One late November afternoon in 1969, a little girl named Sally was touring her new neighborhood along Sesame Street.
She met Mr. Hooper, the manager of the corner store. She met a nice lady named Susan, who offered her cookies and milk. And she met two other kids from block: Ariana and Ronald.
All of the sudden, she heard garbage cans being knocked over.
“What’s that?” she said.
Through some alley doors, the source of the noise appears: a bumbling, 8-foot tall yellow bird who, in addition to surprising Sally, changed children’s TV forever.
“I’m a very nervous bird,” the feathered giant said. “I nearly laid an egg on Sesame Street.”
Big Bird.
Since that very first episode of “Sesame Street” in 1969, the lovable, endlessly childish and very large puppet has been a mainstay in the minds and hearts of children around the world.
Throughout those nearly 50 years, Big Bird’s clumsy mannerisms and sweet voice have been essentially played by one man: Caroll Spinney. Now 84, Spinney is retiring from the show this week after appearing in several thousand episodes. And not just as Big Bird.
Spinney was also Oscar the Grouch, but let’s be honest about the nation’s puppet hierarchy: Only one of Jim Henson’s characters was named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress. It wasn’t the one who lived in a garbage can. Or the frog.
“Playing Big Bird,” Spinney told the New York Times, “is one of the most joyous things of my life.”
In fact, other characters from Sesame Street and Henson’s other worlds — speaking for themselves, not their puppets — have always said it was difficult to figure out where Spinney and Big Bird diverged in character, particularly their childlike innocence.
“He is Big Bird,” Norman Stiles, one of the show’s writers, said about Spinney in “I am Big Bird,” a documentary. “There is no question in my mind that Big Bird is him and he is Big Bird. You look inside, and you’ll see feathers.”
And the memories of a childhood that wasn’t always happy.
Spinney grew up in Massachusetts. He was obsessed with puppets. In the documentary, Spinney remembered buying one for a nickel, then performing puppet shows. Ticket price: Two cents. His mother, an artist, wrote scripts for him. His father thought puppetry was silly and not a manly thing to aspire to.
When his father got violent, Spinney’s mother got in between them. She wore the bruises, not her son.
In high school, Spinney was an oddball. He didn’t play sports. He spent a lot of time by himself — drawing, thinking up puppet shows. After graduating, to get away from his father, he joined the Air Force. When he finished, he did some TV work with puppets in Boston and then joined the cast of “Bozo the Clown.”
Spinney got his big break at a puppet convention in Utah. Henson, already famous for The Muppets, was in attendance. He invited Spinney to come work for him in New York. The late ’60s were a chaotic time in the United States, but shows like “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers” were a source of cheerful, wholesome goodness in America’s living rooms.
At first, Big Bird’s character was actually an adult — a local village idiot. But later in the first season, Spinney and Sesame Street writers began imagining a different state of mind for Big Bird — a lighthearted, well-meaning, curious 6-year-old.
Big Bird and Spinney became world famous, traveling to China with Bob Hope and starring in movies. He even became a political pawn in 2012 when presidential candidate Mitt Romney said mentioned him during a debate.
