Here’s another picture from my 1973 visit to Sesame Street. On the right, you can see the camera extension and the cameramen standing on boxes. In the middle is me (you can tell because I’m wearing the same shirt from the other pictures). On the left, obviously, is Jim Henson operating the character Guy Smiley. Next to him is the great Frank Oz with Grover. The name of the bit they are taping is “Beat the Time”.

I was surprised to find that the bit was pretaped and they were lip-syching to it. It’s easy to lip-synch to a song, but very difficult to lip-synch to dialogue, especially when it isn’t something you’ve rehearsed one hundred times. I asked Jim why they were working to a track. I thought they always did dialogue live. He explained that the Guy Smiley character, who is a game show announcer that shouts a lot, is hard on his throat, so they have to pretape it. It took the entire morning to tape one three minute bit, although, in fairness, besides working to prerecord, it was a very complicated bit.

A few other tidbits of information: At that time, Grover was one of the only Muppets to always have legs, whether they were being used or not. In other words, they weren’t detachable and they didn’t build an extra Grover puppet without legs (like Kermit). Also, Grover was adapted from an earlier generic Muppet monster that was green. He actually appeared that way in some very early Sesame Street segments, before gaining a name and turning blue.

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