Street Gang (43 page)

It wasn’t until decades later that Sainte-Marie became aware that during her years on
Sesame Street
, her name had been listed on White House stationery as someone whose music “deserved to be suppressed.”

 

On the day in 1975 that Judy Collins recorded “The Fishermen Song” for
Sesame Street
, a gaggle of Anything Muppets formed an old-salt chorus, some bedecked in yellow oilskin slickers. It was a scene right out of Gloucester harbor, with nets and lobster traps strewn about and a light-house in the distance. Strumming an autoharp at a tempo that recalled a sea chantey, Collins poured out the melody clear and true as the Muppets harmonized and danced about. The puppeteers were Jane Henson, Frank Oz, Richard Hunt, and Jerry Nelson, invisible to the eye of the camera but palpable in presence.

It was an enchantment of a performance, directed and made entirely possible by Jon Stone, first a fan and later a dear friend of Collins, the classically trained pianist and storyteller in song.

“Jon called me shortly after I had recorded my album
Judith,
which was released in 1975,” Collins recalled. From an invitation for a single guest shot grew a series of appearances for Collins on
Sesame Street
, coinciding with an unstable, often difficult period in the performer’s personal life.

“I was drinking heavily in those years,” she said. “I was very controlled, but the truth was I was really teetering. Being able to appear on the show gave me a spark, a will to live. It was the only playful thing in my life at that point, and I want to tell you, I was not a playful person in my regular life. I was just trying to get by, to get through this physical issue that I was genetically programmed to be in. In part, my relationship with Jon was especially important to me because of the physical trauma that I was going through. He gave me reasons to stay alert and clearheaded.”

Collins said that Jim Henson recognized that she was an alcoholic, and that being around his Muppets provided a cocoon of support for her. To an outsider, it might seem inconceivable that puppets could enhance a troubled person’s well-being. But to be within touching distance of the Muppets is to be drawn into a safe zone, where teasing occurs but never ridicule, where praise is public and criticism private, where colleagues lend a helping hand, literally, figuratively, and continuously.

“For me, the appearances on
Sesame Street
were like this little light that kept flickering on and off, a beacon that seemed to be saying, ‘Come to the party. We’re having fun; you can have fun, too.’ Everybody was very much about the same purpose, which was to have a good time and to let the characters shine,” she said.

“It was Jon who set the tone. He’d always be so concerned about whether everything was set up properly for me and how comfortable I was. Jon loved the characters, and he’d encourage me to interact with them, saying, ‘Go ahead. It’s all right to hug Kermit.’ It was like a pet owner encouraging you to pet to establish a connection with the cat. He understood that was part of the magic, and he encouraged play. The Muppets were totally convincing to me and I was absolutely able to suspend my sense of disbelief. I think a priority of Jon’s was to always have people on the show who got along with the Muppets. It didn’t matter how famous you were; if you couldn’t get along with the creatures, forget it. For me, the Muppets allowed me to be a child again. They were just what I needed.”

Among the highlights of the Collins appearances was the operatic, alphabetic duet she sang with Snuffleupagus. To a mock-Mozart score, Collins (in a floor-length off-the-shoulder gown) and Snuffy (in a jaunty feathered beret) run through the twenty-six consonants and vowels, their highs and lows offered to an unseen, adoring audience. Lifting the shy, shuffling character’s elephantine “snuffle,” Collins danced a mini-minuet, adding a greater sense of gaiety to this
Marriage of Snuffalo.
It was a vintage
Sesame Street
lesson in music appreciation, at once a parody and a celebration of classical propriety.

Collins has also credited
Sesame Street
for extending the depth and breadth of her fan base. “People come up to me at concerts and tell me how much they loved the Yes and No song I did with Bert and Ernie. They were little children when it first aired, teenagers in the early 1990s. They grew up and started coming to my shows,” she said. “For them during a critically important time in their childhood,
Sesame Street
was the best of all television. It was intergenerational, which we performers loved. It had this magical ingredient that brought kids and adults and grandparents together. All of the age groups appreciated the humor and the artistry.”

In the show’s first decade, the menagerie of Muppets expanded with the widening curriculum goals. Some characters sprang from Jim Henson’s doodle pad, others from the typed page. But in every case, the Muppets that clicked best with viewers were the ones that intrigued the writers and challenged the puppeteers.

Take, for example, the number-obsessed Muppet with a monocle, that wonderful, vampiric Count Von Count. Head writer Norman Stiles came forward with the idea for a Dracula who craves counting with the same single-focused passion that drives Cookie Monster. The builders in the Henson Workshop gave the Count a lavender-fleece skin, bat-shaped ears, a flat black hairpiece, and a red spade tongue, outfitting him in caped formalwear.

Puppeteer Jerry Nelson provided all the rest. “Norman came to me one day to say he was working on a vampire character with a jones for counting.” The most famous of Draculas, Bela Lugosi, provided the inspiration for the Count’s exaggerated Eastern European accent, one in which
V
s are pronounced as
W
s and vice versa. “I love to count wegetables,” Count Von Count would say, making an entrance to theater-organ music, lightning flashes, and thunder cracks. Nelson said he played the Count as scarier and hypnotic when the character debuted in 1972. As the years passed, the character became
Sesame Street’
s batty-but-benign uncle. Some first generation viewers didn’t get the Lugosi takeoff until they were old enough to watch late-night horror movies and recognize the significance of the pipe organ, villainous laugh, and distinctive accent.

