Appreciation: Caroll Spinney's unmatched talents made Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch icons
. One, the feathered incarnation of sunshine, the other a grousing dust mop; one voice pulled down from the sky, the other dragged up from the weeds.
Big Bird is one of the few Muppets with the gift of locomotion, free in body as in spirit. Oscar, who distrusts nearly everything, rarely leaves the security of his garbage can. Yet both were made to delight small children: Big Bird as a peer — he is always 6 years old — but one whose large body gives him stature, the other as a lampoon of adult gruffness, stubbornness and pointless ire.
That puppets can go on without the humans who originally gave them voice and movement is obvious. Kermit and Miss Piggy, now working for Disney to mixed effect, have traveled on without Jim Henson and Frank Oz to give them life. Other “Sesame Street” Muppets have had multiple operators, without your ever noticing. Indeed, although most famous puppets pass on with their creators, it is simply not possible with Spinney’s characters, which belong to a world that still has need of them.
Successors can learn the moves, imitate the voice. Still, there is something primal in the relationship between a puppeteer and a puppet. It is barely metaphorical to say that the one gives life to the other; they are literally of one body.Spinney was not the author of his lines, but, like any actor in a long-running role, he was the agent of their delivery, the engine of their spirit, and that spirit informed the lines he was given.
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