Posts Tagged ‘cookie monster’

Bert And Ernie Google Doodle Celebrates Sesame Street Anniversary

Bert And Ernie Google Doodle Celebrates Sesame Street Anniversary:Bert and Ernie are two roommates on the long-running television show Sesame Street. The two appear together in numerous skits, forming a comic duo that is one of the centerpieces of the program. Originated by Frank Oz and Jim Henson, the characters are currently performed by Muppeteers Eric Jacobson and Steve Whitmire, with Oz performing Bert occasionally since 2000.
Bert and Ernie were built by Don Sahlin from a simple design scribbled by Muppets creator Jim Henson. According to Frank Oz, Sahlin also defined their characters on the basis of their physical appearance: Ernie was an orange and Bert was a banana.[citation needed] In a classic pairing, Ernie appears chubby while Bert appears quite skinny (in a similar way to Abbott and Costello or Laurel and Hardy).

According to A&E’s Biography, Ernie and Bert were basically the only Muppets to appear in the Sesame Street pilot episode, which was screen tested to a number of families in July 1969. Their brief appearance was the only part of the pilot that tested well, so it was decided that not only should Muppet characters be the “stars” of the show, but would also interact with the human characters, something that was not done in the pilot.
Main article: Bert (Sesame Street)

Bert was originally performed by Frank Oz. Since 2001, Muppeteer Eric Jacobson has been phased in as Bert’s primary performer.

Bert, though intelligent, is also grumpy, boring and easily frustrated. He enjoys activities such as paper clip and bottle cap collecting, cooking oatmeal and watching pigeons. In one sketch, Bert reads a book called “Boring Stories” and chuckles, “Boy, these Boring Stories are really exciting!” In the book Sesame Street Unpaved, Frank Oz says, “I was never really happy with Bert’s character until about a year in, when I realized… that he was a very boring character, and I’d use that weakness as a strength for him.”

Bert is good friends with a pigeon named Bernice, and has even created a dance called “Doin’ the Pigeon”. Bert serves as President of the National Association of W Lovers, a club dedicated to the letter W. Two conventions held by the W Lovers have been shown on the show. Bert also has pet goldfish, two of whom are named Lyle and Talbot, a reference to the actor Lyle Talbot. A third goldfish is Talbot’s wife, Melissa. Bert has a twin brother, Bart; a nephew, Brad; and an Aunt Matilda.

Today’s Big Bird Show

Today’s Big Bird Show:Big Bird is a character featured on the children’s television show Sesame Street which airs on PBS. A common misconception is that he is a muppet, but in 1989, Jim Henson explained that characters played by people in suits, rather than just hands in puppets, do not qualify as muppets. He is sometimes referred to as “Bird” by his friends.

Officially performed by Caroll Spinney since 1969, he is an eight-foot two-inch tall bright yellow bird.[3] He can roller skate, ice skate, dance, sing, write poetry, draw and even ride a unicycle. But despite this wide array of talents, he is prone to frequent misunderstandings, on one occasion even singing the alphabet as one big long word (ABC-DEF-GHI), pondering what it could ever mean.[4] He lives in a large nest behind the 123 Sesame Street brownstone and he has a teddy bear named Radar, after Walter “Radar” O’Reilly of M*A*S*H, who had a teddy bear and was also lovably naive and innocent. Radar was given to Big Bird by Gary Burghoff when he guest starred on the show.[5][6] Later on, however, it was said that Big Bird got the bear as a gift from Mr. Hooper.

Performing:

As Muppeteer Caroll Spinney has aged, the show has gradually started to train new performers to play Big Bird. These apprentices include both Rick Lyon in the opening theme song of the show’s 33rd season on, and Matt Vogel in the show’s Journey to Ernie segment.

Caroll Spinney was sick during the taping of a few first-season episodes, so Daniel Seagren performed Big Bird in those episodes.[citation needed] He also performed Big Bird when he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1969 and on The Hollywood Squares in the 1970s. According to The Story of Jim Henson by Stephanie St. Pierre, the costume was built for Jim Henson to perform, but when Jim Henson tried it on, Kermit Love, who had built the costume, did not think that Jim Henson was walking like a bird is supposed to walk, and Jim decided not to perform Big Bird. Frank Oz was offered the part, but since he hated performing full-body characters, he turned down the job.[7]

The Big Bird performer is completely enclosed within the costume, and extends his right hand over his head to operate the head and neck of the puppet. The Muppeteer’s left hand serves as the Bird’s left hand, while the right hand is stuffed and hangs loosely from a fishing line that runs through a loop under the neck and attaches to the wrist of the left hand. The right hand thus does the opposite of the left hand: as the left hand goes down, the right hand is pulled up by the fishing line. For some of the Journey to Ernie segments, a second puppeteer (usually Jim Martin) controls Big Bird‘s right hand. He is concealed by dressing in a body suit the same color as their chroma key background (something that obviously cannot be done on the main Sesame Street set).