How many seasons of “Sesame Street” have there been? Let’s count! One season! Two seasons! Three . . . OK, even Count von Count would get tired counting up to 45, which is the age the iconic children’s show will hit when it returns Monday.
And for the PBS show’s entire run, it’s presented a New York City ideal, full of handsome brownstones on a tidy block dotted with leafy trees, a friendly bodega and even a convenient subway entrance. Plus, the neighbors are a truly diverse mix: white, black, Latino, Asian, Muppet.
As for the humans who reside on the street, a handful have been there since the early days: Loretta Long (who plays Susan) and Bob McGrath (who plays Bob) have been on the show from the first episode in 1969.
“Even [co-creator] Joan Ganz Cooney said to all of us, ‘We’ll give it a try for a couple of years and see how it goes,’ ” says McGrath, 82. “One day crept into one year crept into 30, [now] 45 years.”
Another person who’s been a part of the show since that first episode is Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer and voice of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. It all started when Jim Henson, who created the show’s Muppets, gave Spinney a very large bird puppet, based on a full-body dragon puppet Henson had created for La Choy chow mein commercials.
At first, Big Bird was a slow-witted, doofish adult, inspired by Edgar Bergen’s Mortimer Snerd puppet from the 1950s.
“A few months in, I realized just being a silly character wasn’t going to do much for the show,” says Spinney, now 80. He switched to making the big Muppet a 6-year-old bird, who had lots of questions about how the world works, and it stuck.
As for Oscar — who was orange for the first year, before turning a more appealing green — Spinney modeled the monster’s voice on a particularly cranky New York City cab driver he once rode with.
Though the show started out teaching ABCs, the message has evolved over the years to include global social issues — from incarcerated parents to bullying to HIV.
Sonia Manzano, who has been on the show since she joined as Maria in 1971, recalls her character standing up for feminism in the 1970s.
“She would argue with Oscar the Grouch, who would call her ‘little lady’ and talk down to Maria, and she would get very angry with him,” she says. Maria eventually took up a job as a construction worker and co-owned the local fix-it shop, too.
Kids might not notice, but the show takes on a new theme every season. In Season 40, for instance, it tackled environmental issues. This season, the theme is “executive thinking,” which is fancy psychologist speak for self-control.
“Cookie Monster, of course, is our poster child,” says McGrath. He’s talking about the controversial decision a few years ago to have the gluttonous monster cut back on the sweets and focus on healthy snacks like fruit instead. His motto went from “C is for Cookie” to “A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food.”
“Those are all subtle kinds of things we didn’t attempt to teach in the first years,” McGrath says. “When [‘Sesame Street’] started, the criticism about the show was that it was trying to teach too much. ‘Children under 4 can’t learn the alphabet.’ ”
Now, a 2-year-old can likely spout the ABCs.
“We realized children were picking up information earlier and earlier than we could have ever dreamed of,” executive producer Carol-Lynn Parente says.
(As for the “Word on the Street” segment, Parente says, “We never repeat words and do not have a list of words not to use, and [while] we haven’t used ‘Wi-Fi’ or ‘selfie,’ certainly any words that are in [a child’s] world are eligible.”)
Audience worldliness isn’t the only thing that’s changed.
Telly, the nervous red creature with the bulbous orange nose, was originally addicted to TV. That seemed like a bad message to give kids, so he was later changed into a chronic worrier.
Cookie Monster, the king of bad habits, held a pipe on “Monsterpiece Theater” through the late ’80s.
Mr. Snuffleupagus has a darker story: He was originally Big Bird’s imaginary friend, whom adults never believed in. But in 1985, producers had seen news reports of high-profile child sex abuse cases. They worried kids would get the message that their parents wouldn’t believe them if they had been sexually abused. They made Snuffy real, and Big Bird was believed at last.
As the writing has evolved, so have the human characters.
Manzano, now 64, was a teenage Maria when she first arrived on the street; later, as the actress married and had a baby, so did her character.
“We were never required to remain the same age,” she says. “We have all aged as we have in real life.”
Perhaps the most poignant moment was the 1982 death of Will Lee, who played shopkeeper Mr. Hooper. Producers decided to deal with the death of the character on the show, to teach kids about coping.
“We were the first [children’s] show to handle death with any depth and any reality,” Manzano says. “Caroll Spinney could barely contain his emotion. The cast was quite broken up about it and crying.”
And though the old-timers are, well, old, retirement doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Manzano, McGrath and Spinney, along with Long, who is 74, talk about “Sesame Street” like it’s a higher calling, not a job.
Ask kids in Idaho, where there isn’t a brownstone in sight, and they will say [‘Sesame Street’] is in their community.
- Sonia Manzano
“I can’t imagine walking away from being Big Bird,” says Spinney. “I love the character. He’s like my little boy.”
Plus, there are perks for the cast, like meeting their heroes. The show’s celeb guest tradition began the first year, with James Earl Jones. McGrath, a musician, remembers being amped to work with Itzhak Perlman on the show in the ’80s. Manzano gushes over seeing the likes of Tony Bennett, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles on set.
But writing a bit for her fellow Bronx native Sonia Sotomayor, in which the Supreme Court justice adjudicates a case between Baby Bear and Goldilocks, was a particular honor.
“She’s such a brilliant critical thinker,” Manzano says, adding, “She’s got a terrific sense of humor!”
Spinney has been on long enough that he’s seen a generation of adults who grew up on the show and can’t help but be starstruck when they come by. Such was the case for Michael Bublé (who shared the above picture on Instagram) when he met Oscar during a Christmas special in 2011.
“He said of all the famous people he’s gotten to sing with and work with,” Spinney says, “working with Oscar was his biggest thrill.”
Kids learn better when they watch with their parents, so big stars help draw adults in, Parente says. “We’re spoiled rotten. We have people lined up begging to be on the show.”
For the new season, expect to see Janelle Monáe, Claire Danes, Ian McKellen, Ice Cube, Ed Sheeran, One Direction and another appearance by Michelle Obama.
Social media has helped make the show’s spoof segments even more popular and entertain parents, with relevant parodies like “Upside Downton Abbey” and “True Mud” (a play on “True Blood”). This year, we’ll see bits parodying “House of Cards,” “Game of Thrones” and Comic-Con culture. Just this month, Cookie Monster and John Oliver went viral when they teamed up for a faux newscast to help promote the show’s new vocabulary initiative in a video that featured Nick Offerman, Al Roker, Telly and Kate McKinnon. (And the outtakes show just how raw funny the Muppets can be, too.)
Even though Spinney, McGrath and Manzano think they have the best job in the world, there is one question they may never learn the answer to: How do you get to Sesame Street, anyway?
Originally, the show was going to be titled “123 Avenue B,” which would place it across from Tompkins Square Park at Eighth Street, where St. Brigid’s Church is located, but it was spiked for being too New York-specific. A set designer based the streets on a mix of Harlem, The Bronx and the Upper West Side.
“I would place it in 110th Street in Harlem,” Manzano says. “Originally, the goal was to have it in an inner-city neighborhood with a lot of stoops. I always think of Harlem as being a neighborhood [like that].”
Spinney agrees it’s probably on the West Side, but thinks it’s more toward the Hudson River.
No matter where it’s supposed to be, Sesame Street feels like home to everyone.
“Ask kids in Idaho, where there isn’t a brownstone in sight, and they will say it’s in their community,” Manzano says.