MARY BRASWELL: Looking Back at Sesame Street

Each week Albany Herald researcher Mary Braswell looks for interesting events, places and people from the past. You can contact her at (229) 888-9371 or [email protected]. Follow @ABH_MBraswell on Twitter.

Tuesday will mark 46 years since “Sesame Street” was first shown on television. No one could , or would, have guessed just what a success the program would be! Let’s look back.

— Here is how to get to Sesame Street: Take the “R” or “V” train to Steinway Street. Walk west on 34th Avenue, three blocks to 36th Street. Turn left on 36th Street. The entrance to Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens is mid-block, between 34th & 35th Avenues.

— Big Bird’s teddy bear is named “Radar,” after the character from “M*A*S*H” who always slept with a teddy bear.

— Originally, only Big Bird could see Snuffleupagus. It was decided to allow others to also see Snuffy because of the “Children should be seen, heard and believed” campaign where, if children reported something, particularly abuse of their bodies, adults would believe them.

— Originally, the intention was for the Muppets and the human actors to be kept strictly separate in different sequences. However, the producers learned that the audiences (children) were focusing their attention on the Muppets and ignoring the actors. In response, they had the actors and Muppets begin to interact.

— Many of the early collaborators on Sesame Street previously worked on “Captain Kangaroo” (1955). These included writer and composer Jeff Moss, producer Sam Gibbon, executive producer Dave Connell and writer Jon Stone.

—Elmo didn’t debut until 1984, but if you look closely, you’ll see he’s worked as a background character since the early 1970s. And, after all this time, Elmo is still 3 1/2 years old.

—Many, if not most, people think Big Bird is a giant yellow canary. He’s actually an 8-foot-2 golden condor.

— Ernie’s song “Rubber Ducky” was released as a single in 1970, and made it to No. 16 on the Billboard chart. Ernie is also the only Sesame Street Muppet that has a built in smile.

— Most people know Rosita as the only Hispanic Muppet on Sesame Street, but few know what she actually is. She is, in fact, a fruit bat.

— The left-side door in the front of 123 Sesame St. has never been opened, at least on the air.

— The Count was born on the 9th of October 1,830,652 B.C.

— Gordon never had a last name until 1991, when he became a teacher. Since it would not have been appropriate for the students to call him by his first name, Robinson was chosen for his last name. This idea came from the fact that the first actor to play Gordon was named Matt Robinson.

—Cookie Monster wasn’t an amateur when he joined the Sesame Street cast. His acting career started almost three years earlier as “The Wheel Stealer” in a never-aired General Foods cracker commercial. He then went on to appear in an IBM training film and a Munchos commercial.

— In the very first season, Grover, the cuddly blue creature everyone loves, was actually brown. In addition, Oscar made his debut as an orange grouch, not the green grump we know him as today.

—When searching for a name for the show, one of the writers suggested Sesame Street. The word “sesame” was meant to invoke a sense of excitement and mystery, as in the old Arabian Nights saying, “Open Sesame!” The word “street” was used because of the show’s urban setting.

—Big Bird’s favorite snack, birdseed milkshakes, cost only 20 cents at Hooper’s Store back in 1969. Today, these frothy creations go for $2.99.

— The Count’s love of numbers isn’t exactly just a play on his name. Vampires are supposed to have arithmomania, a strong need to count surrounding objects.

— “Sesame Street” has developed special features for military families and for children with an incarcerated parent. These are free and available online.

— Oscar the Grouch may be known for loving “crummy weather,” but he has actually fallen in love. In a now banned episode that was deemed too scary for children, the Wicked Witch of the West made an appearance on “Sesame Street” and was crushed on by Oscar.

— Ernie wears horizontal stripes on his sweater to make him appear more relaxed while Bert wears vertical stripes on his sweater to make him appear more uptight.

— In 1980, C-3PO and R2-D2 visited Sesame Street.

— Kevin Clash, who used to voice Elmo, also voiced Baby Sinclair on “Dinosaurs”.

— James Earl Jones was the first ever guest star on the show. He recited the alphabet.

— In 2004, Cookie Monster revealed that, before trying cookies for the first time, his name was Sid.

— The character of Oscar the Grouch was inspired by two people. His attitude comes from a nasty waiter that served Jim Henson and former director Jon Stone at a restaurant called Oscar’s Tavern in Manhattan. The voice was inspired by a cab-driver who used to drive Caroll Spinney, voice of Big Bird, to the set every day during the first season.

— Linda (Linda Bove) was the first deaf regular character on American television.

— In 2002, producers of a South African version of “Sesame Street” (which became Takalani Sesame (2000) announced that they were adding an HIV-positive Muppet named Kami to the series to address the growing number of people (including children) with the virus in that part of the world.

— The show was once sued for $5.5 million over the song “Letter B,” a parody of The Beatles’ song “Let It Be.” The plaintiffs were not the Beatles (who by that time no longer owned the rights to their original song and who, in fact, wrote a affidavit in support of the parody) but Michael Jackson’s music library, which had purchased the Beatles catalog. The case was settled for $500.

— The shoe size of Snuffy Snuffleupagus was 65 GGG.

— The show’s first episode was sponsored by the letters W, S and E.

QUIK QUIZ answer:

(b) Cookie Monster (all the rest have only four fingers).