Downloaded from YTS.MX
[upbeat music]
♪ ♪
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
- ♪ Sunny day ♪
♪ Sweepin' the clouds away ♪
♪ On my way ♪
♪ To where the air sweet ♪
♪ Can you tell me how to get ♪
♪ How to get to Sesame Street ♪
♪ Sesame Street ♪
[indistinct chatter]
- Stand by. Here we go. Very quiet.
Five, four, three, two, one, action.
[guitar music playing]
♪ ♪
[footsteps pattering]
- Buenas noches, señor,
and welcome to La Casa de Comidas.
I'm Grover, you're favorite singing and dancing waiter.
We have four specials.
Número uno, número dos--
Nu-num--
[stammers] [dishes clatter]
- Yes, uh? - Ah!
[upbeat music]
[indistinct chatter]
- Okay. So let's do it. Let's do the...
- On an average day, according to the Nielsen ratings,
more than 12 million American children
under six watch what goes on in this room.
- Okay. All set, guys?
- Jon Stone was instrumental in developing "Sesame Street."
He was its first producer, still directs half the shows
and have you ever stopped smiling
as you've worked on all of the--
- I wouldn't still be doing it if it weren't fun.
I love it.
- Please welcome the creator of "The Muppets," Mr. Jim Henson.
- I suppose when we first did "Sesame Street"
that was the time where the audience got to know us.
- A turning point in everybody's life,
you and "Sesame Street."
- I was there too.
- Kermit. - Sure. Sure. I was there.
- What the original idea?
What were you trying to accomplish in 1969?
- The original idea came from Joan Cooney,
who is the woman behind the whole project.
- There is no question,
the people who control
the system read
and the people who make it
in the system read.
- Here is Joan Cooney, who is showing us
what television really could be.
I mean, what she is doing is what television would do
if it loved people instead of trying to sell to people,
and there is all the difference in the world.
[upbeat funky music]
♪ ♪
- Oh, you're here.
Well, since you're here,
I might as well answer a set of questions
which have been submitted to me here at the old trash can.
What do you think makes "Sesame Street"
so appealing to kids?
I didn't think they liked it. I hate it myself.
[indistinct chatter]
- Stand by.
- Okay. And it's on camera,
and action.
- It's hard to talk about "Sesame Street"
without talking about Jon Stone.
I think Jon was probably, in my view at least,
the most critical person to the success of the show.
- Come in and kind of look
at the phone and wonder what it is.
- He was a wonderful writer.
He was an amazing director.
- And bring in the word across the top.
- Will do.
- Oh. - Tele...
- Phone.
[chatter]
- Telephone. - [chatter]
[laughter]
- And he was really the soul of the show.
- Jon was the guy who really created
the whole reality of it,
you know, the style and the vision of the show.
- So the two of you together, when you get about here
I hear a bat going-- [squeaking]
whatever bats do, right?
- Hey, don't worry, Count, we'll help you.
- Oh, we must look everywhere, high, low--
- You know, there were a lot of shows
that really talked down to kids
and he really didn't want that.
Jon Stone thought that you could have a kid's show
where adults wouldn't run for the door
as soon as it was on.
- Well, I've worked for over 25 years now
in television in New York City,
so I've seen a lot of studios and a lot of shows.
[balloon pops] [children cheer]
And I've sat through so many children's shows,
just terrible stuff.
- Hot Ovaltine at breakfast
gives you the right start in the morning.
- They'd be selling toys and cereals,
all that stuff.
- You tell Mommy or Daddy
that you want Tootsie Rolls.
children: Tootsie Rolls!
- And I hated it.
- Our dad saw the world in black and white,
and so there were good guys.
You were a good guy,
or you were a bad guy, and the good guys,
he loved with all his heart,
and the bad guys, there was no gray.
- You know, he took things so much to heart
and Dad came to activism
and feeling strongly about the world
because of the era
that he was kind of becoming an adult in.
[soft dramatic music]
[helicopter whirring]
- The Vietnam War was going full blast.
[bomb whistling]
And the country was very politicized.
Everybody was screaming at everybody else,
and it was impossible
not to feel strongly one way or another.
- Black power. Black power.
- I think Dad wore the pain of the world
in a way that other people can let it go.
- I had really quit the business.
I thought I had done about everything
I was gonna do in television.
- And then he got this call
from a producer saying, you know,
she would like to talk to him about this children's program
that she was starting to create.
- Joan Cooney called me and said she was trying
to put together a staff to do a new children's show,
and would I be interested?
I said no, really, I didn't want to do television anymore,
and she is a very charming and persuasive lady.
- I think what drew Dad in
really had to do with her political vision,
and I think when she started talking
about inner-city children
and the amount of time that kids
are spending watching bad television
with nothing to do
because their parents are working,
that's what pulled him in.
- I had been working at Channel 13 in New York
producing documentaries, and through that work
I had become absolutely involved intellectually
and spiritually with the civil rights movement.
I was not focused on young children though.
That all goes back to Lloyd Morrisett,
who really was the father of "Sesame Street."
- I was a psychologist at the Carnegie Foundation,
and we were heavily influenced by the national dialogue
on the gap that was being created in schools.
- There is a singular lack of equal educational opportunity
in the United States for negroes.
- This is not a racial difference
but a socioeconomic difference.
[children chattering]
- We found that those children
who had entered school three months behind,
and by the end of first grade be a year behind
and get further and further behind.
And I wondered whether there was a possibility
that television could be used to help children with school,
but television was not very popular
with the Carnegie staff.
Academics were not interested in television.
[theme music playing]
They didn't have it in their homes.
- Danger, Will Robinson, danger.
- It was the boob tube.
[theme song playing] - ♪ The middle would be lost ♪
- And then one of my friends, Joan, held a dinner party
and I knew Joan was a television producer.
And so, we were just talking
and I said "Joan, do you think television
could be used to teach young children?"
- I knew the answer. I knew the answer right away.
- ♪ When you say "Bud" ♪
♪ You've said a lot of things nobody else can say ♪
- Every child in America was singing beer commercials.
all: ♪ It means you want the beer ♪
♪ That's got a taste that's number one ♪
- Now where had they learned beer commercials?
all: ♪ You tell the world you know ♪
♪ What makes it all the way ♪
♪ When you say "Bud" ♪
♪ You say you care enough ♪
♪ To only want the King of Beers ♪
- A lot of children in America
were walking into supermarkets
and identifying product.
- ♪ Even whiter than it is before ♪
- By having seen Cheer on the screen
or Wonder Bread, et cetera.
children: ♪ An Oscar Mayer wiener ♪
- So to me it was where kids just adored the medium,
and so why not see if it could educate them?
all: ♪ Budweiser ♪
- ♪ You've said it all ♪
- So we hired Joan to do a feasibility study.
[pensive music]
♪ ♪
- Television is a reality to young children,
maybe the reality, and certainly
one of the most interesting things to them
in their lives.
- A child between the ages of three and five
watches television
one half of his waking time.
The only thing that exceeds television is sleep.
- Joan had a brilliantly simple notion.
Children were watching
a tremendous amount of television.
If they're going to watch that much television, why not,
one, find out what it is they like to watch,
two, find out what would be good for them to watch,
and then you put the two together, and that's the show.
- We were talking about 130 hours
of television a year,
and so an initial budget was put together.
A budget of $8 million.
[cash register dings]
It was a lot of money.
So the bulk of the original budget
was provided through the Office of Education,
the federal government.
- Someone said it won't be taken seriously
if a woman heads it,
but the problem is, they didn't have a project with me.
Much of it was in my head, which I pointed out to them.
And when "The New York Times" reported on it,
they said she'll be one
of the most powerful women in television.
- I went to Columbia University,
and I got a master's degree in educational psychology,
and my professor told me that there was a group of people
who were developing a television program
for disadvantaged kids,
so I went in and I met with Joan Cooney,
and she said, "You're hired."
And what she wanted to do
was get a group of television writers and producers
and put them together with educators.
This had never been done before.
It was called the Children's Television Workshop originally.
I think there were about ten people
in the workshop when I was hired.
Having educators
and professional television writers
in the same room
working on the same show was a very unique idea.
- They told us that we had to incorporate
all this education into this new show.
I was convinced that it would be impossible to do.
I had never written anything like this before,
but nobody had ever written anything like this before.
[phone ringing]
And all we had was this money
from the government to do this thing,
but we had no format, no title, no set, no nothing.
- I think it was Jon Stone who suggested
that we invite Jim Henson to come to talk to us.
- And here we are sitting in a conference room,
and someone comes in and sits in back
who is bearded with long hair, you know, leather clothes.
And I remember whispering to Dave Connell,
"How do we know that man back there?
He looks like a hippie."
And he said "No, no, that's Jim Henson."
So that was my first experience with Jim.
And he was terrific.
- Put out the fire.
[energetic jazz music playing]
♪ ♪
- "The Muppets" started as a late-night program
on local television that was, like,
kind of what we would consider today
like, you know, short-form comedy,
and it would just come on quickly after the news,
primarily lip-synching to records.
- ♪ Old black magic has me in its spell ♪
- ♪ Old black magic that you weave so well ♪
- It was late-night comedy.
- Yeah, that's right.
- Punsmoke!
- Are you ready? "The Muppets." [applause]
- They did "The Tonight Show."
