When Big Bird and Oscar occasionally performed together — bird singing ABCs, grouch fulminating — Mr. Spinney operated one puppet while an understudy handled the other, using a vocal recording by Mr. Spinney.
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Spinney was -- like Big Bird still is -- all goodness.
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OpinionArnaud Colinart, Amaury La Burthe, Peter Middleton and James Spinney
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And a documentary about Caroll Spinney is streaming on Topic.
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"It was extraordinarily moving," Oz said in the Spinney documentary.
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Spinney was at the center of a documentary in 2014.
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Spinney and Oscar in 2014 "I always thought, How fortunate for me that I got to play the two best Muppets?" said Spinney in an interview with the New York Times about his retirement.
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Spinney playing Big Bird in the first season of Sesame Street.
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This Thursday, Spinney will tape his final voices for the show.
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In 2015, Spinney switched to just providing the characters&apos voices.
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Caroll Spinney, who portrayed Big Bird for decades, died on Sunday.
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"I've been playing a 6-year-old for 50 years," Spinney said.
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Original Big Bird, Caroll Spinney, Leaves 'Sesame Street' After Nearly 50 Years 55.
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It was after a disastrous performance at a puppet festival in Utah that Spinney met Muppet master Jim Henson, who came backstage and told him, "I liked what you were trying to do," Spinney remembered Henson saying, in his memoir.
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Learning of this extraordinary archive, Middleton and Spinney saw the foundation for a film.
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Spinney recorded more than 4,400 episodes as the two puppets, according to the NYT.
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Spinney, 84, recorded more than 4,400 episodes as the two puppets, according to the NYT.
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Caroll Spinney created a character I could trust and, as an autistic child, connect with.
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I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Spinney twice,and he's a warm, wonderful man.
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Puppeteer Caroll Spinney played Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch in the show's first episode.
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Besides being the man behind Big Bird, Spinney also handled and voiced Oscar the Grouch.
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In his memoirs Mr Spinney wrote that it was only the bird that was famous.
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Ms Spinney, an occasional contributor to The Economist, recreates the world that Spanish flu came into.
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Notes on Blindness, Peter Middleton (Writer/Director/Producer), James Spinney (Writer/Director), Jo-Jo Ellison (Producer)
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Notes on Blindness – Peter Middleton (writer/director/producer), James Spinney (writer/director), Jo-Jo Ellison (producer)
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You can tell that Carroll Spinney was trying his best not to break down into tears.
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"I may be the most unknown famous person in America," Spinney said in his 2003 memoir.
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"I may be the most unknown famous person in America," Spinney said in his 2003 memoir.
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Spinney, just like Big Bird (and me), had one goal -- to make other people feel happy.
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Eventually, Spinney said he turned BB into a "big kid" character -- and the rest was history.
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And he didn't mind that at all....Spinney was -- like Big Bird still is -- all goodness.
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PALE RIDER: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, by Laura Spinney.
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Spinney told the New York Times that Thursday will mark his last day on the beloved program.
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Big Bird shows up frequently in the artwork that Spinney creates and surrounds himself with at home.
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Mr. Spinney, the puppeteer who announced his retirement on Wednesday, played Oscar, as well as Big Bird.
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"They gave us a half-price ticket because he was only 22006 years old," Mr. Spinney said.
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So when Big Bird's famous puppeteer, Caroll Spinney died this week, Gold might have had mixed emotions.
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Spinney has won six Emmys, including a Lifetime Achievement award, and a Grammy for his Sesame Street work.
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Along with Big Bird, Spinney has also voiced Oscar the Grouch since he joined the show in 1969.
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Spinney is pleased that his iconic roles will be carried on by puppeteers Matt Vogel and Eric Jacobson.
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Caroll Spinney, who has been with "Sesame Street" since it began in 533, is retiring from the show.
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When Spinney officially retired from the show in 2018, Seasame Street compiled a tribute to his work (above).
