Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street [Hardcover]

Michael Davis (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 26, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0670019968 | ISBN-13: 978-0670019960 | Edition: 1

In advance of the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street, comes Street Gang, Michael Davis's compelling--and often comical--story of the creation and history of the media masterpiece and pop culture landmark, told with the cooperation of one of the show's co-founders, Joan Ganz Cooney. Sesame Street was born as a result of a discussion at Cooney's home about the poor quality of children's programming, and hit the air as a big bang of creative fusion from Jim Henson and company, quickly rocketing to success. Street Gang, traces the evolution of the show from its inspiration in the civil rights movement through its many ups and downs--from Nixon trying to cut off its funding to the rise of Elmo--via the remarkable personalities who have contributed to it, and reveals how it has taught millions of children not only their letters and numbers, but cooperation and fair play, tolerance and self-respect, conflict resolution, and the importance of listening. This is the unforgettable story of five decades of social and cultural change, and the miraculous creative efforts, passion and commitment of writers, producers, directors, animators and puppeteers who have created one of the most influential shows in the history of television.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Caroll Spinney (carollspinney.com), the voice of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch and winner of the Library of Congress's Living Legend Award, here narrates journalist Davis's gentle yet often surprising look at Sesame Street, the world's longest-running (40 years) and widest-reaching (120 countries) children's show. This will be a sure-fire hit in just about every library; highly recommended. [Includes a bonus interview with Davis and Spinney; the Viking hc was recommended "for all reference and browsing collections," LJ 12/08; visit www.streetgangbook.com for a bonus chapter profiling Roscoe Orman, who played Gordon on the show.—Ed.]—Joseph L. Carlson, Vandenberg Air Force Base Lib., Lompoc, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From The New Yorker

In this history of �Sesame Street,� Davis writes that when the show d�buted, in 1969, the goal of its creators was nothing short of righting �the inequities in our society� through the education of lower-class preschoolers. Such populist choices as an urban setting, a multiracial cast, and a catchy brand of �edutainment� reflected both the mood of the era (it should �jump and move fast and feel and sound like 1969,� a producer said) and painstaking research: a series of seminars held in the summer of 1968 was attended by developmental psychologists, television-industry insiders, and children�s authors and entertainers (Maurice Sendak endured boring sessions by making X-rated doodles; Jim Henson�s sandals and beard sparked fears that he was a Weatherman). The book�s strongest sections are culled from extensive interviews with Joan Ganz Cooney, who oversaw production for more than twenty years, but the narrative loses steam once the show hits the air.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1 edition (December 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670019968
• ISBN-13: 978-0670019960
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #821,552 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 60 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Hitting the pavement running December 28, 2008

By E. R. Bird HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

The television show that can appeal to children and make parents feel like they are good parents and upright citizens for showing it to their kids, that is where the money lies, my friends. Growing up I was not a discerning television viewer. I watched Mr. Rogers, Reading Rainbow, Pinwheel, Today's Special, and a whole host of bad cartoons ranging from Space Ghost to that bizarre time traveling one that was basically just a half hour commercial for Laser Tag. There was maybe only one show amongst the batch that some part of my small reptilian brain recognized as better than the rest. I was an avid Sesame Street fan. I loved the show, the movies, the awful books they churned out (The Monster at the End of this Book excepted). Oddly, this love didn't fade as I grew up. I still have a strange fascination with the world it created and years ago I purchased Sesame Street Unpaved to sate some of my curiosity. Who were these people who created my mental childhood home? Who were the actors? The puppeteers? The writers? Unpaved didn't do much to answer any of that, aside from giving me choice nuggets like the fact that Bob was a teen singing sensation in Japan. So the time seems just about right for Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street. Pulling in at a cool 406 pages, author Michael Davis has gone above and beyond the call of duty. And while I might have removed a chunk or two for the sake of svelting down the book as a whole, you will not and can not find a book that will better answer your questions about the birth of this most impressive of children's television shows....

It began at a dinner party where a man launched into a speech about the vast unfulfilled potential of television. It began with a sentence from a psychologist: "Do you think television could be used to teach small children?" There wasn't any answer to either of these points at the time, until Sesame Street formed. Sesame Street, the greatest educational television show for young children ever created, was the product of a lot of sweat, tears, and psychological blood. Under the care of Joan Ganz Cooney it found its legs. Performers like Jim Henson were brought on board. Actors and teachers, corporations and people who worked the streets of Harlem... there were people involved in its birth that would have no idea of its future impact. With a practiced eye author Michael Davis dives into Sesame Street's world, bringing up everything from previous children's programming to musical geniuses to the death of Jim Henson and beyond. An exhaustive, almost entirely complete, examination of the forces behind Oscar, Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, and even Elmo.