- The very talented "Muppets."
- Look at that.
- All these adult variety shows.
- I've seen you on television before.
- ♪ In a spin, loving the spin I'm in ♪
♪ Under the old black... ♪
- The creator of "The Muppets," Mr. Jim Henson.
[applause]
- ♪ Loving the spin I'm in ♪
♪ Under the old black magic called love ♪
- This is Jim Henson.
- He's got a completely different
kind of personality--
- When I was a little kid,
if I told my friends that my father was a puppeteer,
they would assume that that was somebody
who did birthday parties or church puppets.
You know, they mostly felt sorry for us
when they heard about the puppeteer parents.
[end chords]
[applause]
- My father was a pretty quiet, shy person,
but he wanted to be hip, he wanted to be cool,
and he wanted his whole company, Muppets Inc.,
to have this very cool reputation.
- We're about to show you the new specially designed
Wilson's Meet Television campaign.
- You mean all those crummy commercials
we knocked together?
- And he would produce these commercial campaigns
that were great.
- You'll adore Wilson's Certified Salami.
- No, I don't fall for that stuff.
- You will.
Drop down to the store for some Wilson's Certified Cold Cuts.
- You'll be up a tree if you don't.
- They were these weird sophisticated commercials
that were sort of a little bit dark.
- Are you getting on the Wilkins Coffee bandwagon?
- Never.
- You either go with Wilkins, or you just don't go.
People who don't drink Wilkins Coffee
just blow up sometimes.
- Oh, that's a lot of--
Oof!
I should have saw this coming.
Ooh, that smart!
- They were sort of this beatnik-y,
kind of hip company, you know?
[laughter]
- Are we rolling? - [laughing] Yes.
[laughter]
- It was almost a little too cool for school, you know,
so that they really didn't want to appear
like just a puppet company.
Because, frankly, children's entertainment
wasn't what he had in mind.
[film strip rolls]
- Sound roll 22.
- Jim Henson interview.
- Most of our work was sort of sophisticated,
and it had a slight black humor kind of quality,
and our audience was really college-aged,
- [gasps]
[audience laughter]
- And so this would be the first time
we'd ever worked for children really.
But when I first heard about it from Jon,
I loved the idea of it,
the whole idea of taking commercial techniques
and applying them to a show for kids.
- We're planning to treat them essentially the same way
a commercial enterprise would create a campaign.
We're trying to sell the alphabet to preschool children.
- We talked to all sorts of college professors, educators,
parents, authors like Maurice Sendak,
and we tried very hard to assimilate all this knowledge
into children's programming that could be entertaining
and content-filled at the same time.
- [as Ernie] Here's one half of my chicken-salad sandwich.
Where's the other half? It's gone.
- [as Sherlock] Egad, the hunt's afoot.
Show me the clues.
- It was very exciting. - Who are you?
- Sherlock Hemlock, the world's greatest detective.
- This was an experiment, you know?
We would try new things.
- The letter J.
Two boys are sitting there talking,
and kind of casually one of the boy says,
"What's happening, man?"
The other boy says, "I don't know, it looks like fishhook."
And at that point we will animate the J into a fishhook.
- Let's create something that's never been done before.
- I don't know. - What's that?
- It looks like a fishhook.
- It's not a fishhook.
It's a J. - We would show video to kids.
- It looks delicious. What is it you want to know?
- What happened to the other half of my sandwich?
- And we developed something called the distractor.
It was basically a slide projector
that would show slides and make a clicking sound.
If what they were watching on television
wasn't really holding their attention,
they would look at the slide projector
for a longer period of time.
- We studied their reactions, and we quizzed them,
talked to them,
found out what they retained, what they didn't retain.
- Would you like to hear a story about the letter J, boys?
- I think it's a very good idea,
but the words here are very difficult, you know?
- We're not arguing for a more didactic turnout?
- No. - So much as saying
that this is a difficult entertainment.
- Yeah. Yeah. Right.
- Egad. That's it. I remember.
I ate the other half of your sandwich.
How clever of me to figure it out.
- Why, gosh, Mr. Hemlock. Thanks a lot.
If you hadn't found all those clues,
I never would have known
what happened to that half of my sandwich.
- Very good. [chatter, laughter]
- Television is such a huge influence on children.
There's family or the church or the school and television.
And as an industry, we don't generally face up
to that responsibility,
and I was delighted to be doing that sort of thing.
- Oh, excuse me.
My name is Rowlf, and this is my friend, Kermit.
- Hiya. - And I know a lot about this
Children's Television Workshop show
because us Muppets are gonna be on it every day.
- Oh, yeah. Says who? - What do you mean, "Says who?"
Says everybody. - Yeah!
[overlapping chatter]
- Well, if I'm going to get involved,
I want to know a little more about it,
like, what are those guys doing?
- Well, you see, we haven't settled on a title
for the show yet, so the guys are working on it.
- All right. All right, then. All right.
- How's about we call it "The Little Kiddie Show"?
- Maybe the "Nitty-Gritty Little Kiddie Show."
- [sighs] - Hey,
these kids can't read or write,
can they?
- Mm-mm. - No.
- Then how's about we call the show
"Hey, Stupid"?
- "Hey, Stupid"?
Oh, what am I going to do, Kermit?
- You really think you're going to get this show on the air?
[contemplative music]
- Our target audience were inner-city children,
and the bull's-eye of the target audience
were inner-city Black children.
But the traditional children's show setting
was always like a cute little tree house
or a club in the backyard
or something fairyland and fanciful,
and so we had struggled with the idea of the setting,
the home base for this for a long time,
and it came into focus for me
when I saw a commercial for the Urban Coalition.
- Send your kid to the ghetto for the summer.
We got all kind of facilities here.
Want to see the pool? Come on.
- And it was shot on location in Harlem,
out on the sidewalk.
- Open up a hydrant, jump right in.
At least one pool on every block.
I'm standing near home plate right now.
Two stores down is our owner.
It's not Shea Stadium, but it's exciting.
- And as soon as I saw it,
I knew exactly where we ought to be on this.
I wanted to capture that New York energy
because to the three-year-olds
cooped up in the room upstairs,
the action is on the street.
- I remember Joan said in an interview,
Joan turned several shades of pale.
It did seem odd to me to have an inner city street.
I didn't know how it would play with suburban parents,
but I so trusted his judgment, so I said, "Go ahead. Try it."
- I wanted a realistic set.
Something that would feel like
it's a real street, kind of a real neighborhood.
- Where's this show going to take place?
- On a street, on the front steps of a house.
- On a street? Hey, Rowlf? - Hmm?
- Why don't you call your show "Sesame Street"?
- What--what was that? - "Sesame Street,"
you know, like "Open Sesame." It kind of gives the idea
of a street where neat stuff happens.
- Kermit, why you're a genius. Mwah!
- Yuck.
- "Sesame Street."
- I was working here and there,
and then one day, my boss called me up and said,
"Next week, here's your schedule.
You're going to 81st Street.
You're going to shoot this show we just got," and he says,
"I'm sending a whole crew down there. We start Monday."
[indistinct chatter]
- So I go down there and my camera was camera one,
front of the store, Mr. Hooper's Store.
And then we started shooting "Sesame Street."
[indistinct chatter]
- Initially, when my dad had the idea of "Sesame Street"
and having it be like a real neighborhood,
it was going to be just humans on the street.
- And it's on camera, action.
- And then the Muppets would be separate pieces.
- Ah! - Ah!
- [laughs]
- Ah! [laughter]
- So the Muppets weren't actually going to
be connected with the street, they were going to be separate.
[tape rewinding]
And then they started to run the show
with the test audiences
and there was absolutely no way
the street could compete with the Muppets.
[chatter] [children laughter]
All the kids wanted were the Muppets,
the street was boring, in comparison.
And that's when they decided to blend the two
and "Sesame Street" became
New York City neighborhood that happens
to have an 8-foot tall yellow bird walking around.
[indistinct chatter] - [humming]
- Hi, Big Bird. - Hey, Big Bird.
- Hi, Susan. - You know what?
- So we're shooting the show, and you see this ugly bird.
- Good morning, Mr. Sooper.
- Uh, Big Bird, Hooper, say Hooper.
- And the first year... - Hooper.
- Big Bird wasn't that good looking, you know?
I remember thinking, "Who's going to watch this shit?"
[laughing]
[dynamic tones]
- Public television in those days
was largely on UHF channels.
You really had to work with the set and move
the antenna around and so on to get a clear picture.
So, many people thought that we would not register
a Nielsen number,
that we would have too small an audience.
Evelyn Davis led the community outreach work.
We weren't so worried about reaching
middle-class children,
but we really, really wanted to reach inner-city kids, badly.
It was hardly worth doing if we didn't reach them.
- We hope that every child in the country watches it,
but we do make a particular effort
to be sure that children from minority communities
and low-income communities watch the program.
- So Evelyn worked to try to reach every parent,
caretaker, YMCA, YWCA,
churches, schools, daycare centers,
any place we could find where we could say,
"This show is coming."
- We had done a lot of work to get the information out.
But obviously we were on pins and needles
before it went on the air.
- There never has been before a nationwide TV program
designed especially to help prepare young children
for school.
This week, there will be.
