Sesame Street puppeteer Caroll Spinney dies at age 85

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 legendary puppeteer lived for some time with dystonia, which causes involuntary muscle contractions, the Sesame Workshop said in a statement.

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.

His death comes on the same day that Sesame Street is being honoured for lifetime achievements in the arts as a Kennedy Center Honors recipient.

“Before I came to Sesame Street, I didn’t feel like what I was doing was very important,” Spinney said.

“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. 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 streetwise cynicism that masked a tender core.

Born in 1933 in Waltham Massachusetts, Spinney had a supportive mother who built him a puppet theater after he bought his first puppet, a monkey, at age 8.

He spent four years in the US Air Force after school, then returned to Massachusetts and broke into TV. He teamed up with puppeteer Judy Valentine for their own daily series. Spinney in this period had three children from his marriage to Janice Spinney. He later married his second wife Debra in 1979, and the two were nearly inseparable for the rest of his life.

It was after a disastrous performance at a puppet festival that Spinney met Muppet

master Jim Henson, who came backstage and told him, “I liked what you were trying to do,” Spinney remembered Henson saying.

Spinney would join the Muppet crew when Sesame Street was about to turn them from popular phenomenon into an American institution.

Henson brought his signature character, Kermit the Frog, to the show. His right-hand man Frank Oz would become famous via Grover and Cookie Monster. Together they created Ernie and Bert. . But Big Bird would become the show’s biggest star, his name and image synonymous with not just Sesame Street but PBS and children’s television.

When Henson died in 1990, leaving the Muppet world devastated, Big Bird played the same part in real life.

Sesame Street co-founder Joan Ganz Cooney said Sunday that Spinney, her longtime colleague and friend, “not only gave us Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, he gave so much of himself as well.”

“We at Sesame Workshop mourn his passing and feel an immense gratitude for all he has given to Sesame Street and to children around the world,” she said.

Before I came to Sesame Street, I didn’t feel like what I was doing was very important. Big Bird helped me find my purpose.” Caroll Spinney