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An obituary on Monday about the puppeteer Caroll Spinney misstated the name of the high school he attended.
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Mr Spinney opened and shut Big Bird's eyelids by moving a 5lb (2.3kg) lever with his little finger.
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Spinney met Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, at a puppetry festival in 1962 in Salt Lake City.
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"Big Bird brought me so many places, opened my mind and nurtured my soul," Spinney said in a statement.
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There's the rocking chair with Big Bird's gargantuan, disembodied orange and pink legs attached at either side; the congratulatory letter Spinney received on his 75th birthday from then-President-elect Barack Obama; the wall of photographs in which Spinney has posed with other TV luminaries like Sid Caesar, Bob Hope and Jerry Seinfeld.
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Carroll Spinney, the puppeteer who plays Big Bird on Sesame Street, is retiring after nearly 50 years on the show.
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Spinney Hills, in the centre of Leicester, ranked 13th out of 67 areas in terms of the volume of crime.
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"Eight-year-olds have discovered to their horror that he&aposs a puppet," Spinney told The Associated Press in 1987.
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To play the part, Spinney would strap a TV monitor to his chest as his only eyes to the outside.
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Spinney died on the same day "Sesame Street" was being honored at the Kennedy Center for achievement in the arts.
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The dialogue is scripted, but it was up to puppeteer-actors like Mr. Spinney to provide the voices and personalities.
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In 2011, filmmakers James Spinney and Peter Middleton took Hull's original audio diaries and turned them into a short film.
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As Spinney notes in Pale Rider, it can be difficult to pin down the exact origins of the 1918 influenza outbreak.
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Spinney would join the Muppet crew when "Sesame Street" was about to turn them from popular phenomenon into an American institution.
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His understudy took over as Big Bird's puppeteer in 2015, but Mr Spinney continued to be his voice until last year.
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Now, read the article, "Original Big Bird, Caroll Spinney, Leaves 'Sesame Street' After Nearly 50 Years," and answer the following questions: 1.
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The second wave, Spinney writes, began in August 1918 almost simultaneously in ports in Freetown, Sierra Leone; Brest, France; and Boston, Massachusetts.
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Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer who for decades gave life to Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on "Sesame Street," died on Sunday.
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Remembering Caroll Spinney Fans flocked to Twitter after his death in mourning and remembrance of the happiness the puppeteer bought to people.
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But, raising his voice to a childlike pitch, Mr. Spinney easily picked up the talk of a perennial 6-year-old canary.
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In 20063, a year after President Richard M. Nixon's diplomatic breakthrough with Communist China, Mr. Spinney flew to Beijing for a performance.
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Snapshot: Above, Caroll Spinney, better known as Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on "Sesame Street" since the beloved show's 1969 inception.
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Caroll Spinney -- the guy who manned Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch on "Sesame Street" for nearly half a century -- has died.
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The Shortlist PALE RIDER The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World By Laura Spinney 332 pp. PublicAffairs. $28.
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Puppeteer Caroll Spinney, who has voiced Sesame Street characters Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch for nearly 50 years, will retire this week.
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Ms Spinney ties the virulence of Spanish flu to its genetic irregularities and does a good job of explaining containment strategies through epidemiology.
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"Big Bird is him and he is Big Bird," former "Sesame Street" head writer Norman Stiles said in a 2014 documentary on Spinney.
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Spinney, who suffered from the movement disorder dystonia, had provided only Big Bird's voice since 19823 while another puppeteer was in the costume.
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Spinney, who suffered from the movement disorder dystonia, had provided only Big Bird's voice since 19823 while another puppeteer was in the costume.
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But Mr. Spinney found another inspiration: the belligerent New York cabdriver he encountered on the way to his first day on the show.
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There was a fishing wire that connected both extremities inside the suit, and Spinney would operate both by using just his left side.
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Spinney embraced his avian avatar, traveling the world, appearing in feature films and conducting symphonies in costume throughout the US, Australia and Canada.