[dynamic music playing]
♪ ♪
["Sesame Street" theme plays]
♪ ♪
- ♪ Sunny day ♪
♪ Sweepin' the clouds away ♪
♪ On my way to where the air is sweet ♪
♪ Can you tell me how to get ♪
♪ How to get to Sesame Street? ♪
- When it went on the air,
the phone started ringing off the wall.
No one had ever seen anything like it.
[percussive music building]
♪ ♪
- 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
- And there was an immense interest in the show.
- A new children's program
will make use of the commercial technique
to acquaint the youngsters with the alphabet.
The program is called "Sesame Street,"
and here is a message from one of its sponsors, the letter X.
- This is an X.
Even upside down, it's still an X.
- This is near. - "Sesame Street"
will be seen on more than 180 educational stations.
- This is far!
♪ ♪
- The mysterious nose-snatcher.
- No, I don't think so.
- Two!
[pop]
- The mysterious nose-snatcher.
- I remember when it came out. I was in college,
and I walked into the student union
and there on the screen was a very young,
very bold James Earl Jones reciting the alphabet. "A!"
- A, B, C.
- You know, he's so deliberate and the letters
were flashing over his head, and I thought,
"What is this weird thing on television?"
- E.
- I thought it was a show that taught lip-reading
because he was being so deliberate.
It was so odd.
- Wanda had a pet weasel. - I'm a weasel.
- Then they cut to an animation.
It was something wild, I think "Wanda the Witch" or--
- Wanda the Witch lived
somewhere west of Washington.
- And then very slick singing...
- One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine...
- About the number 10.
- Seven, eight, nine, ten!
- And college students were watching it.
It was such a weird groundbreaking television show.
- "Sesame Street," a unique experimental series.
It's the first educational television show
to compete with commercial programs for its audience.
- Excuse me, sir. - What?
- What is your job in the neighborhood?
- You're kidding me. - No, really, what's your job?
- An elephant trainer. Look at me. I'm driving a bus.
- Working on "Sesame Street,"
it was just a dream come true to fall into this job.
♪ Because a bus driver is a person in your neighborhood ♪
- ♪ In your neighborhood ♪ both: ♪ In your neighborhood ♪
- ♪ And the dentist is a person in your neighborhood ♪
- ♪ They're the people that you meet ♪
- ♪ When you're walking down the street ♪
- ♪ They're the people that you meet ♪
♪ Each day ♪
- Open wide, please.
- Don't talk to the driver. Oh, there goes my bus!
- "Tooth-thirty."
- And the first year we toured
some of the major cities in the country.
[cheers and applause]
And I remember Matt Robinson, who was the first Gordon.
- Do all of you watch "Sesame Street"?
all: Yeah!
- Do all of you?
- He went out and sort of warmed the audience up.
He came back and said "Geez, this is like Woodstock."
[singer vocalizes]
- I said, "Hi."
- One, two, three.
- ♪ "Sesame Street" ♪
- The most talked-about series of the '69 season
has been out on the road checking up on its audience
and has found nothing but love.
- These kids know Susan, Gordon, Bob,
Mr. Hooper and Big Bird
as well as their parents know about Bob Dylan
or Frank Sinatra.
- It was a madhouse, so we got a feeling
that the show was working.
That was our first real connection with the audience.
- Considering the adulation that
the "Sesame Street" players received from the younger set,
it was enough to make a TV newsman
want to change his image.
- One, two, three.
- ♪ "Sesame Street" ♪
- A, B, C and...
- ♪ "Sesame Street" ♪
- And I was stunned at the overwhelming support
for what we were doing.
It was like a swish of a hurricane
coming in through a window.
It was as if the world had been waiting for this.
- I think "Sesame Street" is the greatest thing
that ever happened in television.
- Oh, yes, aren't they great? - You know?
- ♪ Sesame Street ♪
- I'd advise three years old start watching "Sesame Street."
I'd set up and watch it. You really can learn.
It's cute the way they put them things together,
and my little daughter watches it,
and she's getting so smart. She knows everything about it.
- ♪ Sesame--"Sesame Street" ♪ - It was amazing.
- What's your feeling about what it does so well?
- Well, I think the public was really ready
for change in television,
and we hit that, the crest of that wave,
and children needed what we're providing.
- Now for the award for children's programming.
Let's see who the winner is:
Jon Stone, Ray Sipherd, Dan Wilcox, Bruce Hart...
[applause]
- It was just one miracle after another.
[cheers and applause]
- Thank you.
["Sesame Street" theme song playing]
♪ ♪
- [whistling to the theme song]
[cars honking]
- Hey. Come on over. Glad you could make it.
This is a swinging sunny day on Sesame Street.
- "Sesame Street" was just so big, and it was so popular.
You know, back then, you say your dad is Gordon
on "Sesame Street,"
you know what I mean, that's a big deal,
right, really big deal
because he was so well-known in this world of children.
- Hi. - Hi.
- We looked in the TV. It still wasn't registering.
Like, how'd he get in that box?
- How did he get in the box?
- You know, what's he doing there,
and how come he's not stopping everything to say hi to us?
- Sally, you've never seen a street like Sesame Street.
Everything happens here. You're going to love it.
- Yeah, and who's that little girl whose hand he's holding?
- That's another problem.
- Who is that little girl?
- Oh, boy. - She's my age.
- Oh, boy.
- And why is he holding her hand?
- Breathe deeply. You're going to get through it.
- Gordon! I want you to meet Gordon.
- Oh, all right. All right. - Gordon!
- Somebody say, "Mixed neighborhood"?
- Oh, yeah. How you doing?
It's nice to see you. - Okay.
- Before he was on "Sesame Street,"
Matt was basically the Black Johnny Carson
in Philadelphia.
- This is "Black Book." I'm Matt Robinson,
and we're going to continue right after this.
- "Black Book."
- That's how he began his television career.
- "Angelitos negros"... - But that show...
- Is Spanish for Black angels.
- Was all about Black,
and it made him just a little more serious
about what the struggle was all about.
Those were revolutionary times.
And then Matt comes home one night
and says he'd been contacted by Children's Television Workshop,
and they wanted him as a writer.
And then they wanted him to be on camera.
He was going to be interacting with people and Muppets.
But where does Mr. Black fit into this kiddie show?
They sold him on what this show could become,
something revolutionary.
- Hey, Gordon! Come on over! - Yeah. Got my whole gang here.
- Groovy. - Give me something, Odetta.
- ♪ Hammer in the morning ♪ - All right.
- ♪ Hammer in the evening ♪ - [clapping along]
- ♪ All over this land ♪
- Mm-hmm.
- We felt we could demonstrate things very subtlety
that were really important.
- 13. - 13.
- 14! - 14.
- So, of course, there was the cognitive stuff,
numbers, letters, all those things,
but equally important, maybe even more important,
was the fact that Sesame was a neighborhood
where people of all races, kids and adults and monsters...
- Hi, Mr. Looper. What you doing?
- Hooper, Hooper. - Hooper.
- Live together.
[overlapping chatter] - I love that ice-cream store.
- ♪ If I had a song ♪ - If I had a song.
- ♪ I'd sing it in the morning ♪
- ♪ Sing it in the morning ♪ - ♪ Sing it in the evening ♪
- Jon Stone, now that
"Sesame Street" is into its second season,
what has been the impact of the special things
that you've done, the integrated cast,
as you've seen it?
- It really speaks for itself on the air.
We've never beaten that horse to death by talking about it.
We simply show it.
- ♪ It's the hammer of justice ♪
♪ The bell of freedom ♪
♪ A song about love ♪
♪ For all of my brothers ♪
♪ All over the land ♪
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- This million-dollar public television facility
located in the affluent white suburbs of Jackson
is broadcasting five hours a day,
mostly film and tape programs produced in the North.
But "Sesame Street" is not on the air.
Some who saw it apparently disliked the number
of Black performers.
- Mrs. Cooney, what is your reaction?
- There's no question
that we're integrated,
and we reflect to some degree
inner city, I would say,
Black inner city life,
and we're very proud of that.
I mean, if that's our worst sin,
I'm happy to be a sinner.
- Is there anything about "Sesame Street"
which would make it not fit
the needs of people in Mississippi?
- Uh,
"Sesame Street" was considered along with the other ones.
For instance, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood"
uses puppets in a different way.
It's a quiet program.
- Give me some help here. Tell me, "Sesame Street,"
it is integrated racially, isn't it?
- Yes.
- Do you think that had anything to do
with the tabling, if that's what we can call it
accurately, of "Sesame Street"
for the fact that it heavily integrated
that there is a Black father figure in the program?
- That's an extremely difficult question for me to answer.
If the people want it, they'll let us know.
If they don't, they'll let us know.
- Okay. Jimmy, do you like "Sesame Street"?
- I like it quite a bit.
- Do you like it better than other programs,
or is there something else you like better?
- I like that the best.
- What do you learn there?
- ABCs.
- Mississippi is one of the poorest states.
Many children, Black and white, never see a book
until they start first grade.
- We're making an attempt to persuade
the Educational Television Commission
to consider carrying this program--
- A man that was running a commercial station in Jackson
put it on.
- If it is not scheduled,
then our station and others in the state
are making plans to do so.
- Good?
- Rolling.
- So while the politicians continue to squabble
over "Sesame Street"...
- Quiet!
