Doing research for Muppet Wiki consists of exploring many different avenues – checking online music registries, listening to podcast interviews, emailing writers and artists, etc. You might recall our pal Grant Harding’s own research exploits in tracking down some song demos for Fraggle Rock. During that same time period, I too was engaging in some deep Wiki info collecting at a university library.
Over the last few years, I’ve been going through the collection of materials left by the late, long-time Sesame Street writer Tony Geiss, the man responsible for “Elmo’s Song,” Don’t Eat the Pictures, and An American Tail (okay, maybe that one doesn’t have Muppets in it). His papers are held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, and it’s a big collection of stuff from scripts to video/audio tapes to jackets.
I’ve made a couple of visits to the library to personally explore several boxes, but one only has so much free time to do this. Fortunately, the university has an extremely generous digital reproduction program, so I’ve been able to acquire what I couldn’t physically touch through the gracious scanning of some hard-working Yale librarians. It’s taken a few years, but I’ve only recently been able to comb through all the Sesame Street material his collection has to offer (or, at least, the paper-based stuff).
I’ve added a lot of what has been uncovered onto the Wiki already, but sometimes it’s hard to keep up with what’s new or find things when they’re so spread out all over the place. So today, I thought I’d share a few of the goodies Tony Geiss left behind that you may or may not have heard of.
We’ve covered this in great detail on Tough Pigs previously, so I’ll spare you the details, but to sum up – in the mid 1990s, they tried to make another Sesame Street movie, this time about storybook villains stealing the alphabet and our Muppet friends saving the day for readers everywhere. And it’s very crazy.
You can read all about it on the Wiki, or check out our three-part series on the film with wonderful concept art by our Tough Pigs pals!
A Celebration of Me, Grover was a long-overdue spotlight on our favorite furry waiter/superhero/plumber/dog walker. Although it came out in 2004, there had been some attempts prior to highlight Grover on home video.
“The Best of Grover” is one of those attempts, which took the form of a “What’s My Job?” game show hosted by none other than Kermit the Frog! Grover would keep appearing on the show in one of his several jobs, as panelists Elmo, Zoe, Humphrey, and Mr. Johnson try to guess. These would lead to clips about each job, and the video concludes with a musical number as Grover is crowned “Employee of the Year” (and given a glittery hardhat).
The Flyer’s Club Roast concept they landed on later on is very funny, but demoting Kermit to a couple of library video cameos feels like a missed opportunity and it would have been nice if he could have had a bigger part.
“Around the Corner” came and went pretty quickly on Sesame Street, but the one thing that most people seemed to agree was the big highlight was the Furry Arms Hotel. The episodes set there were like their own funny little Muppet show, so it made sense that at some point after the area was dropped, the creatives wanted to develop it into something more.
A group of the show’s writers started a pitch for a spin-off show set at the hotel. All the regulars would be there (Humphrey, Ingrid, Benny, Sherry Netherland, etc.), but there would be new characters too – a talking player piano named Beatrice “Bea” Flatt, a French mouse chef, and Bangers and Mash (the hotel’s security). And they would get into the typical shenanigans presented on the main show as they deal with a wide variety of animal, vegetable, and mineral clientele.
Over a decade later, the idea got reworked into The Furchester Hotel, which in my opinion was far less funny than any of the Furry Arms stuff. Sorry, not sorry, Funella.
SESAME STREET DISCOVERS AMERICA
In 1992, CTW attempted to commemorate the quincentennial of Christopher Columbus’ ocean voyage with a special teaching kids about pre-colonial America. Now, tell me if this sounds too crazy – a married couple from the future takes their time-traveling RV back to see Columbus arrive in the West, but make a pit stop on present-day Sesame Street. From there, Elmo, Telly, Big Bird, Gordon, Maria, and the Count end-up accidentally going back in time with them. Elmo and Telly are accidentally teleported onto one of Columbus’ ships, while the rest of the gang traverses various locations in 1492 to find where Columbus lands. There’s also Snuffy and his mommy portraying wooly mammoths, Big Bird being mistaken for an Aztec sun god at some point, and Elmo and Telly singing a song to Columbus about the wonders of Columbus, Ohio.
Hindsight is 20/20, but I think we can all agree it’s probably best this didn’t happen. Though I gotta admit, I would like to hear that song.
BERT AND ERNIE’S NAT GEO SPECIAL
By 2004, Sesame Street had made productions for many holidays, including Christmas, Christmas Eve, Chanukah, Halloween, New Year’s Eve, and Grouch Appreciation Day. But aside from the Macy’s Parade, Thanksgiving was very much not celebrated. I’m sure it had nothing to do with protecting a certain giant bird who might be sensitive about the holiday.
But, around that time, Sesame Workshop was planning to rectify that by developing a Thanksgiving special with the help of National Geographic. The result was “In Search of Bernice,” or “The Great Pigeon Chase.” Because when you think of Thanksgiving, you think of pigeons! Obviously!
