Street Knowledge (Chapter 1)

 

If you’ve been a kid, parent, or just a human being on Earth, chances are you’ve heard of a little street, called Sesame Street. A place where humans, birds, monsters, fairies, and everyone else comes together to teach kids about letters, numbers, and other life lessons they’d need to know. For 50 years and counting, this educational TV pioneer has been helping kids grow smarter, stronger and kinder, and it’s not showing any signs of stopping.

But how many people can say they know the full history of the friendliest street in the world? Not many people, I would assume. But today, I am going to try to be one of those people, for I, Noah Darden, am going to try and go through almost everything from when the show was first thought of, to what they're doing to help us through this pandemic.

And I know other people have done this type of thing before, but I’m gonna try to do this in my own way, and try to make it as fun and funny as possible. After all, that’s what Sesame Street has been doing all of these years.

But enough with this introduction, let’s get into it. This is Street Knowledge.

Chapter 1: Planting The Seeds

Joan Ganz Cooney was born on November 30th, 1929.

Lloyd Morrisett was born on November 2nd, also in 1929.

Little did the world know that these two people would come together to make something amazing that it would never forget.

The year was 1965, and Lloyd found his daughter was entranced by test patterns and commercial jingles on TV. And it was this revelation that would stay with Lloyd until next year, at a dinner party with Joan, where he would ask her a question that changed everything:

(NOTE: The following conversation is completely paraphrased.)

“Hi, Joan.”

“Oh, hi there, Lloyd. What’s going on in your life?”

“Not much. Look, I’m glad I found you, I have a really important question.”

“Okay, lay it on me.”

“Could we use television to teach kids stuff?”

“...W-What was that?”

“Could we use television to teach kids stuff?”

“I don’t know, I-I never thought about that. But, it’s a good idea! Why don’t we make our own TV show, that educates kids, and also entertains them!”

“Yeah, and we could make our own Children's Television Workshop!”

“Yeah, but wait, what would we call it?”

“Hm… how about… the Children’s Television Workshop!”

“Genius! But we can’t just do this all willy nilly. We need to be smart about this. I can do a case study and figure out what the kids of today need to learn.”

“Good idea. Hey, I should bring up another thing. Last year, I saw my daughter entranced by these commercials that feature bright colors and catchy jingles. You think we could use those in our show?”

“Of course! We’ll use those bright colors and catchy jingles to help kids remember stuff like letters, numbers, and grocery lists!”

“Fantastic!”

“Well Lloyd, it looks like we know what we’re gonna do this year!”

"Yeah!"

4 YEARS LATER

“Well Joan, we’ve got all of our stuff ready, but I feel like we’re missing something.”

“Yeah, me too. I don’t know what it is, but we need to add something to our show.”

“Yeah, it should be funny.”

“It should be eye-catching.”

“But above all else, it should be something that will really appeal to the children watching at home.”

“Hmm… what on Earth could it be?”

Puppets. It turned out that something was puppets. And luckily, Jon Stone, a person the CTW was employing, happened to know a guy who worked with puppets.

So in 1969, Jim Henson, creator of the popular at the time TV show, Sam & Friends, came and listened to Joan’s idea. At first, he wasn’t too keen on the idea of making puppets for children, cause that would make him a children’s entertainer, but what got him to do it was the fact he did like the idea Joan and Lloyd had thought of.

So, it was settled: Jim Henson’s Muppets would now be a part of the show.

And later that year, a pitch reel was made to give folks an idea of what this show would look like, and it featured two muppet characters, Kermit the Frog and Rowlf the Dog. The former would take a place in the main cast of the show and stay there for a very long time, the latter, despite being the one knowing what this show was and how it was going to be, would only have one small cameo in a song. I have no idea why that is, so I decided to ask Rowlf about himself, here’s what he had to say.

"Eh, we figured Kermit was more suited for stardom, I was just a behind-the-scenes kinda guy. No biggie.”

Huh. What do you know?

Anyway, they had it pretty much all figured out, except for one thing: They hadn’t come up with a name.

Several title ideas were thrown around like…

“The 2 And 2 Are 5 Show”

“The Itty Bitty Nitty Gritty Little Kiddie Show”

“The Itty Bitty Farm And City Witty Ditty Nitty Gritty Dog And Kitty Pretty Little Kiddie Show”

And my personal favorite, “HEY, STUPID!!”

But in the end, it was Kermit, who had the winning pick.

