Sesame Street - Cast, Crew and Characters

Cast, Crew and Characters

Shortly after the CTW was created in 1968, Joan Ganz Cooney was named its first executive director. She was one of the first female executives in American television. Her appointment was called "one of the most important television developments of the decade". She assembled a team of producers, all of whom had previously worked on Captain Kangaroo. Jon Stone was responsible for writing, casting, and format; Dave Connell took over animation; and Sam Gibbon served as the show's chief liaison between the production staff and the research team. Cameraman Frankie Biondo worked on Sesame Street from its first episode.

Jim Henson and the Muppets' involvement in Sesame Street began when he and Cooney met at one of the curriculum planning seminars in Boston. Author Christopher Finch reported that Stone, who had worked with Henson previously, felt that if they could not bring him on board, they should "make do without puppets". Henson was initially reluctant, but he agreed to join Sesame Street to meet his own social goals. He also agreed to waive his performance fee for full ownership of the Sesame Street Muppets and to split any revenue they generated with the CTW. As Morrow stated, Henson's puppets were a crucial part of the show's popularity and it brought Henson national attention. Davis reported that Henson was able to take "arcane academic goals" and translate them to "effective and pleasurable viewing". In early research, the Muppet segments of the show scored high, and more Muppets were added during the first few seasons. Morrow reported that the Muppets were effective teaching tools because children easily recognized them, they were stereotypical and predictable, and they appealed to adults and older siblings.

"Sesame Street is best known for the creative geniuses it attracted, people like Jim Henson and Joe Raposo and Frank Oz, who intuitively grasped what it takes to get through to children. They were television's answer to Beatrix Potter or L. Frank Baum or Dr. Seuss."

Although the producers decided against depending upon a single host for Sesame Street, instead casting a group of ethnically diverse actors, they realized that a children's television program needed to have, as Lesser put it, "a variety of distinctive and reliable personalities", both human and Muppet. Jon Stone, whose goal was to cast white actors in the minority, was responsible for hiring the show's first cast. He did not audition actors until Spring 1969, a few weeks before the five test shows were due to be filmed. Stone videotaped the auditions, and Ed Palmer took them out into the field to test children's reactions. The actors who received the "most enthusiastic thumbs up" were cast. For example, Loretta Long was chosen to play Susan when the children who saw her audition stood up and sang along with her rendition of "I'm a Little Teapot". As Stone said, casting was the only aspect of the show that was "just completely haphazard". Most of the cast and crew found jobs on Sesame Street through personal relationships with Stone and the other producers.

According to the CTW's research, children preferred watching and listening to other children more than to puppets and adults, so they included children in many scenes. Dave Connell insisted that no child actors be used, so these children were nonprofessionals, unscripted, and spontaneous. Many of their reactions were unpredictable and difficult to control, but the adult cast learned to handle the children cast's spontaneity with their own spontaneity, even when it resulted in departures from the planned script or from the planned lesson. CTW research also revealed that the children's hesitations and on-air mistakes served as models for viewers. According to Morrow, this resulted in the show having a "fresh quality", especially in its early years. Children were also used in the voice-over commentaries of most of live-actions films the CTW produced.