Caroll Spinney obit

Caroll Spinney, Big Bird’s Alter Ego on ‘Sesame Street,’ Is Dead at 85

He was not on the list,

Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer who gave life to Big Bird, the towering yellow avian of TV’s “Sesame Street” who accompanied generations of youngsters in the arduous, yet wondrous, work of growing up, died Dec. 8 at his home in Connecticut. He was 85 and died hours before “Sesame Street” received Kennedy Center Honors for achievement in the arts.


The production company Sesame Workshop announced his death and said he had dystonia, a neurological disorder affecting movement.


Decades before the advent of smartphones and tablets, when the “boob tube” was the boogeyman for parents and child psychologists fretting about what today is called screen time, Mr. Spinney brought his puppetry to a television show that aspired to be an educational influence on kids preschool-age and younger. It would become the longest-running children’s program on U.S. television.



Sesame Street” debuted on public television in 1969, its curriculum undergirded by the research of the Children’s Television Workshop, which was co-created by television producer Joan Ganz Cooney. The show featured a racially diverse cast of live actors, as well as animation and Jim Henson’s Muppets. It used advertising techniques including jingles and rhymes to teach children the alphabet and numbers, how to tie their shoes and brush their teeth, how to love a new sibling and confront a bully, and how to live in a community.


Mr. Spinney, who said he had been teased in childhood for his fascination with what his tormentors mocked as “dolls,” met Henson at a puppetry convention and first donned Big Bird’s 4,000 canary-yellow feathers for the show’s opening season. In thousands of episodes over nearly a half-century, he gave voice and motion to Big Bird and to Oscar the Grouch, the shaggy green trash can-dweller who showed children that they needed not always be happy and that it was okay to like things others didn’t — trash, for instance.


The Muppets also included the thoughtful Bert and his playful friend Ernie, the ravenous Cookie Monster and giggling Elmo, who became a fan favorite particularly among the youngest “Sesame Street” viewers in the show’s later years. But Big Bird, who interacted most frequently with the human actors, remained the centerpiece of “Sesame Street,” a creature often bewildered by a world that was too small for him, much as children are confused by one that is too big.


Mr. Spinney brought to his character “a sensitivity to what childhood is like, what its challenges are, what its adventures are,” said Kathryn A. Ostrofsky, a scholar of media history who has studied the history of “Sesame Street.”


Big Bird became “the most human character of all the Muppets, the most nuanced, complex, most rounded,” she added. She attributed those qualities to Mr. Spinney’s acting ability, which she said “is something that people take for granted often when they think of puppeteers.”


Henson, who died in 1990, originally conceived Big Bird as a “funny, dumb country yokel,” Mr. Spinney said, recalling that he persuaded the show’s makers to recast the character as a curious 6-year-old. In creating Big Bird, Mr. Spinney said he drew from memories of his boyhood.


“I was very insecure, shy, didn’t know what to say to people,” he once told The Washington Post, recalling also that he was the smallest kid in school. “One time my teacher was asked what ‘puny’ was and she thought for a moment and said: ‘Caroll. He’s puny.’ It’s probably just as bad to be too big, like Bird.”




Like many children, Big Bird had an invisible friend, called Mr. Snuffleupagus, although the woolly mammoth-like creature was eventually rendered visible to avoid suggesting to young viewers that their perceptions were not valid.


Often, Big Bird made mistakes so that children on the other side of the screen could learn from them, or jubilantly correct them, said Robert W. Morrow, author of the book “ ‘Sesame Street’ and the Reform of Children’s Television.” Other times, he posed questions that were unnatural for other characters to ask, the ones for which children most ardently sought answers.


In a memorable 1983 episode, “Sesame Street” viewers learned about the death of Mr. Hooper, the bowtie-bedecked shopkeeper played by actor Will Lee, who had died of a heart attack. The makers of the show considered having Mr. Hooper retire to Florida but ultimately decided to be honest with the children who had loved him.




“Big Bird, don’t you remember? We told you, Mr. Hooper died,” a human cast member reminds Big Bird, who, bearing a gift for his friend, had forgotten.


“Well, I’ll give it to him when he comes back,” Big Bird replies.


“Big Bird, Mr. Hooper’s not coming back,” another cast member explains. “When people die, they don’t come back.”


