Brain Behind Big Bird Retires After 50 Years Under Mysterious Circumstances
First Bert & Ernie were making headlines when big gossip came out.
And now Sesame Street is back in the news as the brain behind Big Bird mysteriously steps down after a troubling narrative has come out of the closet.
::congrats Kate, you’re the 1,000th person to make that joke::
Buuuut really though…
Carroll Spinney, 84, seems like a wonderful guy & he’s had a pretty incredible career after five decades on the Street. As I kid I loved the show & his characters were some of my favorites.
NPR says he’s hanging up his ‘big orange legs’ having ‘given voice and life to Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch for nearly 50 years’.
He has performed the roles since the show’s very first episode in 1969.
He had met Jim Henson at a puppetry festival in 1962, and Henson invited him to be a part of this new show he was creating.
“He said, ‘Why don’t you come down to New York and talk about the Muppets?'” Spinney recounted to NPR in 2003.” ‘I have some characters I want to build. One is a tall, funny-looking bird and the other’s going to be this grouchy character who’s going to live in a pile of trash in the gutter.’
Playing Big Bird all these years has been a big job, in part because of the beloved creature’s oversized stature: 8 feet, 2 inches. The role requires its puppeteer to hold his arm high in the air throughout, to maneuver Big Bird’s head.
“I can’t see out,” Spinney explained in the 2003 interview. “I wear a tiny little television set strapped to my chest, and I’m watching to see if Big Bird is looking at Maria, whoever he’s talking to, or looking at the children at home. And if we have a complex walk for me to do, we can remove two feathers that are on by Velcro. But we try not to do that, because sometimes you see this little dark spot in his chest where I’m peeking out — but I have to do that so I won’t walk into the door.”
To put that in perspective, Manute Bol and Gheorghe Muresan were the tallest in the NBA at 7’7. Big Bird could have easily dunked on ‘em (but Spinney, not so much). At the Museum of the Moving Image I got to see one of the original costumes & it’s impressive knowing all that he was able to do.
Besides Big Bird he also voiced Oscar, whose voice he based on a cab driver from the Bronx who brought him to the audition. ::Newswoman voice:: Hopefully his next ride… is into the sunset of retirement.
Closing it out, here he is singing Bein’ Green as Big Bird at Jim Henson’s funeral in case you want to feel sad.