Caroll Spinney, Big Bird on Sesame Street and Oscar the Grouch, dies at the age of 85

Caroll Spinney, better known to several generations of curious kindergarten teachers and their parents as Big Bird on Sesame Street, has died today. He was 85 years old. Spinney had the longest career of the original cast of the series, beginning with the debut of the series from 1969 until his retirement in 2018.

Spinney not only portrayed Big Bird, the giant canary whose childlike curiosity helped the writers and actors of Sesame Street explain the world to preschool audiences, but also the voice and puppeteer of Oscar the Grouch, an Iraqi Gremlin they lived a garbage can next to Mr. Hooper’s candy store.

“Playing Big Bird is one of the happiest things of my life,” said Spinney to The New York Times last year, a quote printed in today’s obituary. In 2010, he told Yankee Magazine that “I’ve gotten used to the fact that Big Bird is super famous and I’m a nobody, I’m glad I’m not recognizable.”

Spinney was a dropout who joined the Air Force in the 1950s, and played in 1960s children’s television programs broadcast locally in Boston. At the end of the decade, he joined Jim Henson’s Muppets Ensemble, which collaborated with the children’s television workshop to launch Sesame Street for public service broadcasting.

Sesame Workshop, as CTW is now called, tweeted the news of Spinney’s death and a tribute to the actor this afternoon.

Caroll Spinney, the legendary puppeteer of the popular Sesame Street characters Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, died today at December 8, 2019, at the age of 85 at his home in Connecticut, after spending some time with Dystonia. https://t.co/9nQ8H9iUES pic.twitter.com/8BoXn9rge3

– Sesame Workshop (@SesameWorkshop) December 8, 2019

In roles that he played for almost 50 years, Spinney traveled to China as a Big Bird, writing and singing in numerous fellow-reading and sing-along albums and books, and even directing the Boston Pops. On Sesame Street, Big Bird and his imaginary friend Snuffleupagus explored the secrets of the ABCs and 123s.

In 1983, after the death of Will Lee, who played Mr. Hooper, Spinney mourned both his Oscar and Big Bird with unshakeable honesty for his friend and created a milestone in American television history. The performances earned Spinney a Special Award for Outstanding Individual Performance at the 1984 Daytime Emmy Awards. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 2006.

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In a debate between presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in 2012, Romney expressed appreciation for Big Bird, but said his government would cut funding for Big Bird in an election. The following weekend, Big Bird appeared in the Weekend Update of Saturday Night Live to provide a special commentary on the semi-controversy that, despite its characteristic jokes about grain balls, brought numerous applause pauses for the audience.

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In 2000, Spinney’s Big Bird was honored as a living legend by the Library of Congress for a lifetime full of creative contributions to American life, including stars like Ray Charles, Dolly Parton, and Larry Bird (no relationship).