Caroll Spinney

Caroll Spinney has been with Sesame Street from the beginning and performs both Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.
"I first met Jim Henson at a puppet festival in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1962. He did a wonderful show of his early, bizarre stuff. It was the best puppet show I had ever seen. I also did my own little show and afterwards, he suggested I come down to New York to 'talk about' the Muppets.
I never got around to that, but in August of 1969 Jim was in the audience at the Puppeteers of America Festival in Salt Lake. Everything went wrong with my big show, a program that combined puppetry and animation in one theater-[an attempt] to meld the two mediums. After the show, Jim came backstage and said to me, 'I like what you were trying to do!' Then he said, 'Why don't you come to New York and talk about the Muppets?' That sounded familiar somehow, only this time I asked him what he meant! 'Talk about joining the Muppets,' he explained.
"And so only a month later, I joined the Muppets and Jim gave me the greatest privilege of playing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch."

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