Meet Caroll Spinney: The Heart and Soul of Big Bird
Written by Krystal Grow
Caroll Spinney’s yellow-feathered tenure as the world’s most lovable bird started in 1969, when the young actor, artist and puppeteer met legendary Muppet-maker Jim Henson. At the time, Spinney was a sideman on the Bozo’s Big Top, and despite the invaluable live television experience he gained, thought he was capable of something sweeter- something with more substance.
“I wanted to do something that was important,” Spinney says in one of many adorable and revelatory moments in Dave LaMattina and Chad Walker’s I Am Big Bird, which follows the long and truly incredible career of one of the most iconic characters on childrens television. Sesame Street, as envisioned by Henson and Frank Oz, was an entirely new concept for public television when Spinney joined the team and first embodied the big yellow bird, as well trash-can gremlin Oscar the Grouch.
“When Jim hired me I had no idea what I was going to be doing,” Spinney said, “but Sesame Street was introduced as an experiment in public television, and it still is.”
That experiment presented both a major opportunity and a huge challenge for Spinney, who almost quit the show a few months in, worried he wasn’t living up to the expectations Henson and the Muppet team had for Big Bird and Oscar. Luckily enough, Spinney reconsidered, and began to infuse his characters with qualities that were genuinely relatable, and sparked decades of affection among children all over the world.
“At first, Big Bird was kind of a bumbling, country yokel kind of character,” Spinney says in the movie, “but I started to see him as just a big kid, so that’s how I started to play him, and kids really connected with that.”
Big Bird’s seemingly endless joy and curiosity was undoubtedly an extension of Spinney himself, and in his darkest moments, like his divorce from his first wife and Jim Henson’s unexpected death in 1990, provided him with a sort of shelter, a nest where he could pour all the pain and love of life’s difficult moments into the mentality of a sensitive and compassionate child. On the flip side of that unbridled innocence was Spinney’s dual role as Oscar, the gravely voiced curmudgeon with a heart-of-gold.
In behind-the-scenes footage from Sesame Street and home movies shot by Spinney’s second wife Debbie, it’s clear that Spinney was the only person who could have played these characters, even if he doubted himself initially. At 80 years old, Spinney shows little sign of stopping, though he’s made plans to pass the role on to a successor, and was happy to have an opportunity to be featured in LaMattina and Walker’s film.
“At first I didn’t think I was really worthy of a whole documentary film,” Spinney said after the screening at the School of Visual Arts Theater, a somewhat ironic statement for someone who’s logged countless hours on-screen and has legions of lifetime fans, many who were in the audience at DOC NYC and greeted him with a standing ovation after the credits rolled. Always humble and unconditionally gracious even outside the big yellow bird suit, Spinney accepted the roaring applause in the instantly recognizable voice of Big Bird with a simple “thank you,” further proving that while there may be a big difference between the man and the bird, the two will always share a heart and soul.
For more about I Am Big Bird, visit the film page on the DOC NYC website.
Krystal Grow is an arts writer and photo editor based in New York. She has written for TIME LightBox, TIME.com, LIFE.com, the New York Times Lens Blog, the Magnum Foundation and the Stranger Than Fiction blog and is the 2014 DOC NYC Blog Coordinator. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @kgreyscale.