- Thousands of Mississippi schoolchildren
are watching the program on commercial stations
whether the officials who control educational TV
here like it or not.
- Eventually Mississippi Public TV
put it back on the air.
[indistinct chatter]
which shows you that all this maybe made a difference.
[device beeps]
- Okay. Anytime.
- I just want you to repeat after me each time, okay?
- Okay. - All right.
Here we go. I am.
children: I am. - Somebody.
children: Somebody. - I am.
children: I am. - Somebody.
children: Somebody. - I may be young.
children: I may be young. - But I am.
children: Somebody.
- I may be small.
children: I may be small. - But I am.
children: But I am. - Somebody.
children: Somebody. - I can change the world.
children: I can change the world.
- I am. children: I am.
- I am! children: I am.
- I am. children: I am.
- Somebody. children: Somebody.
- We are beautiful.
children: We are beautiful.
- Beautiful children will grow up.
children: Beautiful children will grow up.
- And make the whole world beautiful.
children: And make the whole world beautiful.
- Right on. children: Right on.
- [laughs]
- [indistinct] And mark it.
- What? What is it?
Hmm, hmm, hmm. Hmm, hmm.
- What are those?
- Well, these are questions, Bert,
questions that we're supposed to answer.
- Oh. Oh.
- You ready, ready to answer a question, Bert?
- Yeah. Why do we have to answer questions?
- I don't know.
I was given this paper that has questions on it,
and it says, "Answer these questions."
- Okay. - So listen to this.
- Okay. - Are you two best friends?
- Why, yes. We're good buddies until he starts something.
- That's true. Me and my old buddy, Bert,
we are close friends, Bert and I.
- We are. We're the best of friends.
- Yes. - What was that?
- What was what?
- You just-- Your hand went like that.
- Oh, I-- - See. That's what I mean.
We're good friends until he starts something.
- I didn't start anything, Bert.
- Yeah. - Didn't start anything.
Okay. Next question, do you all ever argue?
- Jim Henson, Frank Oz are super puppeteers,
and the Muppets are unquestionably
the stars of the show,
and Bert's my all-time favorite.
- What are some advantages of having a roommate?
- I suppose the main advantage is if you wanted
to mess up the place, you wouldn't have to do it
because your roommate always does it.
- Frank throws himself into the characters
so thoroughly that you just...
You believe Bert as much as if he were Sir Laurence Olivier.
- [sighs]
Are we finished?
- Yeah, that's the last question.
- Okay. - Matter of fact,
there's nothing written on this anyhow.
I made those up, Bert.
- You what? - [laughs]
- You're supposed to go-- [laughter]
- Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello,
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, these are just comedy teams,
and Jim and Frank were a comedy team.
[upbeat music]
- We've worked together as a pair for 12, 13 years now.
- Too long. - Too long.
- We dislike each other tensely,
which is why we can work so well together.
- There's kind of a little bit of love/hate there.
[laughter]
- And you two really don't
agree with each other on anything.
- Oh, on some things, yes. - Oh.
Not on all things. - No.
- Well, not on many things. - Or was.
- Two things. [laughter]
- They weren't even what I would call best friends
away from the set.
You know, Jim had five children,
and Frank was single
and, you know, completely different lives.
- Bert, why don't you loan him your scarf?
- Be nice of you if you pulled the scarf.
- But there was incredible chemistry.
- [silly whoosh noise]
- Maybe you'd loan him your scarf.
- Ah!
Ernie.
- Honestly, to be on the set watching this dynamic
between this two guys, it was magic.
[squeaking] - Ah! Ah! Ah!
- [snickering] Hi, Bert.
- Ernie. [laughter]
- What a drive.
- Before I became a puppeteer,
I was an unemployed actress in New York.
There was an ad in Backstage
saying that Jim Henson was looking to train puppeteers.
The guys had been doing female characters,
and it was hysterical
because they were doing them in falsetto.
- Sky. - It's not?
- No, that's Wanda the Witch.
- And I think they started feeling a little pressure
about how they should hire a real female
to do these characters.
I mean, I'd never played with a puppet in my life,
but it was better than modeling bras at Lady Marlene,
which was one of my other jobs.
- Stand by, rehearsal.
- Okay and theme.
- So the whole idea is to make this piece of felt and fuzz
react and move
and look like a person, like a real thing.
- ♪ Exercise, we just gonna work it out ♪
- And it's so, so hard to do.
Not only are you keeping the character alive,
but you are looking at a monitor that's on the floor
- All right, hold on.
- Because that's how you see what you're doing.
You're not watching the camera. You're looking down here,
so it's multitasking like you wouldn't believe.
- Okay. Then we'll...
- Using the television monitor,
you can perform
and see your performance exactly as the audience does.
- Right, Bert? Bert?
- This is unique in the performance field.
I mean, no other actor can ever see their performance
at the same time they're doing it.
- Bert? He's sleeping.
Well, I don't mind if he's sleeping.
- As we're performing, we're also framing the shots
in such a way that it feels
like these things are totally dimensional.
- Now where is he this time?
He knew he was supposed to be here.
Roosevelt Franklin. Roosevelt Franklin.
- Roosevelt Franklin is whom-- is who--who is he?
- He is a Black Muppet created
by the man who plays Gordon, Matt Robinson.
- ♪ Roosevelt Franklin, what you say? ♪
- ♪ You know the very first letter is the letter A ♪
- ♪ What more can you tell me ♪
- ♪ I know the very next letter is... ♪
- Roosevelt was very specific.
- Roosevelt was a Black kid.
- He was a Black kid in a classroom telling you
that learning was cool, and if you weren't down
with that, couldn't hang out with him.
- Yeah, 'cause you wanted--
everyone wanted to hang with Roosevelt Franklin
because he had the flavor, you know.
[overlapping chatter]
- I don't know what's wrong with everybody,
but when I come in, I want some action.
- Action?
- I think Matt created Roosevelt Franklin
because he was tired of pretending
that everybody blended in together.
He loved the message of "Sesame Street,"
but he wanted children of color
to be recognized as children of color
because in real life
those children knew they were different.
They knew they were brown, so why couldn't they be brown?
Why couldn't their difference be recognized?
- You are free when you are walking and talking,
and tell everybody I am great when the sun comes up.
- Yeah!
- I am great when the sun go down.
- All right, Roosevelt! - Sun up.
- Yeah! - Sun down.
- Yeah!
- Nobody's ever going to put me down.
- All right, Roosevelt!
- But there were a lot of Black parents
that really complained to "Sesame Street"
that they didn't like Roosevelt.
- Letter-writing campaign, they went after him.
- Yeah, yeah, they did go after Roosevelt.
- They did not want to be reminded of this character
who sang in dialect and talked Black.
- Uh-oh. Check out, Roosevelt.
- Something must be up. - Yeah.
- And then Roosevelt disappeared.
He just disappeared.
For Matt, Roosevelt Franklin represented truth.
He knew they meant well,
but it was the beginning of the end for him.
And then he left "Sesame Street."
["Sesame Street" theme song playing]
♪ ♪
- Morning. - [yawns]
Hi, morning, Zoe. How are you?
- Oh, hey, Gordon. - Hey, Bob.
- Hey. How you doing? - How you doing?
- Hey, that was a great time at your place last night.
- Yeah, wasn't it?
- I took over the role of Gordon,
and working on the show was wonderful.
It had that sense of, you know,
both serious intent and joy.
- Yes. - Hi, Forgetful.
- Oh, hi, Bertram. - Gordon.
- Gordon? - Gordon.
- Oh, yeah, Bertram is your wife's name.
- No, no, no. Her name is Susan.
- Spontaneity and fun and zany.
- No. No. Yeah, Susan, of course.
- And it always respected the children.
Children were never talked down to on "Sesame Street."
- Hey. You know something? I'm tired now.
I think I'm going to go on a coffee break.
Will you do me a favor?
Answer the teléfono for me?
And if they don't speak English,
you know, [speaks Spanish].
- It was very difficult at that time
to find meaningful work
as Latino actors, you know?
I don't remember ever reading for any kind
of a positive character.
The only roles that I could find
were gang members or drug addicts.
I realized I had gotten a role on television
that was a role of a Latino, Mexican-American,
who was like a regular person.
- Hey, Mack. - Luis.
- You got a mango? - Have I got a mango?
- He was part of the neighborhood.
He had his own business.
- Maria. - What is it?
- I got to go out for a few minutes.
- It was a role that hadn't been shown before.
[phone ringing]
- It was Jon Stone who cast me as Maria.
Hello, Fix-it Shop.
And I think he was looking for someone
who was unpolished and raw,
and, boy, was I unpolished and raw.
- You can't take a pretty picture with a shiny nose.
- I remember one day I was all made up,
and Jon grabbed me off the set
and dragged me into the makeup room,
and he says to the makeup artist,
"I go through all the trouble of hiring a real person,
and you make her up to look like a Kewpie doll?"
And I saw it as a political show
because of the diversity of the cast that was unheard of
and because we would have seminars with activists,
and they would say, "You people are doing this,
and you're not showing us like we really are,"
and La Leche League, you know,
"Why aren't you showing nursing on 'Sesame Street'?"
- What you doing, Buffy? - I'm feeding the baby.
See, he's drinking milk from my breast.
- It was fantastic,
and we would, you know, cultivate that.
