After 50 years, Caroll Spinney is letting someone else wear Big Bird’s wings.
The 84-year-old has announced that he is retiring as one of Sesame Street’s most beloved characters, who he has played since the show’s first season in 1969.
On Thursday Spinney will record the voices for Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, who he has also played from the beginning, for the very last time.
It has been an incredible television career for Spinney, whose talents first caught the eye of Muppets creator Jim Henson back in the early 1960s.
Fast-forward half a century and he has been featured in thousands upon thousands of Sesame Street episodes.
After 50 years, Caroll Spinney is retiring from playing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street
Spinney, 84, will record the voices for Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, who he has also played from the beginning, for the very last time. He is pictured here in 2008
‘Playing Big Bird is one of the most joyous things of my life,’ Spinney told the New York Times last week.
‘I always thought, how fortunate for me that I got to play the two best Muppets?’
But the time has come for Spinney to hang up the suit for good.
Spinney had to stop puppeteering for Big Bird in 2015 due to the physical requirements that come with handling a full body costume for an 8ft 2in bird.
He began to develop problems with his balance, and thus for the last three years has only been recording the voices for Big Bird and Oscar.
With Sesame Street’s 50th anniversary on the horizon – for which his final voice recordings will be used – Spinney felt it was the right time to say goodbye.
It has been an incredible television career for Spinney, who first caught the eye of Muppets creator Jim Henson back in the early 1960s
The pair met at a puppeteering conference and Henson asked Spinney to join the Muppeteers and perform on the very first season of Sesame Street
Spinney first became interested in puppeteering when he was just a five-year-old watching a performance of Three Little Kittens.
Three years later he bought a monkey puppet in a yard sale and began putting on his own shows, eventually using the Punch and Judy puppet his mom bought him one Christmas.
Spinney continued to puppeteer throughout his adolescence, putting on shows to help save money for college.
But after graduating from high school, Spinney joined the US Air Force.
Upon his return, he spent nearly a decade puppeteering for a show in Boston and working as an animator.
Spinney first met Henson at a puppet festival in 1962. Their paths crossed again in 1969, at another puppeteer festival in Salt Lake City.
Spinney won children’s hearts with both the cranky Oscar the Grouch and the lovable Big Bird
Spinney can be seen here in the 1970s, chatting with Henson while playing Oscar for a scene
Henson was in the audience as Spinney tried to put on a multimedia show with both live actors and puppets, a faulty spotlight washing out his animated background.
Still, Henson was impressed. After the show, he went up to Spinney and said: ‘I liked what you were trying to do’.
He then invited Spinney to join the Muppeteers full-time and revealed that two new characters were being developed for a children’s program called Sesame Street.
The rest, they say, is history.
Since that fateful day, Spinney has played the lovable Big Bird and the cantankerous Oscar, performing them everywhere from Australia and China to Japan and Europe.
Spinney has played the characters everywhere from Australia and China to Japan and Europe
Spinney is pictured here with Oscar the Grouch in 1970 when the character was still orange
It was Spinney who helped shape Big Bird, originally imagined to be a ‘ funny, dumb country yokel’.
‘I said, I think I should play him like he’s a child, a surrogate,’ Spinney recalled telling the producers.
‘He can be all the things that children are. He can learn with the kids.’‘
Sesame Workshop president Jeffrey Dunn credited Spinney with helping shape the beloved character and the long-running children’s series as a whole.
‘Big Bird has always had the biggest heart on Sesame Street, and that’s Caroll’s gift to us,’ he said.
Sesame Workshop president Jeffrey Dunn credited Spinney with helping shape Big Bird and the long-running children’s series as a whole
Spinney said he feels grateful that he got to play a ‘six-year-old for 50 years’. He is pictured here on Sesame Street Day in New York City in 2009
‘I think it’s fair to say that Caroll’s view of the world and how we should treat each other has shaped and defined our organization.’
Spinney went on to win four Daytime Emmys and two Grammys for his work on the program, as well as a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Spinney would go on to win four Daytime Emmys and two Grammys for his work on the beloved children’s show
Sesame Street would also be responsible for introducing Spinney to his second wife Debra, who had been working at the Children’s Television Workshop when they met in 1972.
‘I couldn’t believe Big Bird was coming up and talking to me,’ she recalled of the day they met.
Big Bird will next be played by Matt Vogel, who has been Spinney’s apprentice since 1996.
Vogel, who now also plays Kermit the Frog and Count Van Count, knows that following in Spinney’s footsteps will be ‘daunting and important’.
‘The more I do the character, the more that I try to preserve what I think Caroll’s intentions were,’ he said.
‘Inevitably, part of our own personality starts to creep into those characters. But that’s the way they live on.’
Spinney said he feels grateful that he got to play a ‘six-year-old for 50 years’.
And while he may be hanging up the Big Bird suit for good, Spinney isn’t really saying goodbye.
‘I don’t get to play him,’ he said. ‘I get to live his life.’
While he may be hanging up the Big Bird suit for good, Spinney isn’t really saying goodbye. ‘I don’t get to play him,’ he said. ‘I get to live his life’
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