…How to get to Sesame Street? Yes, the previous two pictures were of me on the set of Sesame Street. Several people got the correct answer, but only one guessed the year correctly, and he was a friend of mine from college, so that doesn’t really count. The year was 1973. The picture above shows what it looked like when they were shooting on that part of the set. On the left side, you can see the “No Parking” door and in the middle is the stoop to 123 Sesame Street. That photo originally appeared in an RCA Broadcast News magazine promoting the fact that Sesame Street was produced using RCA TK-44 cameras. If you click on the picture, you’ll see a larger, uncropped version that shoots off the set. Now, not that anyone doubted me, but for further proof, I present the following picture of me manhandling a certain angry looking yellow Muppet.

This was only the 4th season of the show and it was shot at a studio called Teletape (which shortly would become Reeves Teletape) on W. 81st Street near Broadway in New York City. Sometime in the 80’s, they moved to Unitel Studios and for the last 12 years, the show has been shot at the historic Kaufman Astoria Studios in Astoria, New York. The studio is historic not only for housing Sesame Street and the 1980’s Bill Cosby Show, but it goes all the way back to the silent era and is the studio where the Marx Brothers shot their first two features, Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers.

I received this question from Dave Bittner, who was one of the people who guessed correctly, “Is it true that the entire Sesame Street set is built up several feet to make it easy for the Muppet performers?” As you can see from the picture at the top of this article, that is not true. However, if you could pan right on that picture, you would see an open area where the Muppets used to perform their non-street bits. Look at the picture on the left and you will see that all of those sets, like Bert and Ernie’s house, were built up off the ground so the performers could stand with the puppets over their heads. They were so high up, that the cameras had to have an extra height ring added to their pedestals so they would be eye level with the characters. These and the two previous photos were taken by my longtime friend, and Davey Simpson’s right arm, Ralph Kalatucka. This was the first time I got to visit the set of Sesame Street, and more of the story will follow in subsequent weeks.

And now, I’m going to the mailbox to check for the letter of the day.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.