece of video tape is still in existence.

Chapter 14

The White House

I
n December 1976, I was asked to write the material for a live
Sesame Street
cast appearance at the White House. Mrs. Gerald Ford was having her annual Christmas party for the children of foreign diplomats. Big Bird and several of the cast members from the show were going to be the entertainment. Dulce Singer, our producer, was gracious enough to take me and several other staff members along for the ride.

Just for your information, when he flies, Big Bird, the puppet that is, gets his own seat in the passenger compartment, and always first class. Kermit Love, who was Big Bird’s builder and dresser, wouldn’t let the costume out of his sight. The costume is hidden in a canvas travel bag, which hangs over the seat next to Kermit.

On our flight down to Washington, I sat next to Will Lee, the actor who played Mr. Hooper, owner of the local candy store and soda fountain on
Sesame Street
, until his death in 1982. Although the store has had several proprietors since Will’s death, the store is still, and always will be called, “Hooper’s,” in Will’s memory.

During the flight, Will told me that the last time he had been at the White House with the
Sesame Street
cast, Richard Nixon was President.

Will had been blacklisted for five years during the 1950s. At the time, Congressman Richard M. Nixon had a seat on the House Un-American Activities Committee, which determined which actors, writers, directors and producers, including Will, because of supposed communist affiliations, were placed on the blacklist. Blacklisted artists were denied employment for as many as ten years. And many of their careers were completely ruined.

So Will was no fan of President Nixon. He told me that during the reception after the show, he made sure to have a kid in each arm so there would never be a picture of Will Lee shaking hands with Richard Nixon.

We were picked up at Washington National Airport in special White House vans and spirited to the White House. There, we were installed in a very comfortable room with an excellent buffet. While killing time before the performance, Caroll Spinney and I started exploring the halls of the White House.

At one point we encountered a broad stair case with a highly polished banister running down the middle. Caroll couldn’t resist. He ran to the top of the stairs and slid all the way down the banister. One of my fondest memories of Caroll is of him sliding down the banister in the White House.

In further wanderings, we encountered the 1,000
^th
piano produced by the Steinway Company. A beautiful concert grand, it had been a gift to the White House from the Steinway family. I succumbed to temptation by sitting down and belting out a few bars of boogie woogie on it.

The show took place on the stage of the Gold Room. The kids were seated in rows on the floor. When the entertainment was over, Jon Stone declared the show was a smashing success, evidenced by a small puddle he found on the floor after the kids had left.

Later on, there was a receiving line for us to meet our hostesses, Mrs. Ford and her daughter, Susan. On the line, I succumbed to another temptation. Behind me in the line was Sam Pottle, then
Sesame Street’s
Music Director.

Suddenly, I remembered something George Burns had done to Jack Benny on a receiving line to meet the Queen of England. Burns turned to Benny, who was behind him, and said, “Remember! Whatever she says, don’t laugh!”

I said the same thing to Sam just before I shook hands with Mrs. Ford. As I moved down the line, I heard Mrs. Ford say, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Pottle.” And, just like Jack Benny, I heard Sam dissolve into helpless giggles.

Chapter 15

Records

I
’m old enough to remember radio drama. (Sigh.) When I was in boarding school and we were in bed after lights out, Sister Regina Agnes, who was in charge of the dormitory, would turn on her radio and we would fall asleep listening to
The Lone Ranger
and
The F.B.I. in Peace and War.
I remember it being a wonderful exercise in imagination.

Later on, when I became a copywriter, I realized how much fun radio was to write. I was free of the strangulation of film production budgets. All I needed was an actor or two and a sound effects library and I could create ship wrecks, rocket launches, cattle stampedes, airplane races, and anything else I dreamed up.

But, in the mid-70s, I got to dust off my radio chops again when I was asked to write some
Sesame Street
record albums. I did a “monsters” album and a couple of Christmas albums, one based on a Christmas television special I wrote with Jon Stone. But the two that were the most fun were The Count
COUNTS
and
Bert
&
Ernie SING-ALONG.

For The Count
COUNTS,
we created a hard driving, 1960s, AM radio disc jockey show with the Count as the very “hip” D.J. Sam Pottle and David Axlerod created some wonderful, fast paced musical buttons in that 60s D.J. genre of over-the-top reverberation:

All the swingingest sounds around, it’s the Count’s Countdoooooown.

Radio One, Two Threeeeeeeeeee!

Who’s
the Count we’re bats about
? It’s the Count Von Coooount!

You get the idea.

Jim Henson’s hyper-hysterical Guy Smiley, Star of Day Time TV, did the opening introduction:

AND NOW! DIRECT FROM THE SESAME STREET STUDIOS LOCATED HIGH ABOVE
HOOPER’S CANDY
STORE! RADIO 1-2-3 PROUDLY PRESENTS COUNT VON COUNT AND THE COUNT’S COUNTDOWN!!!!