- When you're growing up and you don't see yourself
in the media,
then you get the feeling that you don't exist, see,
and that's when you start feeling that you're not part
of this society, of this culture.
Television has so much power of doing that.
- I had a great deal of influence
in the creation of Maria.
[both speaking Spanish]
- And Jon let me know that by rehearsing a script with me
and then saying, "Would you really talk like that?"
And I'd say, "Well, no, actually I'd say it like this."
Of course, the writer is pulling his hair out but--
- Do I carry the letter? - You don't have to.
No, she will carry it.
- Say, Big Bird, somebody wants to take your picture.
- Oh, boy.
Well, which side, my left side or my right side?
You're it. Tag.
- Big Bird could walk on
without a puppeteer being seen,
and that's because I'm inside.
And the puppet would be lowered down over me
and I'd go in through the bottom
and put my hand up in the head and operate the head like that.
- Oh, well, then where will I live?
- Oh, don't worry about that.
You'll have a house all your own.
Here's a lovely...
- His head was very elaborate.
The thumb was in the bottom part of the beak.
When they say, "Action," I come alive.
And there were all kinds of little gears inside his eyes
that I could move with my little finger.
That's the only finger I could spare.
- Ooh, ah, ooh, oh,
you silly door, right in my way. Hmm.
- Originally, Big Bird was supposed to be kind of
a big dumb, goofy guy.
- Whoa.
Big Bird, Bird.
- So I think it was about a month or two in,
I said, "You know,
"I don't think I should be playing him as a goofy guy.
"He has so much more depth. He's a very complex character.
"I think I should play him as a child who's just learning,
and he doesn't know a lot of things yet."
- Oh, I didn't do my share, and that wasn't fair.
- We needed a peer for the audience.
- I've got a great idea. I could take all the toys out
and then put them back in again, and that way--
- No, no, Big Bird.
- A character that was young enough
to make the same mistakes
and have the same problems
that a four-year-old would have.
- I think you're right. - Yeah.
- Yay!
- And no one else could play Big Bird, I don't think,
certainly not the way Caroll plays it.
He is Big Bird.
- This is Mr. Caroll Spinney.
Do you have any trouble
separating your personality from Big Bird?
- I-- One of the things
we've played up or I've played up with the bird
is that he's very insecure because I think actually
a lot of children will have this problem.
I know I never will lose it, I'm afraid,
and so I use my insecurities to understand the bird,
but Oscar has no such insecurities at all.
[laughter]
- The further you stay away from my can, the better.
Keep moving there.
- Over here, Oscar? - Yeah. Just keep walking,
Bright Eyes.
- I also play Oscar the Grouch.
- Do I get paid?
- Well, no. I get the money. - You bastard.
[laughter]
- With Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch,
I think Carroll Spinney saved a lot of money in therapy
by being able to play those two disparate characters.
- You know I hate you? - I do.
You've told me that before.
- Well, I have to tell somebody.
- He says things as Oscar
that he would never say as himself.
- Oh, yes. Any changes I'd like to see on the show?
Yeah, well, we don't really have very much sex.
[laughter]
- Stand by. Okay.
- Caroll, give him a little dialogue.
- Yes, here's a little dialogue.
Your mother wears Army boots.
[laughter]
[indistinct chatter]
- Dad felt very strongly that kids need to see
that not everybody is nice,
and not everybody is easy, and this is how you deal
with the grouch who's in your neighborhood.
- Hey, Bob. What is this?
- I think Oscar is really going to do it this time.
- Oscar is really going to do--
- Yep, you guys have guessed right.
I'm moving away forever.
- Oscar is the dark side of everybody.
- No ifs, ands or buts, fellas.
Nothing you can say will change my mind.
- He's what children are constantly told
they must not do. Don't say that.
It's bad. Don't do that. Don't talk back.
- Too much noise and playing and kids
and too much laughing... - Come on, man.
- Come on now. - And too much everything
that bothers me.
- Oscar the Grouch was created
very much to show that
even somebody with a completely different point of view
than yours could be your friend.
- Why do you like rain, Oscar? - Oh, the rain is beautiful.
I'll tell you.
The rain is so nice. It's all wet and soggy.
[upbeat music playing]
♪ Rain falls, puddles on the street ♪
♪ No one can go out and play ♪
[laughs]
♪ Rain falls, people soak from head to feet ♪
♪ Gee, I like a rainy day ♪
[laughs]
♪ Trucks roll by splashing mud on everyone ♪
- Joe Raposo was hired to do the music for "Sesame."
He did all the arranging,
and he had so much heart and so much knowledge.
- ♪ Sing ♪
- ♪ Sing a song ♪
- ♪ Sing out loud ♪
- That's good.
♪ Sing out strong ♪
- Joe Raposo I call the music man.
He was the music man, you know, in every respect.
[singing in Spanish]
This guy was like a Muppet himself, you know?
His personality was just so big that
when he walked into a room,
you couldn't not notice Joe Raposo.
♪ ♪
- Don't ask me what makes me write these things.
I don't--
♪ Around, around ♪
♪ Around, around over, under, through ♪
- [breathing heavily] ♪ Around, around, around ♪
♪ Over and under and through ♪
Oh, boy.
♪ Over, see, and under ♪
♪ And through and through and through ♪
And through!
I did it. [sighs]
- And of course, you know, his talent was just so amazing
that he could come up with all of these songs.
- ♪ I'm an aardvark, and I'm proud ♪
♪ I'm an aardvark, and I'm happy ♪
♪ Two is my favorite number ♪
♪ Two is neat ♪
♪ Two is being together ♪
♪ Two is sweet ♪
♪ If I could only paddle like a doggy on a paddle ♪
♪ I would paddle my way to you ♪
♪ No river too wide ♪
- It was like somebody was working on the show,
and they had an idea for something, say,
"We need a song about something here,"
and he'd go off and, like, five minutes later come back
and show them the music for a new song.
- Hmm.
- It was 1970 in the middle of the first taping season
that Jon Stone came to me,
and he said, "You know, we got this character,
this Kermit the Frog," and Jon said to me,
"What does Kermit think about when he's alone?
Does he ever have a quiet moment?
What would you think about doing a song
that's quiet for him?"
[soft piano music]
♪ ♪
I was at my desk,
and I was thinking about the frog
and about the swamp and the log.
And what his life was like alone,
and what did he actually think of himself?
And, I mean, like a shot, I mean, without thinking twice,
I put my hands down on a B-flat chord.
This whole song just unfolded by itself.
♪ ♪
- ♪ It's not that easy being green ♪
♪ Having to spend each day the color of the leaves ♪
♪ When I think it could be nicer ♪
♪ Being red or yellow or gold ♪
♪ Or something much more colorful like that ♪
- ♪ It's not easy being green ♪
♪ It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things ♪
♪ And people tend to pass you over ♪
- ♪ Because you're not ♪
♪ Standing out like flashy sparkles in the water ♪
♪ Or stars in the sky ♪
- "It's Not Easy Being Green" with Kermit the Frog.
- ♪ But green is the color of spring ♪
- So many things in this one song.
I mean, this was a profound song.
- ♪ And green could be big like an ocean ♪
♪ Or important like a mountain ♪
♪ Or tall like a tree ♪
- And I remember thinking,
"Are they singing about what I think they're singing about?"
Of course, they were singing about race,
but they were also singing about being down in the dumps
because you're a little green frog.
Some kids just thought it was about a little green puppet
and other kids thought about, "Maybe it was something else."
- My father's belief
that children should never be spoken down
to specifically in the world of music
made the music as sophisticated as he could.
[upbeat music]
- P.
Q.
- The American musical scene
is a fantastic smorgasbord of fabulous styles.
- ♪ You can count on me ♪
♪ Count on me ♪
- If you're familiar with them,
you take, "Hey, kids. Here's an olive."
- ♪ Oh, whenever I see your grouchy face ♪
♪ It makes me want to smile because I like you ♪
♪ Just a little bit ♪
- "Hey, kids. Here's a piece of pastrami.
"Hey, kids. Here's some black-eyed peas.
Hey, kids."
- ♪ Now, Nasty Dan was a nasty man the whole day long ♪
- Good for him. - ♪ He'd go where he could ♪
♪ And he would try real good to make things go wrong ♪
- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- ♪ He'd jump for joy when a little boy ♪
♪ Would trip and fall ♪
- Really mean, huh?
- ♪ And the only words that he ever said ♪
♪ Were, "I don't like you at all" ♪
- Yeah! Right on.
- And every once in a while,
"How about a little filet mignon?"
♪ ♪
Are you kidding? Wow!
♪ ♪
- So my father and a few other people were tasked
with creating all of the music for the show,
so you're talking about 100 or more episodes each season.
That's a lot of music to produce.
They would make it every week for the show.
- Stand by.
This is a direct cue. Quiet, please!
- The production sessions, they would go into 3:00
in the morning, 4:00 in the morning.
And I would sleep there.
My father would be stuck in the session.
My mother would have gone home,
and he would say, "Oh, I'll bring the kids home
when we're done."
He never went home.
[solemn music]
- My father didn't even have an apartment
in New York City or anything.
And he would go to work and come back four days later,
that sort of thing,
and I just thought, "Well, that's what fathers do."