Picking up the book I admit that at first I did not much care about the people behind the scenes. In fact, if you are reading this book solely for the purpose of finding out more about Carol Spinney and Sonya Manzano, you may just want to start reading at Chapter Fifteen and not look back. I'd encourage you to reconsider, though, because when you get right down to it Sesame Street owed its very existence to the people involved in everything from Howdy Doody to Captain Kangaroo. From Ding Dong School to Tinker's Workshop, from Kukla Fran and Ollie to Laugh-In (it makes sense when you think about it), all these shows played some small role in Sesame Street's creation. And then you start to become involved with these characters pulling the strings. Joan Ganz Cooney wasn't just the show's mother; she was and is a truly fascinating woman in her own right. The kind of person who was, for example, Vin Scully's date the night the Dodger's won the World Series in 1955. Every person involved has stories like this one in their histories. And Michael Davis has done his best to sniff them all out.

Of course, if all you want is to know about is information on the performers, there's plenty of that to go around as well. This book delves into the nitty gritty of everything from Northern Calloway's (David's) mental instability (and the real reason he died) to the Belgian born jazzman who plays during the show's musical opening. You can find out how every guy on the show essentially thought that Maria (Sonya Manzano) was way hot. Or the fact that Bob really really WAS a Japanese pop star for a while there. There is an odd blip when it comes to talking about the third Gordon on Sesame Street, Roscoe Orman. Davis chooses not to talk about this major player in spite of the fact that he is the Gordon most children watching from Season Six onward think of when his name is said. As one of the early major players, his absence is an odd glitch in an otherwise complete collection.

A significant portion of the book is dedicated to the seemingly dull but strangely fascinating topic of basic funding for an untested hypothesis: Can television teach? Our new millennium renders such a question almost laughable. Duh, of course it can teach. But it wasn't so evident pre-Sesame Street. So it is that for me, a child of the 80s, the book provides some background to those mysterious names that would appears before and after each episode of the show. Things like The Children's Television Workshop, The Carnegie Corporation, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and (altogether now) viewers like you! Children of the 60s may have memorized commercial jingles but children of the 80s memorized funding contributors.

If this history does anything it may make you shake your head in wonder over the fact that so many different concerns (money vs. education) could successfully come together to create something as cohesive as Sesame Street. It reminds me of the creation of Casablanca. Now there was a script that went through so many hands, revisions, changes, and writers that it should have ended up some kind of unholy mess. Instead it's one of the greatest movies today. Likewise Sesame Street had to run the gamut between corporations, funding entities, educational critics, artists (who would contend that all creative products had to avoid objective scrutiny) not to mention feminists, blacks, Hispanics, and other people who wanted a show to reflect an all inclusiveness never before seen on the airwaves. And credit where credit's due, the show really didn't become all that inclusive until people like women and Hispanics started to complain about their exclusion. So it is that Sesame Street stands as the last true legacy of the 60s. At least, until recently.

Because maybe one of the things the book does most perfectly is to provide a step-by-step explanation of why Sesame Street sucks today. For many members of my generation, a long lingering look at today's incarnation of Sesame Street can be a painful experience. We see the princess fairy Muppet and cringe. We watch a little bit of Elmo's World and experience sugar shock. I read through this book and I discover that in the past there was a team of in-house researchers who would regularly consult with the writers on what to produce for the kids. That prior to each broadcast the content was tested in daycare centers or Head Start classrooms for the children. And that after the shows the researchers evaluated the programs to see how effective they were to meet the shows "education goals". Davis says that Sesame Street was "the first children's television series with a bona fide curriculum and evaluation mechanism." Is this still the case? When we consider a show that could combine the educational with the truly emotional, everything that happens on the current incarnation rings strangely false. I can't imagine any writer talking about today's Sesame Street saying: "There was birth and death, love and loss, courtship and calamity, pleasure and pain, all from a little show whose aims at first were simply to test television's ability to stimulate the brain."

Truth be told, Davis spends surprisingly little time considering the show in its later years. We know the changes it went through had something to do with Franklin Getchell. Something to do with the rise of Elmo. Something to do with the Tickle Me Elmo craze... actually a LOT to do with that. I was pleased as punch to read about the rise and fall of that brief attempt to expand the neighborhood with elements like a hotel and other places around the corner from "the street". However, I was utterly unprepared for the revelation that Abby Cadabby, the Ally McBeal of the Sesame Street universe, was the direct brainchild of Joan Ganz Cooney herself. That hurt. Now we have a show that is profitable, that can compete with Nick Toons, the Disney Channel, and other major competitors, but that somehow lost its way in the process. It met Barney head-on and then proceeded to emulate that horrid purple dinosaur. Not the happy ending one might have hoped for.

