BIG BIRD PUPPETEER CAROLL SPINNEY DIES
“Sesame Street” icon Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer who played Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch during his nearly five decades on the children’s show, died Sunday at 85.
His death was announced by the Sesame Workshop, which said Spinney had been living with Dystonia “for some time.” He passed away at his home in Connecticut, the nonprofit organization that puts on “Sesame Street” said.
Spinney joined “Sesame Street” for the inaugural season in 1969 and played a variety of characters over the years, but none were more prominent than the yellow, 8-foot-tall Big Bird or the trash-can-inhabiting Oscar.
Los Angeles — Caroll Spinney, who gave Big Bird his warmth and Oscar the Grouch his growl for nearly 50 years on “Sesame Street,” died Sunday at the age of 85 at his home in Connecticut, according to the Sesame Workshop.
The Sesame Workshop said in a statement that the legendary puppeteer lived for some time with dystonia, which causes involuntary muscle contractions.
Spinney voiced and operated the two major Muppets from their inception in 1969 when he was 36, and performed them almost exclusively into his 80s on the PBS kids’ television show that later moved to HBO.
“Before I came to ‘Sesame Street,’ I didn’t feel like what I was doing was very important,” Spinney said when he announced his retirement in 2018. “Big Bird helped me find my purpose.”
Through his two characters, Spinney gained huge fame that brought international tours, books, record albums, movie roles, and visits to the White House.
“Caroll was an artistic genius whose kind and loving view of the world helped shape and define ‘Sesame Street’ from its earliest days in 1969 through five decades, and his legacy here at Sesame Workshop and in the cultural firmament will be unending,” the Sesame Workshop said.
But he never became a household name.
“I may be the most unknown famous person in America,” Spinney said in his 2003 memoir. “It’s the bird that’s famous.”
Spinney gave “Sesame Street” its emotional yin and yang, infusing the 8-foot-2 Big Bird with a childlike sweetness often used to handle sad subjects, and giving the trashcan-dwelling Oscar, whose voice Spinney based on a New York cabbie, a street-wise cynicism that masked a tender core.
“I like being miserable. That makes me happy,” Oscar often said. “But I don’t like being happy, so that makes me miserable.”
To colleagues there was no question which character the kindly Spinney resembled.
“Big Bird is him and he is Big Bird,” former “Sesame Street” head writer Norman Stiles said in a 2014 documentary on Spinney.
It wasn’t easy being Big Bird. To play the part, Spinney would strap a TV monitor to his chest as his only eyes to the outside. Then the giant yellow bird body was placed over him. He held his right arm aloft constantly to operate the head, and used his left hand to operate both arms. The bird tended to slouch more as the years took their toll.
In 2015, Spinney switched to just providing the characters’ voices.