[bright music]
- ♪ Oh, me know it true that me so blue ♪
♪ When you far away and you not stay in view ♪
- There were no hours to the day.
We worked from morning deep into the night.
No one ever kept track of when we were going to have lunch,
when we were going to have dinner.
It was getting the show up.
- ♪ Me got to be blue, me got to be blue ♪
- How do you manage a life like that?
- ♪ What else can me do? ♪
- It seems unreasonable to me, but that was what they did.
And Jon Stone rode herd over that group better
than anybody could have possibly.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Now you know it not you ♪
- Now he would say that he had three children.
He had Polly. He had Kate, and he had "Sesame Street,"
and that he felt really passionate about all of us,
but as his daughters,
you know, we could grow up and be anything,
and he would support us and celebrate us,
but "Sesame Street" had to maintain an integrity,
and I think he felt the weight of holding onto that
and being responsible for it.
- ♪ Just got to be blue ♪
♪ Once more, with feeling! ♪
- All right. Okay.
Three and two, you want to come to the front.
- What we mostly saw was the funny side of our dad,
the entertainer.
But Dad had a dark side, dealt with depression,
and he felt hurt when things didn't go his way.
- Stand by! - Take two.
- Say, "Big Bird!"
Somebody wants to take your--
- Not that camera. - Where do you want cameras?
- Frankie, you're not on a five.
Okay, I need to do it? Chopped.
- I don't know if he wanted love,
but he was a very sensitive, difficult man.
- You know, I never had deep conversations with Jon
about his feelings about things.
He held his feelings close to his chest,
but for some reason,
publicly he was never given the credit that he deserved.
- He certainly wanted credit for the things
he had accomplished on the show,
but it was very hard to get the press
trained on anyone but me,
so it was awkward at times.
♪ ♪
- ♪ When someone socks me in the eye ♪
♪ And they don't even tell me why ♪
♪ That makes me mad ♪
- ♪ Yeah, we're angry, very, very angry ♪
- Jon did not have much taste for bureaucracy.
He was an iconoclast in a way.
I mean, if there was anything nonsensical about the way
the workshop was being run,
he would try to express it on the show or off.
A funny little story that tells you a lot about him,
when "Sesame" started,
we had one of those little signs
where you put little white letters into grooves,
and it said Children's Television Workshop.
Every morning when Jon came in,
he would change that
to Children's Television Porkshow.
[laughs]
Just by changing the P and the W.
He was just irreverent.
- Technical term. We like to call it "waiting around."
- My dad was very close with Jon Stone and Joe Raposo.
I think he loved the energy of them and the boldness
of what they were trying to do, and he got caught up in that,
and it was very inspiring for him.
- Take one, rolling. - One, two, three, four!
[upbeat music]
- Fat. - Fat.
- Cat.
- I remember Jim Henson, Frank Oz
doing a puppet bit, everybody hysterical.
Jim Henson saying, "What are we teaching?"
Jon Stone saying, "Happiness."
"That's the ticket. That's the joy."
- ♪ A fat cat sat on a hat ♪
♪ So I ran on a mat, pat-a-pat ♪
♪ Had a chat with a gnat ♪
♪ That he pat in a vat that was flat ♪
Oh, yeah!
Oh, fat, cat, sat, hat, and that's that!
- Scat!
- One thing that I will credit Joan Ganz Cooney with
was that she let these guys do what they could do.
They had ideas and concepts and behaviors
that were just off-the-wall,
and they were allowed to do it,
and that's what people loved.
They felt the lunacy on the screen, the contained madness.
- Train rhyme with rain! Me win cookie.
- So these wildly creative people
were allowed to just try stuff.
♪ ♪
- It was chaos, but it was the chaos of people
dedicated to a real ideal.
Believing something could be done
and having the will to do it,
and it was the most exciting period of our lives.
♪ ♪
- Those first years of "Sesame Street,"
it was just shocking how much they did.
- ♪ I'm the King of Eight ♪
♪ And I'm here to state ♪
♪ That everything here has to total eight ♪
♪ ♪
- ♪ One wedding cake! Oop ♪
- I think it's overstimulating.
I think it's kind of staggering to a young child's brain
to have that much excitement and noise,
sound and all kinds of figures bombarded at them really.
- I want cookie. I want cookie! Give me cookie.
Oh, oh, the cookie! Oh, thank you. Oh!
- Noony, noony, noo, noo, noony, noony, noo. Mm-mmm.
- P. P!
Huh? Oh...
Argh. Ah.
- Pencil!
- I had very little experience as a writer,
and I had no job.
- Aw.
- I was basically just writing jokes,
and I was watching TV, and I saw "Sesame Street."
- And, matter of fact, there it is!
They've got Mr. Humpty Dumpty back together again.
For all the egg lovers of the country, I want you
to know it's very nice to have you back.
Uh. Uh, horses? [sirens wail]
- I was--wow, that's great.
- [snickering]
- It was funny.
- Ooh. Yeah.
- And it was the only other show
besides "The Tonight Show" in New York
that really had comedy writers working for them,
and I didn't think I had a chance in hell
at getting a job at "The Johnny Carson Show."
- You can forget that immediately.
- And I needed a job.
But "Sesame Street" has a curriculum,
so everything that was written taught something.
And the idea that it was more than just telling jokes
appealed to me. It had to be entertaining,
and it was going to teach at the same time,
and that's hard to do.
- And I think, you know,
she may have a personal sensitivity to it
because that's the first time I've heard that particular one.
- The writers didn't always understand educational terms.
So we came up with this big tome, the Writers' Notebook.
It has all the rules of the show tabbed
that the writers could thumb through
to help them understand
how to translate educational terms into production terms.
And it was helpful to the educators
because they could communicate with the writers
in a nonthreatening way.
So instead of saying, you know,
"cognitive development learning letters,"
what you said is, "After watching the segment,
the child should be able to identify..."
- Frog. - "The letter Y,"
for example.
- What's the first letter in the word "yellow"?
- Y.
- Because I can't remember.
- When the curriculum and the entertainment worked together,
you know, it was like magic!
- Action! - Come, my lovelies!
Breathe deeply.
Enjoy the fresh air, ah, ah, ah.
- When I came up with the Count,
I was talking with Sharon.
I said, "I have this idea for Count von Count,"
and she said, "Well, enumeration,
that's what you're teaching."
Well, what is enumeration?
- Did you say seven? - Yes.
- I think there's only six, Count.
- That's funny. I had seven when I left the castle.
I will count them.
One, one beautiful bat. Two terrific bats. Three ...
- When you count, one, two, three, four, five,
you're just counting, but if you count fingers,
it's one, two, three, four, five.
When you get to the fifth, you know you have five fingers.
- Five fingers.
- That's enumeration, all right?
[phone ringing]
One ring! Two, two rings. Three, three rings!
[laughs]
Is that mine? Oh, it must be mine.
- I think what amazes me most looking back at "Sesame"
is that there was an underlying humor in everything.
- Ah, listen, Jack. If you want to work in a world-famous
nursery rhyme, you got to do it right.
- I mean, we were all comedy freaks,
and all of us loved parody, satire.
- Now jump over means you jump up into the air,
and you leap, and you sail gracefully
over the candlestick,
and you land on the other side.
- And we would try to appeal to adults as well as to kids.
- He did it! He did it, folks.
Jack jumped over the candlestick.
- Ooh, yeah. Jack also broke every bone in his body, frog.
- Oh, I'm sorry about that.
- Yeah, I'm going to sue Mother Goose for that.
That's some heavy action.
- Boy, these nursery rhymes get weirder all the time.
Weird.
- We found out that if adults
watched the show with kids,
that the kids really learned more.
- Now three plus one equals four!
- Three plus one equals four?
- Yes, always.
- The conversation that the adult had with the child
while the show was on the air and after the show
was on the air really enhanced the learning,
so there was a real conscious effort to attract adults.
- I am the Count!
They call me the Count because I love to count things!
- Wonderful! Well, I am Guy Smiley.
They call me Guy Smiley
because I changed my name from Bernie Liederkranz.
[cheers and applause] - Yes, thank you.
Yes, I did. I did.
- So things like "Monsterpiece Theater,"
the parody element wasn't for the kids.
They didn't have to know "Masterpiece Theater."
"Monsterpiece Theater" is a funny thing anyway.
- Good evening, and welcome to "Monsterpiece Theater."
Me Alistair Cookie. Tonight, me proud to present
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
- Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.
Cuckoo?
- We wrote something that we knew we would like.
I think that was the key, and the show
would not have worked if that weren't the case.
- One of Chris' incredible talents is his ability
to write a song
that sounds like the original but isn't the original.
- I think I remember how to do it.
I might start in the wrong key, but.
♪ ♪
♪ When I find I can't remember ♪
♪ What comes after A and before C ♪
♪ My mother always whispers "Letter B" ♪
♪ She told me B starts "big" and "bird" ♪
♪ And "ball" and "bat" and "battery" ♪
♪ Yes, buh-buh-buh-buh-buh means letter B ♪
- ♪ Letter B, letter B ♪
♪ Letter B, letter B ♪
♪ My mother whispers B words, letter B ♪
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
- That was a $5 million lawsuit.
- [laughs]
- ♪ My mother whispers B words, letter B ♪
- It was all of us having the time of our lives
writing silly things but always with this message
that television could be socially valuable.