And none of this even touches on the millions of tiny details Davis has fearlessly worked into his book as well. Were you aware that Maurice Sendak sat in on some of the early Sesame Street planning seminars (and was bored to death by them)? Or that Mo Willems was the guy responsible for the look of Elmo's World? Or there's the fact that Cooney mistook Jim Henson for one of the Weathermen the first time she saw him. Or the fact that Frank Oz was able to turn Bert into "everyone's idea of a blind date." Or that Mississippi originally refused to run the show because it was "not yet ready" for a program where kids of different races played together. Or that Linda, who was deaf, really did have a library science degree just like her character. I could go on, really. But best that you find out some of this stuff for yourself.

In terms of the writing itself, as an author Davis plays with time and continuity like a child with a bouncy bauble. One minute you're in the 1950s, then you suddenly leap forward to the 70s, and then back again to where you were when you started. One such example is when he mentions the Children Television Workshop on page 121 (I'm working off of a galley, so my page numbers may not match up to the final copy) and then doesn't go about explaining what it is until page 127. The result is that you're left with the impression that you must have missed something along the way. It also means that as an author Davis has decided to be consistent about names, which adds its own confusion. For example, Joan Ganz Cooney is always referred to as Cooney (her married name) even when we hear about her pre-married life, while Sesame Street is always called by that name rather than a generic "the show", which makes the whole how-it-got-its-name section seem almost redundant (not to say, confusing).

Davis also has a penchant for a pretty bizarre turn of phrase. When discussing the hanky panky that went on behind the scenes he says with a straight face, "Philandering tends to rub the topcoat off a man's soul. All it took was a look at the reflection in the shaving mirror to see the painful loss of luster. " Hoo boy. Or how about the night Sesame Street was thought of, which involved some people having a dinner from a recipe in a Julia Child book. "Let history note, then, that Julia Child, public television's grand dame, provided the savory sauce poured on the night Sesame Street was conceived." But you can get used to it. Once you get into Davis's style the words become enjoyable. Like describing Jon Stone's attempts to sidestep "a water bug the size of a Sunsweet prune."

Of course, the book is long. Too long, one might think. For a Sesame Street fanatic like myself, this is not a problem. I love diving into the minute details and the millions of tiny backstories. Others who simply want a comprehensive look at the show itself, however, may find themselves wading through a lot of information before they find what they want. So while I enjoyed every page in my own way, I concede that some judicious pruning would probably be in order.

In the end, the book makes for a perfect complement to the Sesame Street Old School: Vol. 1 DVD released a year or two ago. The information gathered in the book spills over nicely into the DVD. Now before picking this title up, I suggest that you figure out what kind of Sesame Street fan you are. If you've only a passing interest in the show, you may wish to skim this book. If you are a rabid fan, it will answer your every need. And if you fall somewhere in the middle you will find a book that answers your questions, raises even more, and though a bit long is a fun and satisfying look at a world that has passed. A world that did a lot of good in its day, and that will continue to charm in one way or another. Read more ›

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Allows readers who remember "Sesame Street" fondly as children to look back as adults at the show with brand-new eyes January 26, 2009

By Bookreporter

Format:Hardcover

One of the favorite stories I've heard my parents tell is about how, on the morning of their wedding, the whole crew of bridesmaids, groomsmen --- even the groom himself --- nearly missed getting to the church on time because they were so transfixed by a hip new television show they were watching in my dad's hotel room. That program? "Sesame Street." When I was younger, having been raised on a steady diet of "Sesame Street" and its offspring, the idea of a bunch of grownups sitting around watching a kids' show seemed bizarrely funny to me. In the historical and pop cultural context explained by Michael Davis in STREET GANG, however, the behavior of my parents' wedding party makes a whole lot more sense.

The first generation of kids who saw "Sesame Street" as preschoolers are now in their 40s, so anyone younger than that probably has a hard time grasping just how revolutionary the show was when it debuted in 1969. Compared with other children's television options --- which ranged from the ridiculous (such as "Howdy Doody") to the painfully didactic --- it was clear that "Sesame Street" took a radically different approach to reaching, and teaching, its young target audience. Peopled with a multiethnic cast (not to mention those many-hued Muppets), the show used (and still uses) a gritty, realistic urban environment as a backdrop for its silly, sublime segments, thereby directly relating to the kids who need the show most --- those who don't necessarily have access to high-quality, early-childhood education programs. Like its predecessors, "Sesame Street" successfully used advertising taglines and jingles to reach an impressionable young audience. But the product it was selling was not toys or breakfast cereal --- it was numbers, letters and other early learning concepts....

Because it has flourished for so long, it's easy to overlook just how much the show in its infancy was a product of its times. The creators --- many of whom learned their trade as part of the staff of CBS's "Captain Kangaroo" --- were idealistic, progressive thinkers who saw the rapid rise of television as an opportunity to extend smaller-scale educational initiatives to reach the largest possible audience and have a positive influence on children's lives and educational success. "They came together at a star-crossed moment in American life," writes Davis, "when people of means who lived in comfort chose to dedicate their energies to the less fortunate and the forgotten, the rural poor and the underprivileged of the urban ghettos." Davis clearly relates how a show like "Sesame Street" can be seen as part of the larger civil rights and social justice initiatives that inspired this generation in the 1960s.

