Sesame Workshop Founder Joan Ganz Cooney with Maurice Sendak

Susan Tofte is Sesame Worskhop’s Archivist.

“I don’t believe in children.  I don’t believe in childhood.  I don’t believe that there’s a demarcation.  ‘Oh you mustn’t tell them that.  You mustn’t tell them that.’  You tell them anything you want.  Just tell them if it’s true.  If it’s true you tell them.”   – Maurice Sendak.

In June 1968, the staff of Children’s Television Workshop (CTW, now known as Sesame Workshop) gathered in Cambridge, Massachusetts with a group of educators, scholars, child psychiatrists, television producers, authors, illustrators, composers, and puppeteers to determine what Sesame Street should attempt to teach in the show’s first year.  The seminars were designed to bring a diverse group of thinkers together to tackle a problem that no participant had tried to solve.  The challenge: find a way for the creative intuition needed to create a television show to work along side a deliberate objective curriculum.  The first seminar covered social, moral and affective development of children.  Among the 20 participants was writer and artist Maurice Sendak.  Instead of taking notes, Sendak doodled as the discussion of what four-year-olds understand conceptually drifted through his unconscious.  He doodled about sibling rivalry, children challenging their parents’ authority and violence on TV.  The sketches are classic Sendak – irreverent, subversive and witty.

After the seminars, Sendak’s involvement with Street continued.  He was an early member of the National Board of Advisors for CTW and consulted with Workshop founder Joan Ganz Cooney and producers on early storyboards and outlines for the show.  Some of the doodles from the seminars were used in the first promotional brochure for the Workshop.  The cover image of the booklet features a drawing of a child with a television for a head holding a Children’s Television Workshop banner.  Sendak also drew the first logo that appeared on early CTW stationary and press releases.

In addition to his work behind the scenes, Sendak contributed two animations that aired during Sesame Street’s second season.  He collaborated with Jim Henson on two animated films – writing and designing stories full of mayhem and ruckus.  “Seven Monsters,” a subversive story about a group of seven monsters wrecking havoc on a village, was turned into a storybook in 1977.  “Bumble Ardy #9”, Sendak’s best known short, is a tale of nine pigs showing up to celebrate a boy’s 9^th birthday, eating birthday cake and drinking wine. The animated short was the basis for a book that was published in 2011.  It was the first book in 30 years that Sendak both wrote and illustrated and was the last book he published before his death.

It is unknown what circumstances led to Maurice Sendak’s invitation to participate in the early seminars for Sesame Street but there is no doubt that Sendak’s influence was felt during the early development of Sesame Street.  Both Sendak and the creators of Sesame Street believed that children understand a great deal more than most adults believe; that when creating content for children, one must take children seriously as children.

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Susan Tofte is Sesame Worskhop’s archivist.

There is a scene in the promo film for Sesame Street where ad-men type Muppets in business suits meet around a large conference table debating potential names for the show. Ridiculous titles are suggested like the Two and Two Ain’t Five Show and the Itty-Bitty, Farm-and-City, Witty-Ditty, Nitty-Gritty, Dog-and-Kitty, Pretty-Little-Kiddie Show. Rowlf the Dog fires the entire group of Muppets and Kermit the Frog eventually comes up with the name Sesame Street. “You know, like ‘Open Sesame.’ It kind of gives the idea of a street where neat stuff happens,” he suggests.

The name Sesame Street was not dreamed up by Muppets in a boardroom but the promo sketch does reference the dilemma the Workshop had in finding a name for the show. As producer Jon Stone remembers, “the name was set at the 11^th hour and fifty ninth minute.” Early promotional materials simply referred to the show as a “preschool educational television show.” In early spring of 1969, the press conference announcing the show neared and producers had still not made a decision. “We were just frantic for a title,” said Joan Ganz Cooney. “Our press and publicity people were going nuts. How were they going to promote a show that had no name?”

Pressure was put on the production staff and Workshop employees to come up ideas for names and hundreds of titles were suggested. Potential names included The Video Classroom and 1-2-3 Avenue B. “Everything from the mundane Fun Street,” Joan would later recall. 1-2-3 Avenue B was seriously considered and worked well with the show’s set design, which resembled an urban, inner city neighborhood complete with a corner store, subway station and brownstone stoop. It also made reference to the show’s educational goals. However, the name was eventually rejected for fear that the show’s title would not appeal to viewers outside of New York City.

The name Sesame Street is credited to Virginia Schone, a writer for the show. Almost everyone on the staff disliked the name. There was concern that young children would have trouble pronouncing it. But time was running out and the show needed a name. Finally, Executive Producer Dave Connell put out a memo to the staff saying “if nobody came up with a better idea, as of Monday we were going to call it Sesame Street.” As Joan put it, “We went with it because it was the least bad title.”