Another notable debut was the trundling elephantine wonder that is Aloysius Snuffleupagus, a towering full-size Muppet that takes two puppeteers to operate, front and rear, like an old-time costume of a barnyard horse.

Dulcy Singer said that she believed the idea for Mr. Snuffleupagus began with a Henson sketch. She and longtime writer Tony Geiss agreed that the character was always envisioned as Big Bird’s imaginary friend, a fine idea while it lasted. Snuffy looked like a wooly mammoth whose tusks hadn’t grown in yet. He was designed with wide, moony eyes (with luxurious lashes) and an elongated snuffle, a floor-length appendage that he used to conduct music and blow-dry his shaggy coat. In the early years, sad-sounding Snuffy was a less pessimistic Eeyore, a slow-motion galumphing cave dweller whose signature phrase was “
Ohhhhh,
dear.” Nelson provided the original voice, while taking up the rear was a lanky puppeteer just out of his teens, a gung-ho guy who was only too happy to assume the physically demanding task.

Nelson first spied Richard Hunt during the training workshops for
The Great Santa Claus Switch
, a CBS Christmas special featuring the Muppets. “Jim had a video camera set up so the trainees could practice in front of a monitor, which provides a mirror image,” he said. “It’s the opposite of what you think, and it takes some getting used to, since your body is doing the opposite.”

The eighteen-year-old Hunt demonstrated an almost manic talent at the workshop. “Richard had a boundless energy when he first came, like a little puppy wanting to do this, wanting to do that,” recalled Nelson. “We sat on him pretty good at first. But he had this creativity, and this sense of what energy was required to compel a production in a needed direction. Some of that came from growing up in a theatrical family that encouraged his early interest in performing.”

Hunt made his national television debut quite unexpectedly while seated in the Peanut Gallery during a live broadcast of
Howdy Doody
. “I dressed Richard and his sister Kate in blue velvet pants and white shirts,” said their mother, Jane Hunt. “As Buffalo Bob was saying good-bye at the end of the show, Richard walked right up to him and said, ‘Would you like to see a magic thhhrick?’ He talked funny because he had fallen down and knocked out a front baby tooth.

“Buffalo Bob said, ‘Not now, sonny. We don’t have time.’ But Richard had already pulled out the little props that came from a box of magic tricks someone had given him. And just at the instant the show was about to fade to black, Richard completed the trick. It was like abracadabra-please-and-thank-you
poof!
”

Though he was born in the Bronx, Hunt’s family moved to Closter, New Jersey, nine miles from the George Washington Bridge, when he was in elementary school. “Richard had no fear . . . and no shame,” his mother said. “The kids at school sensed that he was different and made fun of him. He used to steal money out of my pocketbook to buy candy to give away at school, and eventually everyone became his pal.”

Puppetry was an active interest for a kid from a home where five children made the best of modest circumstances. Jane made a puppet theater for Richard out of a discarded cardboard box used to ship an appliance and purchased a set of Steiff puppets from a consignment shop.

By the time Hunt was ten years old, after he had already appeared on
Howdy Doody,
he and his family had come to know both Cosmo “Gus” Allegretti, the gifted puppeteer from
Captain Kangaroo,
and Burr Tillstrom of
Kukla, Fran and Ollie.
“My husband and I knew Gus from our days at Marietta College in Ohio,” Jane Hunt said. “We remained friends when we all ended up in New York, and Gus used to come over to our house to do the kids’ birthday parties. He’d bring his puppets and perform by going behind our upright piano.”

By the time he graduated from high school, he was determined to catch on at
Captain Kangaroo.
“Richard just decided that was what he had to do,” his mother said, “and so he went over to the CBS studio where the show originated, hoping to talk with Gus. It was a bit of a shock, but Gus went nuts. He took Richard outside and said, ‘Get out of here! Bob Keeshan is the nastiest man in the world, and I don’t want you anywhere near him. He’s awful.’ ”

Instead of giving up, after that warning, Hunt reached into his pocket for change and made a pay phone call to the Henson Workshop. “I’m a puppeteer,” he said “Can you use me?”

Jane Hunt cackled. “It’s amazing when you think of it. On the very same day he was being shooed away from
Captain Kangaroo,
Richard called the Muppets. They told him about the upcoming training workshops, and you know the rest of the story.”

Jerry Nelson said, “Richard just loved the Muppets and wanted to get involved with them as soon as he could. But like many talents who worked under Jim, he had to serve an apprenticeship. In his case, he did right hands for five years before he took on a character, and even then they were background characters.”

When his chance came, Hunt’s pent-up passion to perform could hardly be restrained. The list of characters he took on includes the following:

Hunt’s characters had a persistent urge to succeed and a temperament that distinguished them as slightly out of the norm. They filled the screen with attitude and exuberance, with assistance from a writing staff that looked to use Hunt whenever and however possible. He was impossible to ignore or resist.