Readers who come to STREET GANG expecting a tell-all account of behind-the-scenes mayhem and secret scandals might be slightly disappointed with the book. Although Davis does relate some of the show's darker moments and personality clashes, the bulk of the book actually takes place before the series even premiered, as Davis relates how a handful of folks, particularly Children's Television Workshop founder Joan Ganz Cooney, navigated the murky waters of educational research, philanthropic funding and the nascent public broadcasting movement in order to achieve their objectives. Davis does explore the backstories of producers, actors, composers and others --- all of whom found their way to the most famous address on television, many of whom stayed there for the remainder of their careers. Cooney and Muppet master Jim Henson (whose moving memorial service serves as the backdrop for the book's prologue) are clearly the heart of the narrative, but Davis --- who obviously writes with the enthusiasm of a true fan --- overlooks none of the contributors who have made the show the success it continues to be today.

Davis, a long-time TV Guide columnist, clearly knows his stuff, and he places his subject firmly in its historical and cultural context. Perhaps the greatest contribution of STREET GANG will be to get readers like me --- those who remember "Sesame Street" fondly as children --- to look back at some of those early episodes (now available on DVD) as adults, to witness the wonder, accomplishment and revolutionary spirit of the show with brand-new eyes. Maybe my parents' wedding party wasn't so crazy after all.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl Read more ›

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars If you make it past the first 3 chapters it does get better March 11, 2009

By Katie C. Nelson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I rarely give only 3 stars for a book but this one was written in such a haphazard manner that it was very difficult to read. The first 3 chapters were almost unbearable but I'm glad I kept with it because it got better. The story behind the show is so interesting and it is really quite amazing how the planets practically aligned to make Sesame Street happen.

I wish the author would have found a more linear and clear way to tell the story. There were so many people involved in the making of Sesame Street and he throws bits and pieces of their experiences around on the same page, even from completely different time periods.

I was born the same year as Sesame Street (1969) so the show has always been a part of my life. I think Jim Henson was a genius and I appreciate all that the creators, actors, and puppeteers put into establishing a place for children to be educated and entertained at the same time.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A slog through early Sesame Street history April 8, 2009

By Bonnie Svitavsky

Format:Hardcover

When I was in grad school, I signed up for a class called Death and Literature. The description sounded awesome and I was being a bit morbid. What it turned out to be was a philosophy class in literature class clothing, which resulted in me reading Heidegger for weeks at a time, only occasionally broken up by "She" or "Dracula." The few moments of awesomeness did not make up for the fact that I was dragged through "Being and Time." And that's what reading "Street Gang" is like.

This is not a complete history of Sesame Street. This is a slog through the personal histories of several of the key players who created Sesame Street: Joan Ganz Cooney, Jon Stone, David Connell, Sam Gibbon, and Jim Henson. And when I saw histories, I mean you learn about their parents' upbringing, their upbringing, schooling, weird relationships, everything! This book is hyper-detailed, bogging it down. What isn't about family history is about how the show got funded, which has the potential to be interesting if we weren't forced to walk through every step of the process. And, of course, we do. You finally get to the genesis of the show and its characters and stories in Chapter 12... so if you want just that, skip to page 166.

To finish my complaint on the book's completeness, it skims a fair amount of the 1980s (compared to the detail of earlier chapters) and gives very little info on the mid-1990s and beyond. This is probably because management changed at the CTW and Davis does not fawn over these people. Elmo is the most-covered subject during this time period.

I'd also have to say that the writing structure is incredibly awkward.... Readers are flung forward and backward and forward again in time within the span of a few paragraphs, all usually to tell a story that usually doesn't need telling. Like did I need to know that Cooney's personal assistant attended her abusive ex-husband's funeral for her, so she could report back to her boss on how it went? Or should the moment Jane Henson steps forward to speak and Jim Henson's funeral really be the time Davis first brings up that they had had marital problems?

That's not to say that there aren't fascinating stories about Sesame Street, its creation, and its creators. The book is full of them, but you have to be patient and dig around to get them, and I'm not sure it's really worth your time. You do gain an appreciation for how ground-breaking this series was and still is. You also wonder if maybe it was a requirement that you have a terminal illness in your future, as much of the end of the book is dedicated to all the contributors to the show who died of cancer, AIDs, or other diseases. It's kind of frightening how many people involved in the show have died.

I can't say that I really recommend this book. Mostly, I recommend the middle of this book. Unless you're looking for a history and finances lesson, with some Muppets thrown in for good measure. Read more ›