"Why don’t you call your show Sesame Street? You know, like Open Sesame? It kinda gives the idea of a place where neat stuff happens.”

And so Sesame Street it would be named from then on.

With the name finally in tow, they were finally ready to get started making their new show, but because they wanted to make sure they got it right, they first aired five test pilots that allowed them to experiment with their formula.

In these test show pilots there was a specific formula that was put in place: The main setting was a small street in New York City, where a cast of humans, which consisted of Bob, (played by Bob McGrath) Susan (played by Loretta Long), Mr. Hooper, (played by Will Lee) Gordon, (played by Garrett Saunders) and the kids (played by… kids.) would hang out and do stuff, while the muppets, which consisted of the aforementioned Kermit the Frog, and now, two roommates known as Bert and Ernie, (Bert is the tall yellow one with the vertical stripes and the unibrow, Ernie is the short orange one with the horizontal stripes and no eyebrows. Remember that now.) would be relegated to their own segments.

After showing these pilots to kids, something was immediately obvious: They were more interested in the muppet segments.

Yeah, it turns out kids liked watching yellow and orange felt men and a felt frog more than they liked watching actual people.

The solution was simple: They just had to bring the muppets to the street. Sounds easy, right? Not exactly. I mean, sure, they could still do Ernie, Bert and Kermit behind walls and stuff, but they’d also have to make characters that were designed specifically for the street setting.

And that’s when two characters destined for greatness, were born.

One was a giant canary covered in turkey feathers, named Big Bird.

The other was a grumpy orange pile of fuzz, that was originally gonna live in a manhole, and then a waste pile, but eventually settled on a shiny metal trash can, named Oscar the Grouch.

Once they were built, Jim realized he needed another puppeteer to perform these characters. He couldn’t do it, and neither could his best bud, Frank Oz.

And that’s when a guy named Caroll Spinney came into the picture.

Jim and Caroll met at the Puppeteers' of America Festival at Kingsbury Hall in Salt Lake City, and Jim asked Caroll if he wanted to perform a giant bird on children’s television show, and he said yes.

Once aboard, Spinney was able to get the hang of Big Bird, but for Oscar, he struggled to find a voice that suited him, until one day, he took a taxi, and the taxi driver said in a really gruff voice:

"Where to, Mac?"

That sentence really sparked something, so Caroll kept saying it to himself, in that voice, and eventually, he knocked his audition for Oscar out of the park.

So, with the new characters and format in place, the Children’s Television Workshop was ready to bring Sesame Street to the actual public.

But they wanted to give fans a preview of what was to come, so November 8, This Way To Sesame Street aired on NBC stations everywhere. In it, Bert and Ernie basically summarize everything that would happen on the show, and all of the characters the kids would see.

And then, two days later, on NET, (National Educational Television, basically PBS before it was PBS) kids and their parents were officially introduced to what would soon come to be America’s favorite street.

The first line of the first episode was Gordon telling a little girl named Sally:

"Sally, you’ve NEVER seen a street like Sesame Street! EVERYTHING happens here! You’re gonna love it!”

And he was right on all accounts.

Season 1 of Sesame Street went off without a hitch. Kids really got attached to Big Bird, Oscar, Ernie, Bert and Kermit.

Two certain muppet monsters that debuted this season would not be definitely defined, but would later evolve into two beloved characters that are still around today.

And other muppet characters, while not achieving the status of the ones mentioned earlier, like Guy Smiley, Roosevelt Franklin and Lefty the Salesman, would still be remembered as true classics.

All four of the original human cast members from the test pilots had reprised their roles. Well, except for Gordon, who was now given a much more endearing performance by Matt Robinson.

Oh, I forgot to mention, there were also these two guys named Buddy and Jim, (Played by Brandon Maggart and James Catusi) they were sort of like Bert and Ernie, except they were human, and really dumb.

Additionally, in an effort to appeal to both the kids and parents, many TV celebrities made guest appearances on the show, starting with James Earl Jones, who recited the alphabet as slowly and carefully as he possibly could.

They even had Batman, Robin and Superman appear from time to time to give lectures on certain things.

Once all 130 episodes of season 1 had been aired. Sesame Street had now cemented itself as a TV show. But Joan and Lloyd didn’t really think it would garner that much attention, let alone enough to make a second season…

Chapter 2: https://thomperfan.blogspot.com/2020/10/street-knowledge-chapter-2.html