As it turned out, all of the stress and worry over the title were for nothing. The first episode of Sesame Street opens with a view of the now iconic green and yellow street sign hanging on a lamppost. The camera pans down to Gordon telling a little girl named Sally “you’ve never seen a street like Sesame Street. Everything happens here. You’re gonna love it!” 

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Susan Tofte is Sesame Workshop’s Archivist.

“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” – Jackie Robinson

Of the hundreds of celebrities who have appeared on Sesame Street, Jackie Robinson is one of the most notable. Workshop co-founder Joan Ganz Cooney met with Robinson in 1969 when she was working to build awareness and outreach prior to the show’s November premiere. Reaching out to Robinson and his connections made sense.

Since retiring from baseball in 1956, Robinson was active in the civil rights movement, working on campaigns for the N.A.A.C.P and developing affordable housing for low-income families. At the meeting, Joan screened the pitch reel for Sesame Street, distributed promotional materials, and talked about the Workshop’s early outreach efforts in poor communities. Robinson must have seen promise in the show. He appeared in the first season, becoming the first athlete to swing by Sesame Street.

In his segment, Robinson recites the alphabet while animated letters appear on the screen next to his head. His speech does not have the cadence or dramatic pauses of James Earl Jones, or the comedic timing of Bill Cosby or Richard Pryor. Unlike the professional athletes that appear on the show today, Robinson did not wear his team’s uniform, or hold a baseball bat or glove to indicate to preschoolers he was a baseball player. He does not banter with Muppets, wear zany costumes, or use catchy songs to help entertain.  But Robinson’s appearance on Sesame Street is worth watching with each new generation of Sesame Street viewers, because it gives parents an opportunity to introduce their children to a remarkable person. Jackie Robinson overcame great adversity to become the first black man to play major league baseball. His remarkable accomplishments on and off the field were a monumental contribution in the civil rights movement.

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It is hard to imagine Sesame Street without the delightful animations that teach things like letters, numbers, emotions and problem solving. Animations have been a part of the show since the pilot episodes. But back in 1969, the idea of using a series of short animations to act like “commercials” for letters and numbers was a true innovation.

When Joan Ganz Cooney created her proposal for an educational television show, she envisioned borrowing the techniques used in making TV commercials to help teach counting and literacy. Joan and the producers knew that kids were attracted to commercials on TV. What they didn’t know was whether they could successfully create short commercial-like segments for the show that would actually teach to the curriculum.

The search for animators began in August of 1968. During the next 14 months, producers commissioned artists to produce storyboards for short cartoons that taught letters, numbers, counting and words. It was necessary for the artists to create work that met the educational goals of the show but the Workshop placed little restriction on style or length for the pieces. With curriculum in mind, producers poured over storyboards and scripts and selected animations they thought could teach 4-year-olds about letters and numbers.

“The Story of J” was the first animation commissioned by Sesame Street in early 1969. It was designed to familiarize children with a single letter. When the cartoon arrived at the Workshop, the producers were relieved. As producer Dave Connell recalled, “All of a sudden, it worked. We could see somebody understood how to do this.” The cartoon runs just over a minute and shows two round-faced youngsters contemplating the fish hook configuration of an object lowered from the sky. The animation is narrated with a rhymed story involving Joe, a Junebug, a Jar, a Justice, a Jury and a Jail. It even includes the familiar tagline “Here Comes the Judge!” from Laugh-In, a show that was a direct influence on Sesame Street.

Producers then inserted the animation into an hour-long program of randomly chosen children’s television material as if the animation was a spot commercial interruption in the program.  The film was brought to a day care center a few blocks from the Workshop’s offices to be shown to children and was subject to an audience reaction test. The test results suggested that the producers were on the right track. “The Story of J” is such an important part of the history of Sesame Street because it proved that when done right, short animations could get the attention of 4-year-olds and familiarize children with the sound and sight of letters and numbers.

By the end of the first season, the Workshop had commissioned work from 32 animators and film producers. In the first ten years, the Workshop commissioned more than 1,000 live action and animation films for Sesame Street and The Electric Company. The Whitney Museum of Art curated a selection of the films as part of their New American Film Series in 1979. The animation on Sesame Street was groundbreaking in the way it borrowed techniques from TV commercials to teach and for the support the Workshop gave to independent animators and filmmakers. For forty-three years these artists’ creativity and talent have contributed to the success of Sesame Street. Check out some of the show’s iconic animations on SesameStreet.com.

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