Slowly, Big Bird comes to understand.


“It won’t be the same,” he laments, his head low, his beak hanging toward the ground.


Distributed internationally, “Sesame Street” became “one of the most recognized cultural products for which the United States is known around the world,” according to Ostrofsky, with Big Bird as its symbol.


For much of his career, even as he was summoned in character to the White House or to China with comedian Bob Hope or to conduct the Boston Pops, the bearded Mr. Spinney could go nearly anywhere without being recognized. Big Bird, meanwhile, was a celebrity everywhere. And that was how Mr. Spinney wished to keep it.


Once, children’s television host Fred Rogers invited Mr. Spinney to appear on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” a show that preceded “Sesame Street” on national television by a year, to explain how the Big Bird puppet worked.


The costume was 8-foot-2. Mr. Spinney, who was 5-foot-10, stretched his right arm up through Big Bird’s neck, his hand giving motion to the beak and his little finger working Big Bird’s lolling eyes. A camera hidden inside the costume helped Mr. Spinney navigate the set. The costume was hot and so heavy that Mr. Spinney, his arm straining under the six-pound weight of Big Bird’s head, needed to break every 10 to 15 minutes during filming.


But Mr. Spinney had no desire to explain such details to an audience of children. “If you want me on, Big Bird is real,” he recalled telling Rogers. “Caroll Spinney does not do television.”


Later in life, Mr. Spinney revealed more of himself to the public, appearing in the 2014 documentary film “I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story,” directed by Dave LaMattina and Chad N. Walker. By the account of his “Sesame Street” colleagues, Mr. Spinney was almost indistinguishable from Big Bird: He was childlike in his innocence, perhaps a bit fragile and unyielding in his loyalty to “Sesame Street.”


As for Oscar, Mr. Spinney said he modeled the character on a cabbie from the Bronx who drove Mr. Spinney to a meeting with Henson and spent their ride grousing about then-New York Mayor John V. Lindsay. “Who could be more of a Grouch than a cabdriver from the Bronx?” Mr. Spinney quipped.


He observed that, for the actor who played Big Bird, it was “therapeutic to switch to Oscar, to live awhile with the exact opposite attitude about life.” But it was Big Bird, he said, whom he loved best.

While in the Air Force, Spinney wrote and illustrated Harvey, a comic strip about military life. He also animated a series of black-and-white cartoons called Crazy Crayon.

Filmography

Film

    The Muppet Movie (1979) - Big Bird

    The Great Muppet Caper (1981) - Oscar the Grouch

    Night of 100 Stars II (1985) - Big Bird

    Follow that Bird (1985) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Bruno the Trashman

    Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993) - Dog in Pound

    The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland (1999) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) - Oscar the Grouch

Television

    The Judy and Goggle Show (1958-59) - Goggle

    Bozo's Big Top (AKA: Bozo's Circus) (1959-69) - Mr. Lion, Kookie the Boxing Kangaroo, Flip-Flop the Rag Doll, various other characters

    Sesame Street (1969–2018) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, various characters

    The Flip Wilson Show (1970) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    What’s My Line? (1973) — Big Bird, himself

    Out to Lunch (1974) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    The Electric Company (1972, 1975) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    Hollywood Squares (1976, 1977) — Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    The Muppet Show (1979) - Big Bird

    Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (1981) - Big Bird

    Big Bird in China (1983) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    Don't Eat the Pictures (1983) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years (1986) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    A Muppet Family Christmas (1987) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    Shalom Sesame (1987–1991) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    Big Bird in Japan (1989) - Big Bird

    Big Bird's Birthday Celebration (1991) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Bruno the Trashman

    Learn Along with Sesame (1996–2001) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    Between the Lions (2001) - Big Bird

    Little Children, Big Challenges: Divorce (2012) - Big Bird

    Supernatural (2015) - Big Bird (uncredited)

Video games

    Sesame Street: Oscar's Letter Party (1988) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    Let's Learn to Play Together (1988) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    Sesame Street: Big Bird's Hide & Speak (1990) - Big Bird

    Sesame Street: Let's Make a Word! (1995) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    Sesame Street: Get Set to Learn! (1996) - Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch

    Sesame Street Sports (2001) - Big Bird

    Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster (2011) - Big Bird