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Sesame Workshop co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney hailed Spinney for his turn as the curmudgeonly puppet in a trash can, Oscar the Grouch.
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Middleton and Spinney keenly recognize the autonomy of sound, how Hull could feel so lost in blindness but so thoroughly present in his voice.
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It is thanks to Hull as much to Middleton and Spinney that Notes on Blindness is so philosophically resonant, emotionally affecting, and visually eloquent.
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Several pictures show him working alongside Jim Henson, the iconoclastic creator of the Muppets, who recruited Spinney to "Sesame Street" all those years ago.
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Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer who brought my yin and yang to life on "Sesame Street" before stepping down in 2018, died Sunday at 85.
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"The sound, it's thrilling when you're a motorcycle rider," said Peter Spinney, 75, a New Jersey resident who rode through the White Mountains last month.
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At first he was depicted as a country yokel, but by the end of that first season the puppet's operator, Caroll Spinney, had changed tack.
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Mr Spinney, who was Big Bird for five decades, played him as a six-year-old child, with all the wonder and sweetness that entails.
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Caroll Spinney, known for voicing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch in his nearly 50-year career on "Sesame Street," died at the age of 85.
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At the funeral, Spinney appeared alone on stage in full Big Bird costume and sang "It&aposs Not Easy Bein&apos Green," Kermit&aposs signature song.
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"I always thought, 'How fortunate for me that I got to play the two best Muppets,'" Mr. Spinney said in a retirement interview with The Times.
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Laura Spinney traces its long shadow over human history; records are patchy and uncertain, but Hippocrates's "Cough of Perinthus" in 412BC may be its first written description.
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Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer who played Big Bird on the show for nearly 50 years, has died at age 85, Sesame Workshop announced in a statement Sunday.
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I know Spinney would have hated that his 6-year-old bird had a name that made it easier for kids to bully 7-year-old me.
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Spinney explores three possibilities: In March 1918, a mess cook at the United States Army's Camp Funston in Kansas contracted the disease, possibly from a nearby farm.
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"Big Bird brought me so many places, opened my mind and nurtured my soul," said Spinney in a press release from Sesame Workshop on Wednesday announcing his departure.
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" Big Bird was the protagonist of the 1985 "Sesame Street" feature film, "Follow That Bird," and Spinney was the subject of a 2014 documentary, "I Am Big Bird.
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Though Oscar and Big Bird seem to have little in common, Spinney observed that they were both solitary characters who performed with other humans but few other Muppets.
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"Before I came to &aposSesame Street,&apos I didn&apost feel like what I was doing was very important," Spinney said when he announced his retirement in 2018.
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Spinney passed away Sunday at his Connecticut home after living with Dystonia for a while, according to Sesame Workshop ... the nonprofit org behind the hit children's television show.
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The legendary Jim Henson brought Spinney on-board, and by most accounts ... he struggled bringing Big Bird to life at first and having him resonate with the audience.
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Now that Big Bird's original puppeteer Caroll Spinney is leaving Sesame Street after 50 years, people are wondering who can possibly step in to fill his big orange shoes.
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Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer and voice actor behind Sesame Street greats Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, will retire from the show after 50 years of embodying these characters.
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Spinney told me in a phone call that one theory tries to explain the unusual virulence of the 1918 flu by positing that it developed first in Europe's trenches.
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Caroll Spinney, the beloved and renowned puppeteer who brought the original Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch to life on Sesame Street for nearly 229 years, died on Dec.
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Born in 1933 in Waltham Massachusetts, Spinney had a deeply supportive mother who built him a puppet theater after he bought his first puppet, a monkey, at age 8.
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"Of course, bigger players may eventually start buying smaller players here, it's a likely trend," said Steve Spinney, master brewer at Little Island Brewing Company, one of Singapore's craft names.
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Another Spinney painting, titled "In My Dreams I Can Fly," shows Big Bird — who is traditionally depicted as flightless — with his wings spread as he soars high above the countryside.