- Yeah.
[soft music]
♪ ♪
- Big Bird, that's me. [chuckles]
♪ ♪
- Well, I just drew pictures of all of my grown-up friends
on "Sesame Street."
- Look at me! - That's you, Luis.
[chatter] - Yeah.
- I know that's got to be me. - There's Susan.
- Yeah, that's ... You're always smiling, Susan.
- How's that? - That looks great.
- Does that look like you? - That's good.
- And this is Mr. Hooper, who was played by Will Lee.
He was our grandfather figure, such a kindly man.
He was always so sweet.
♪ ♪
And he died in 1982.
♪ ♪
- Take two! - We had lost a friend.
He was part of our family.
- It was a huge, huge loss. - Can I see Mr. Hooper?
- You want to see the store? Okay, come on in.
- Yeah. I still miss him. Yeah.
- So we had a decision to make.
- We had to describe his absence
from the show or explain it,
and believe me, everybody said,
"Let's just say he retired and went to Florida."
- But people said, "Well, maybe it's...
That would be a missed opportunity."
- If we've been trying to be truthful all along,
why should we shortchange kids now?
- Jon, you know, when they speak our language...
- We talked for a while about how to deal with his death,
and we decided, "Well, we'd really like to have his death
"used in a educational way
that might help children deal with that."
- And so the question was asked
of our research department,
"What do three- to five-year-olds need to know
about death?"
So it came down to some very, very simple things.
They need to know that when somebody dies,
they don't come back.
And that whatever you're feeling is okay.
You can be angry. You can be sad.
You know, it can be all of them.
Whatever you feel is fine.
- TV is make-believe, but life is real.
In real life, Will Lee died,
and tomorrow on "Sesame Street,"
Mr. Hooper will die too.
- When I wrote the scene,
I didn't want it to be that it just happened.
It seemed that that would be too jarring.
I thought it was better if Big Bird
just hasn't processed it.
You know, they might have told him that he died,
but he didn't know what "died" meant,
and now he's just going to first find out.
- And last but not least
ta-da! - Oh, look at that one.
- Big Bird, that's so beautiful.
- That's nice.
- It really looks like him. - Yeah, you captured him.
- Wow, that's beautiful, Big Bird.
- Oh, thank you.
Well, I can't wait until he sees it!
Hmm.
Say, where is he? I want to give it to him.
I know. He's in the store.
- Big Bird, he's--he's not in there.
- Oh, then where is he?
- We carefully and thoroughly researched
what children's normal reactions to a death are,
and we tried to deal with those in the form
of Big Bird's reaction to Mr. Hooper's death.
- Big Bird, don't you remember we told you?
Mr. Hooper died. He's dead.
- Oh, yeah. I remember.
Well, I'll give it to him when he comes back.
- Big Bird, Mr. Hooper is not coming back.
- It's hard to watch. It was a difficult show to do.
♪ ♪
- Big Bird, when people die, they don't come back.
- Ever? - No, never.
- Hmm.
- It was about the fictional person
and the real person.
They were going to be talking about Mr. Hooper,
but as human beings,
they were going to be talking about their friend Will.
- But I don't like it. It makes me sad.
- We all feel sad, Big Bird.
- He's never coming back? - Never.
- No. - Well, I don't understand!
Why does it have to be this way?
Give me one good reason.
- Big Bird,
it has to be this way because.
- Just because?
- Just because.
- Oh.
You know, I'm going to miss you, Mr. Looper.
- That's Hooper, Big Bird, Hooper.
- Those are real tears, you know.
There was no acting.
- Right.
♪ ♪
- In five, four, three, two, one!
- I wonder if I got any mail yet today.
Oh, there's something.
Where the hell did it go?
- One of the great things about being part of "Sesame"
was seeing what happened when a take went wrong.
- I have paint on my nose? - Yes, right! [laughing]
- There, is that better? - No!
[laughter]
You're permanently scarred for life.
- The puppeteers would just keep going,
and they would do all the things
that we could never possibly do on television.
- Oh, say, frog. - What?
- Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be...
[choking noises]
- Gladys?
Oh, thank goodness she died.
[laughter]
[indistinct chatter]
- Jim Henson, Frank Oz,
they were really professional.
You know, if they were serious,
and Jim maybe had to go somewhere to get out,
then it was serious, you know?
[doorbell rings]
- But if they were on kidding around...
- Oh, hello there! Greetings, froggy, baby ...
- You had a good day. They were hysterical.
- Go away, Grover.
Whatever it is, we do not want any.
- Whoa! [indistinct speech]
Open, please. - What?
- Please, did you open? Open the damn door!
[laughter]
- You... I
- You know, it's too bad you couldn't come to the park
and play with me today, Bert.
- Mmm. Yeah, me too, Ernie,
but I had a lot of stuff to do around here, you know.
- Hey, Bert. - Mmm?
- You said, "Me too."
That didn't follow what I said, Bert.
[laughter] - I'm sorry.
- I thought maybe somebody could...
a friend could save it.
- Jim and I, we are unrelenting in our cruelty
towards each other because you can't see our faces,
but if one of us screws up, instead of pinching in to help,
the other just kind of smiles at him.
[laughter]
- Night, Ernie. - Me too, Bert.
- Oh, that's cute. Oh, that's funny.
Lost 17 seconds of our life just then.
- We were all so silly together.
- We added tats. That's Tuesday.
- And the most wonderful thing was to hear Jim Henson laugh,
let alone make him laugh. That was, like, fantastic.
- Wait a minute, that's last Tuesday.
- No, tats. I said we had tats. I said tats.
- I thought that was weird.
- We added tats last ... Oh, Your Majesty.
It's been so hard.
- How many lines do you have?
- Let me see. Um...
Well, the first one ...
- Let me see. Well... - Three.
- Three. Well, try to get the first one better!
- Yes, Your Majesty. [laughter]
- Jim was such a genius in terms of, you know,
how to create the imagery with the puppets
and make it all kind of work, you know, in a magical way.
I mean, it was like these were real people.
- Hey, listen, we thought we would talk to you
a little bit about the concept of being next to. You see?
Now then, right there you see Charla is next to Frannie.
- The kids accepted them as being real.
- What is that over here?
- Arrow. - A what?
- Arrow.
- An arrow?
- Those one-on-one bits with the Muppets.
- Let's hear you sing the alphabet.
- A, B, C, D, E, F, Cookie Monster.
- It wasn't rehearsed, and it wasn't professional children
with professional smiles. It was a pretty low-key,
fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants--
I mean, that was part of the charm of it
was that everybody was real.
- You're not singing the alphabet.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N,
O, P, Q, R, S... - Cookie Monster!
- I go this way.
- That way! - That way?
- Yes.
- But the arrow was pointing the other way!
- No, that way. - Okay, it's pointing that way.
I'll go that way.
- This way. - That way.
- Frank Oz is sitting there with Grover,
and you have a little child,
and the child is interacting with Grover.
- Oh, hello, Polly.
- Frank Oz doesn't exist for that child.
- It's nice to see you. - It's Grover.
- Polly? - What?
- Can you count up to five? - Yes.
- Can you tell me how?
One hand, just hold up one hand.
Now count how many fingers there are on that hand.
- One, two, three, four, five. - Boy, are you lucky!
Five fingers.
- My famous moment with Grover.
You know, this superstar on television.
It was a wonderful way to grow up where, you know,
I had all these friends that were blue and fuzzy.
- Polly, I am so proud of you.
Aw!
- They were close together, you see?
So they are next to each other.
Now, Kermit the Frog is next to Carlo.
- I know that. - Oh. Thank you.
That's lovely. - [giggling]
- It's that way. - [panting]
[sighs] - [laughing]
What happened, arrow?
- ♪ W, X, Y and Z ♪
- ♪ Now I know ♪ - ♪ Now I've sung ♪
- ♪ My ABCs, won't you ♪
- Next time, Cookie Monster is--
- Next time Cookie Monster can do it with you.
I'm leaving.
- I love you. - I love you too.
- Thanks.
- I remember once where a lawyer said to me,
"I often negotiate with Henson,"
and I said, "Give him anything he wants."
[laughs]
And the lawyer said,
"Oh, that's the worst attitude I ever saw from any client."
I said, "He is precious to me."
- Tell me, Joan, did you ever think
when you started this show 20 years ago
that we would be sitting here now talking about it?
- Jim, I didn't think you'd be here.
- Oh, really?
- I would have thought you would have flown the coop.
- Oh, I see.
- What's interesting about it from the viewpoint--
Well, from both of our viewpoints
is it's sort a form of immortality
because if you think about it, Ernie will live forever.
We've now built this huge library
of fabulous "Muppet" pieces
as well as other kinds of things so that--
- Does this mean I can really stop doing Ernie?
- No, it doesn't, but it means that 200 years from now,
people will look--
be looking at Bert and Ernie and Kermit the Frog.
It's interesting.
- Yeah. Frank-- I was talking with Frank Oz.
You know, he and I imagined when we're in our 80s
doing Ernie and Bert,
you know, in rocking chairs and still doing it.
- Oh, I hope so. - I can imagine that.
- I may not there with you.
[both laughing]
- For millions of people, a little of the magic is gone.
Jim Henson, the man who created The Muppets,
the man who made complex characters out of cloth,
has died at the age of only 53.