The proposed special would star Bert and Ernie, as they scour the globe trying to find Bernice, who has taken off from Sesame Street without warning. While traveling around the world to locate her, they meet new friends, see interesting sights, encounter various Elmo relatives, collect food for their Thanksgiving feast at home, sing some original songs, and meet some celebrity cameos like George Carlin and Omar Shariff.
I don’t know how they could have pulled this off – would they actually go on-location to places like South Africa and Cuzco, or would it be a lot of green screen over Nat Geo stock footage? But, given how much Bert and Ernie’s stars have fallen since 2004, I’m sad we never got this kind of big showcase for them, and now the pair are only allowed to star in 20-second TikToks. Sigh.
Hey, that’s right – a non-Sesame thingy! Now, information about this was already publicly available on the Jim Henson’s Red Book blog. But it wasn’t until I found scripts for them in Geiss’ collection that I found a way to expand on it for the Wiki.
See, in 1983, Andy Rooney was supposedly thinking of retiring from 60 Minutes, and one of the producers thought Jim Henson could fill the time with a funny Muppet skit. For some reason, they landed on making the recurring feature star the Muppet Mount Rushmore (with Kermit doing little intros), and Geiss was tapped to write their sketches.
Unlike the Sex and Violence pilot, they wouldn’t be telling dumb jokes – they’d be doing “biting political satire,” like commenting on Congress breaking up the telephone trust, climate change, or how news anchormen are the “Paul Reveres” of today. They are kind of non-partisian, but they are also kind of non-humorous, so I can see why they didn’t take off.
Unlike most of the things we’re talking about today, they actually went so far as to shoot some of these, but famously, Andy Rooney did not retire for another few decades and the skits just ended up nowhere. As for Mount Rushmore, I think Jim had it moved back to South Dakota where it belongs.
Now, now, I know what you’re saying – “Shane, the 20th anniversary special does exist! I can see it on my DVD shelf RIGHT NOW, you buffoon!” BUT, did you know there was a totally different concept for it? I bet you didn’t, so nyah!
Originally, the special was going to be called “Around the World in 40 Winks.” Not unlike the other concept above, the special would take Bert and Ernie around the world, because Ernie is sleepwalking and trying to find something (which eventually turns out to be his bed). Bill Cosby was still there (unfortunately), but he was instead left behind on Sesame Street by his tour group (and Bert and Ernie board his bus as it takes off). They also wanted some celebrities to perform more classic songs, like Mick Jagger singing “Rubber Duckie” or extremely classy-types (like James Earl Jones and Katherine Hepburn) debasing themselves by singing “C is for Cookie.”
This was all back when the special would have been a part of The Jim Henson Hour, and they even suggested Ernie and Bert cameo in Muppet Central. But, I think the visual of them meeting Digit would have caused the universe to implode in on itself.
SESAME MUPPET INSERTS
As you can imagine, a lot of material was needed for the show back when they were making a bazillion hours a year. A bunch of inserts would get written and sometimes, the writers come up with songs and sketches that just never make it off the page for one reason or another. I found many scripts for unmade inserts, and here are a few that I would have liked to see onscreen:
- Hey, You Two Look Exactly the Same! (Season 13): Guy Smiley hosts a talk show about identical twins, but his guests look nothing alike at all. He instead books them for his other show, “Hey, You Two Look Completely Different!”
- Remembering Smith (Season 17): John Candy was to appear as the counterpart of Forgetful Jones, who can remember every detail of his life (except he’s forgotten to put on pants today).
- Hercules Parrot (Season 22): Deviating from the adventures of Sherlock Hemlock, “Mysterious Theater” would have hosted a new series of sketches starring an avian version of Hercules Perot. The skits are not that remarkable, but it would have been pretty neat to see Vincent Twice present some new kinds of sketches.
- “The Pigeons of Paris” (Season 30): Bert appears in a Parisian park singing about the lives of these French, feathered friends.
- Cinderella at 12 O’Clock (Season 37): Prairie Dawn gives a fashion report from the ball Cinderella is at, but she’s too busy dancing with Prince Charming to care about the time. When the clock strikes midnight, Cinderella turns into a number 12. The Prince still wants to marry her, but will have to wait as she’s “just turned twelve.”
Fascinating stuff, no? In some cases, it’s clear why certain projects and ideas didn’t move forward, but it’s always fun to get a glimpse at what could have been. Just think, in another lifetime, I could be here telling you about a special they never made where Big Bird fights for the soul of a cursed Egyptian prince he found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s not any less ridiculous than what I’ve described thus far!
Once again, a big shout-out to the staff at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library for scanning hundreds and hundreds of pages for us. Librarians rule!
Click here to travel the world with Bert and Ernie on the Tough Pigs Discord!
By Shane Keating