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Mr. Spinney couldn't save me or other kids who struggled to fit in from being targeted by bullies, but his characters still helped a lot of us find our voices.
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Joining "Sesame Street" for its first season, Mr. Spinney, who had loved puppeteering since childhood, had problems at first adjusting to the Big Bird puppet suit created by Kermit Love.
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Others tried mixtures of ritual and desperation, which Spinney describes with a novelist's eye: In Odessa, Russia, the community held a "black wedding" between beggars to defend against the disease.
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"I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story" explored his life and the inspiration behind his creation of the Big Bird character and his collaboration with Jim Henson over several decades.
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Mr. Spinney was 5 feet 10 and had to maneuver the giant from inside with hands, wires and a TV monitor strapped to his chest to guide him around studio sets.
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"Caroll and Big Bird are very similar in their genuine niceness and sweetness and lovingness," said Joan Ganz Cooney, one of the cofounders of Sesame Workshop, in a tribute video for Spinney.
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This Thursday, as he so often has, Spinney, 250, plans to travel to the studios in Astoria, Queens, where "Sesame Street" is produced, and record some voices for his colorful alter egos.
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This documentary delves into the performer's career largely through his own words, telling the story of how a childhood passion for puppeteering ultimately landed an adult Spinney in the big yellow suit.
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And yet Spinney, a novelist and science writer, argues that almost a century later, the Spanish flu is "still emerging from the shadows of the First World War" in our collective memories.
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According to the statement, Spinney, who also voiced Oscar the Grouch since he joined the show in 1969, died Sunday day at his home in Connecticut after living with dystonia for some time.
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And the humans behind some of "Sesame Street's" most iconic characters offered reporters a brief tribute to Caroll Spinney, who died Sunday morning and who was the original Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.
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Performer Caroll Spinney is seen half harnessed into his Big Bird rig, Frank Oz mugs as Fozzie Bear, and puppet maker Don Sahlin is captured in a candid moment adjusting a few of his creations.
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" [See where to stream a great documentary about Big Bird] Asked if he had long been contemplating his departure from "Sesame Street," where he has worked since its debut, Spinney answered, "No, not at all.
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"We have a global population that is four times the size, and at least in the industrialized world, the populations are much older with respect to 210, and old age weakens immune systems," Spinney continues.
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Spinney said he would have to hold the 5-pound head up with his right hand and work the mouth and eyebrows on that end ... while controlling both arms with just his own left one.
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Ms Spinney is sanguine about the risks of such experiments: influenza appears to have all the ingredients for another catastrophic pandemic and scientists, using caution, should probably do all they can to learn more about it.
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Although they had previously crossed paths in the 1960s, Spinney pinpointed a fateful encounter at a Salt Lake City puppeteers' festival in 1969, when Henson watched him try to perform a multimedia show that went gradually awry.
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We also enjoy a much more robust public health infrastructure in 2019; in 1918, as Laura Spinney documents in her pandemic history Pale Rider, medical experts still hadn't agreed that the flu is caused by a virus.
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Spinney voiced and operated the two major Muppets from their inception in 1969 when he was 36, and performed them almost exclusively into his 80s on the PBS kids&apos television show that later moved to HBO.
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Caroll Spinney has played the beloved Sesame Street character since the beginning, and he told the story of his brush with spaceflight in "I Am Big Bird," a documentary about his life as the character, released in 2015.
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Mr. Spinney, who also performed his characters in live concerts around the world and at the White House many times and was featured in films, documentaries and record albums, died on Sunday at his home in Woodstock, Conn.
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Chuck Spinney, a critic of overpriced weapons systems who became friendly with Mr. Fitzgerald in the late 1970s, wrote on his blog that Mr. Fitzgerald had once told him how best to simplify the complexities of Pentagon spending.
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As Laura Spinney wrote in the 2017 'Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World', there "is no cenotaph, no monument in London, Moscow, or Washington, DC. The Spanish flu is remembered personally, not collectively".