- My name is Jon Stone. I'm a writer and director.
I don't remember exactly how Jim and I met.
I know it was 1963 or '64, but from the moment we met,
we were never very far apart.
That happened to a lot of people.
More and more of us
joined Jim's extended family over the years.
All the designers and builders and writers and puppeteers,
one by one, all of us heard the unhearable,
and my phone rang all that day and that night
and all the next day. The calls were from you.
Each of you hurting so much and knowing
that I must be hurting that much too.
So you called just to see if I was all right.
It is no accident that you loving, talented,
caring people wound up in Jim Henson's family.
I loved Jim very much, and I love you very much too.
[piano music]
♪ ♪
- ♪ It's not that easy being green ♪
♪ Having to spend the day the color of the leaves ♪
♪ When I think it could be nicer ♪
♪ Being red or yellow or gold ♪
♪ Or something much more colorful like that ♪
- That song was a point of departure for the series
and for me.
- ♪ Being green ♪
- The song addresses that one thing that's
at the kernel of our being.
We're not sure what we are or what we can be.
We know there's potential,
and the realization to accept ourselves.
- ♪ I am green ♪
♪ And it'll do fine ♪
♪ It's beautiful ♪
♪ And I think it's what I want to be ♪
- To know that we can become something
that we perhaps never dreamed we could be...
That's what "Sesame Street" is about.
[indistinct chatter]
- Stand by. - Okay.
- Switching over.
- P.
[gibberish]
- R. - No, no, no, no, no.
- P. - No! [growls]
But if you say the name first and then the sound shot.
- Wait, we're teaching something here?
- Yeah!
- The happiest time of his life
were those early years in "Sesame Street"
when Dad suddenly had this family around him.
That was all he could ever have wished for.
You know, he battled depression
for a good part of his life,
but on set with the Muppets he was so happy.
- All right. Quiet please. Here we go.
[laughter]
- Cookie Monster?
- Hmm, what? - That's just so disgusting.
- Sorry, Jon.
- Don't worry, Jon, keep rolling.
- So sorry, Jon. - Sorry, Jon.
- I bet Jon would like to do those shots one more time!
- Of course-- - Please don't hurt me.
Don't yell at me, Jonny. Please! Fade to black!
[indistinct chatter, laughter]
- "Sesame Street" truly was the love of his life,
and that's the thing that he stuck with longer than anybody,
right up until the end.
- There must be something to life besides big balloons
and little balloons. I like little sized balloons.
- Years ago I tried to persuade Joan Cooney
to do a special entitled "Backstage at Sesame Street"
because I wanted to capture the family aura
that we had in the studio and still have,
but we never did the show. Maybe we're doing it now.
[chuckles]
- It was a family, is a family,
and really all of us loved each other,
and it shows in the work.
- The most amazing part of "Sesame Street"
was how everybody was in the right place
at the right time,
and that's the thing that made the show.
- Thinking about in the very beginning of the show
and all of the people that worked on it.
It's hard for me to talk about it.
It's very emotional.
It can't be reproduced.
- It's still to this day is very difficult for me
to wrap my mind around
how big this thing is, how big it became.
- I don't know that there is a show
that is as universally loved from childhood
through adulthood as "Sesame Street" is.
- "Sesame Street" wanted to give kids tools
to create the world they wanted to live in.
- You know, in the beginning,
we thought we were helping education,
maybe changing children's television,
but I don't think any of us sat there thinking,
"Oh, my God. We're changing the world."
- There was just a magic moment in time
where we all worked on an idea
that we understood was bigger than ourselves.
- It was an amazing experience.
- This is why it's still loved.
The people who do it love it.
They're genuine, and they believed in
what they're doing,
and from the very beginning,
the joy that those guys put into the show,
the joy that they all felt...
It shows on every frame of the show
throughout its history.
- Wind.
♪ ♪
- Ah!
- "Sesame Street" is immortal.
- Shake your head. Shake your head.
- Oh, boy, is this fun! - Shake your head.
Shake your head. Shake your head.
- Is it--aren't you glad you're playing, everybody?
["Sesame Street" theme song ends]
♪ ♪
- ♪ Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance ♪
All right!
♪ Dance, dance, dance ♪
♪ Everybody dance ♪
♪ You can dance with me ♪
♪ Dance, dance, dance ♪
All right!
♪ Dance, dance, dance ♪
All right! ♪ Everybody dance ♪
♪ You can dance ♪
- ♪ The mama pajama rolled out of bed ♪
♪ She ran to the police station ♪
♪ When the papa found out he began to shout ♪
♪ And he started the investigation ♪
♪ It's against the law ♪
♪ It was against the law ♪
♪ What the mama saw ♪
♪ It was against the law ♪
- ♪ It's against the law ♪
- ♪ The mama looked down and spit on the ground ♪
♪ Every time my name gets mentioned ♪
♪ The papa said, "Oy, if I get that boy ♪
♪ I'm gonna stick him in the house of detention" ♪
♪ Well I'm on my way ♪
♪ I don't know where I'm going ♪
♪ But I'm on my way ♪
♪ I'm taking my time ♪
♪ But I don't know where ♪
♪ Goodbye to Rosie, the queen of Corona ♪
♪ Seeing me and Julio ♪
♪ Down by the schoolyard ♪
♪ Seeing me and Julio ♪
♪ Down by the schoolyard ♪
- ♪ Dance, dance, dance ♪
♪ Everybody dance ♪
♪ Everybody ♪
- Whoo!
[cheers and applause]
[upbeat jazz music]
- ♪ Excuse me, Mr. Hoots I hate to bug a busy bird ♪
♪ But I want to learn the sax ♪
♪ And I need a helpful word ♪
♪ I always get a silly squeak ♪
♪ When I play the blues ♪
- ♪ Ernie, keep your cool ♪
♪ I'll teach you how to blow the sax ♪
♪ I think I dig your problem ♪
♪ It's rubber, and it quacks ♪
♪ You'll never find the skill you seek ♪
♪ Till you pay your dues ♪
♪ You've got to put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put down the duckie yeah ♪
♪ You've got to leave the duck alone ♪
all: ♪ You've got to put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone ♪
- Whoo!
- You didn't hear a word I said.
♪ You got to get it through your head ♪
♪ Don't be a stubborn cluck ♪
♪ Ernie, lay aside the duck ♪
♪ I've learned a thing or two ♪
♪ From years of playing in a band ♪
♪ It's hard to play a saxophone with something in your hand ♪
♪ To be a fine musician ♪
♪ You're going to have to face the facts ♪
all: ♪ You've got to put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put down the duckie ♪
♪ You've got to leave the duck alone ♪
♪ You've got to put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put the duckie if you want to play the saxophone ♪
- Yeah!
- ♪ Though you're blessed with flying fingers ♪
♪ When you want to wail, you're stuck ♪
♪ What good are flying fingers ♪
♪ If they're wrapped around a duck ♪
♪ Change the toy's position if you wanna ace the sax ♪
♪ Yeah! ♪
all: ♪ You've got to put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put down the duckie ♪
♪ You've got to leave the duck alone ♪
♪ Don't mess with me ♪
♪ You've got to put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put down the duckie ♪
♪ You've got to put down the duckie ♪
♪If you want to play the saxophone ♪
- ♪ Don't have to put it on a train ♪
♪ Don't have to wash it down the drain ♪
♪ Don't have to lock it in a drawer ♪
♪ Don't have to shove it out the door ♪
♪ Don't have to stuff it in your pocket ♪
♪ Or send it flying in a rocket ♪
♪ Don't have to get it out of town ♪
♪ Ernie put the quacker down ♪
- Oh, gee, Hoots, you know
I really love my duckie. I can't bear to part with him.
- Oh, you don't have to lose your duck.
all: ♪ You've got to put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put down the duckie ♪
♪ You've got leave the duck alone ♪
♪ You've got to put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put down the duckie ♪
♪ If you want to play the saxophone ♪
- Gee, Hoots, you know I really love my duckie.
I can't part with him.
- Well, you don't have to lose your duck.
You can pick it up when you're finished.
- I can? - Yeah!
- Oh, wow!
♪ ♪
♪ You've got put down the duckie ♪
- ♪ Put down the duckie ♪ - ♪ Put down the duckie ♪
- ♪ Put that down ♪ - ♪ Put down the duckie ♪
♪ Yeah, you've got to leave the duck alone ♪
♪ Put down the duckie ♪
- ♪ Put down the duckie ♪
- ♪ Put down that duckie ♪
- ♪ Put down ♪
- ♪ Put down the duckie ♪
♪ If you want to play the saxophone ♪
♪ One more time ♪
all: ♪ You've got put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put down the duckie ♪
♪ You've got to leave the duck alone ♪
♪ You've got put down the duckie ♪
♪ Put down the duckie ♪
♪ If you want to play the saxophone ♪
- Whoo. Can I pick up my duckie?
- By all means! - Oh, thank you.
Oh, duckie, I missed you so much.
Yes, me too.
- Take care, Ernie, my man!
- Well, I want you to know how truly unpleasant
it has been having to talk to you.
So I'm going to leave now so ta-ta.
Oh, that sounded as though I might have cared too.
How about scram, get out of here,
and I can't stand you? [laughs]
Ow, why don't you watch that?