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Caroll Spinney, who gave Big Bird his warmth and Oscar the Grouch his growl for nearly 50 years on "Sesame Street," died Sunday at the age of 85 at his home in Connecticut, according to the Sesame Workshop.
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"I once got a letter from NASA, asking if I would be willing to join a mission to orbit the Earth as Big Bird, to encourage kids to get interested in space," Spinney said in an essay in The Guardian in 2015.
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Mr. Spinney, whose home in Woodstock had a roller-skating rink and a secret passageway for children to spy down on grown-ups in the dining room, spoke softly and had a gentle face framed by long gray hair and a neat goatee.
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Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit education organization that produces "Sesame Street," did not have a precise figure for the number of episodes Spinney has appeared in, but a spokeswoman said the number was likely thousands of the more than 4,400 episodes that have been created.
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Photographers bore witness: at a listening party Kanye West held in Wyoming; as Tony Kushner's masterwork, "Angels in America," returned to Broadway in the age of Trump; as Caroll Spinney, who played Big Bird on "Sesame Street," hung up his claws and yellow feathers.
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"We were taping another episode of Sesame Street at the time it went up and they said, &aposThe ship is about to take off so we&aposre going to punch the broadcast of the takeoff onto the monitors on the set,&apos" Spinney told CBC News in 2014.
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While many of the creative and production team members behind "Sesame Street" have worked at the show for many years — the executive producer Carol-Lynn Parente has been involved for 27 years and Caroll Spinney has performed as Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since 1969 — there are new executives.
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Finally, tell us more about what you think: In the article, Dave Itzkoff writes: Spinney has said that over the years his work on "Sesame Street" acquainted him with countless fans who could not help but tell him — often with eyes full of tears — how the show had changed their lives.
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He published a memoir, "The Wisdom of Big Bird (and the Dark Genius of Oscar the Grouch): Lessons From a Life in Feathers" (2003, with J. Milligan), and was the subject of a 2014 documentary, "I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story," by Dave LaMattina and Chad N. Walker.
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With the impending 50th anniversary of "Sesame Street" in October 2018, Mr. Spinney left the show after his own remarkable half-century run as the embodiment of two of the most beloved characters on television and one of the last surviving staff members who had been with the show from its beginning.
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The movie "gets a little syrupy at times," Neil Genzlinger wrote in his review for The Times, but Genzlinger added that Spinney is "forthright and engaging throughout," and that the film ultimately "reminds us that even the most omnipresent cultural phenomena were created by someone, usually through a combination of hard work and happenstance."
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Meet the Creator of the Egg That Broke Instagram "Mockingbird" Producer Reconsiders, Letting Local Plays Go Forward He's 16 Going On Stardom: Meet Broadway's Next "Evan Hansen" Stan Lee Is Dead at 95; Superhero of Marvel Comics Original Big Bird, Caroll Spinney, Leaves "Sesame Street" After Nearly 50 Years Banksy Painting Self-Destructs After Fetching $1.4 Million at Sotheby's Horseback Wrestling.
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His name was Caroll Spinney — not that many people would know it — and he was the comfortably anonymous whole-body puppeteer who, since the 1969 inception of the public television show that has nurtured untold millions of children, had portrayed the sweet-natured, canary-yellow giant bird and the misanthropic, furry-green bellyacher in the trash can outside 123 Sesame Street.
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It must stop Jill Filipovic: Houston police chief's furious shaming of the GOP over NRA and guns David Phillips: What tourists don't get about White Island Gene Seymour: Why 'Moonstruck' actor Danny Aiello was a hero to late bloomers Lynn Smith: The Peloton ad is a faux controversy Sara Stewart: Golden Globes nominations list looks like ominous backlash Samantha Vinograd: Prisoner swap shows Iran may be eager to deal with US AND... RIP Caroll Spinney Comedian Judy Gold, who was six feet tall by the time she was 13, was teased and bullied about her height, and almost every day someone called her "Big Bird," referring to the 8-foot-2 inch "Sesame Street" character.
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