David
Vol. 3, Issue 25
I never thought I’d have a child so I never thought I’d watch Sesame Street ever again. But in the past four years, I've had three children, and I’ve watched it 9 million times. The episode we've watched the most is from 1978 titled “Naming Barkley," when the whole gang picks a name for that big dumb orange dog. (They named him Barkley.) When I first rewatched it, I was shocked by how vivid the memories from 40 years ago returned: Herry monster. John-John! Those purple honking space sloths. That funky, slinky “1-2-3-4-5…” song with the pinball animation. The stoop kids who recovered their toy jack with a horseshoe magnet. All of it was transportive.
I was four years old when this episode came out, which, according to the brain trust of the Children's Television Workshop, is the ideal age for me to retain this stuff. They kind of nailed that.
This episode's human actors were my childhood crew: Maria. Luis. Gordon (the second one). Weird Bob. Susan. Olivia. Ah, man – Mr. Hooper. And David. I forgot about David. But then I remembered him. He was one of my favorites.
It only took a couple of rewatches before I Googled and rabbit-holed through the entire cast and was heartened that almost all of them were still alive (besides Mr. Hooper, of course), but they also proudly spent the bulk of their careers as Sesame Street humans. You can find quotes from any one of them proclaiming it as the best gig an actor could ever hope for. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! A wonderful journey! That sort of reverent enthusiasm. All except for David.
David was played by the actor Northern Calloway from 1971 until 1989, but he died in 1990. The brief Wikipedia synopsis at the top of his page shocked me: "He was a favorite among the many viewers of Sesame Street during his time on the show, but his later career was increasingly hampered by a serious decline in his mental health until he had to be dismissed from the show. He was institutionalized and died less than 8 months after his last appearance on the show."
Those old episodes, now coated in an unavoidable sheen of luridness, lost their magic for me after I read about David. Yet, I wanted to know more about him.
*****
In 2008 an author named Michael Davis wrote "Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street," and significant portions of the book's reporting were used to seed the documentary currently showing on Amazon Prime. The doc version focuses more on the show's halcyon days, its societal impact, and Jim Henson's magical puppetry. It's a decent documentary, but I was uneasy waiting for them to mention David – or not mention David, rather. There were a few clips of him during different set pieces here and there, but he was never named. He was listed in the credits as part of the "Humans of Sesame Street." A small acknowledgment, but he was basically erased.
Because if they did mention him, then they'd have to talk about this part, which I'll summarize both from Tennessean newspaper reports and sections of the Davis book: On September 14, 1980, Northern Calloway was in Nashville to participate in a performing arts festival. While there, he'd picked up and quickly shacked up with 27-year-old Mary Stagaman. (According to many who worked closely with Calloway, this was a frequent occurrence.) But on September 19, things went haywire. According to the Nashville police report, Calloway beat Stagaman with an iron rod. He fled her house, wearing only a T-shirt, and proceeded to terrorize the Green Hills area of the city. He smashed a rock through a car window, destroyed some expensive crystal at another person's home he had entered, stole a book bag from a young kid, ran into another person's backyard, sat down, and ate fistfuls of grass. Just real batshit stuff.
When the cops came, he was hiding inside another family's garage, wild-eyed and screaming, "I'm David from Sesame Street!" He told the police officers trying to subdue him that he was with the CIA and needed to speak to President Jimmy Carter. One of the police reports stated that he'd beaten Stagaman so viciously that the metal rod actually broke.
Calloway pled guilty by reason of temporary insanity, and he was allowed to return to New York under medical supervision. Stagaman spent two months in the hospital due to her injuries and sued him for $750,000, but it was settled out of court in 1982, just two days before it was set to trial. Details of the settlement were never revealed.
The tabloids overlooked the story, but the Sesame Street higher-ups did not. Given the disturbing nature of what took place in Nashville, the Children's Television Workshop agreed Calloway had to be fired. However, there was an executive producer named Dulcy Singer there who pushed back. And here's where I'll quote directly from what Singer said in the oral history because this blew me away:
"After the incident in Nashville, I had a hard time with the front office, convincing them that we should keep Northern on the show. But it was apparent to me that he was extremely ill, so I fought to keep him. You don't fire people because they are sick."
I've fired so many people before. I wrote the names of everyone down – including those that could be safely categorized as "layoffs" – and it's a number hovering above or below 20. I either sat down with them face-to-face or had awkward shaky phone calls that usually lasted less than three minutes. I told myself these were business decisions. I never pushed back against my bosses, even when some people didn't deserve to get canned. My decisiveness in these moments – my ruthlessness – made me an excellent manager. I truly believed that at the time.
One time I fired a young guy who'd just had a baby. We met after work at a tapas bar near our office. I told him what was happening, and he just stared right through me for a few extra seconds. He was terrified and breathing heavy, waiting for me to blink or offer condolences or severance or a handbook about what he should do next, but I did no such thing. Eventually, he pushed away from the table, and it teetered a bit, rattling the water glasses. He threw open the door and walked out. I ordered a drink to celebrate my job well done.
*****
Northern Calloway not only survived the Nashville scandal, but he lasted nine more seasons. NINE. He was prescribed lithium, and Singer kept close tabs on him to make sure he was prioritizing his health and seeing his psychiatrist regularly. But in 1982, Will Lee, the actor who played Mr. Hooper, died unexpectedly. The documentary honed in on this moment and the extraordinary challenges it presented to the show. It was decided that Mr. Hooper would not retire abruptly and move someplace far away and sunny. Will Lee died, so Mr. Hooper died, too. Sesame Street needed to use this as an opportunity to teach.
I had aged out of Sesame Street by that point, but I have hazy memories of the significance of the "Farewell, Mr. Hooper" episode. I watched it a couple of days ago, and it was shattering: Big Bird is looking for Mr. Hooper so he can give him an illustration he drew but then one by one, each human on Sesame Street tells the stupid puppet bird that Mr. Hooper's dead and never coming back. Big Bird doesn't get it. "But I want him to come back!" Big Bird's voice cracked, and my throat got tight. Big Bird repeatedly asks why it has to be this way – why can't Mr. Hooper come back? "Because," says Gordon. "Just because." David decides to put off law school to run Mr. Hooper's store.
Calloway, however, deteriorated. He started doing coke along with the lithium, which led to more psychosis. There were more work-related incidents, too. One time during an argument with the musical director, Danny Epstein, Calloway bit him. More awkwardness and tension: a new teenage cast member named Alison Bartlett came on board to play Gina, an aspiring actress who worked alongside David in Mr. Hooper's store. In real life, Calloway mentored her, and she adored him, but then he showed up at her high school and proposed to her. Plus, the lithium made him fat and disoriented. He was flubbing and slurring lines. One time he went on camera with potato chip crumbs on his face. Singer had to let him go. Accompanied by a psychiatrist, she took him to a restaurant and fired him. He took it well. David's last episode was May 20, 1989.
A new character named Mr. Handford appeared on November 20, 1989. Alison Bartlett cheerily turns to the camera and explains what happened to David. "See, David doesn't live here anymore. He went to the farm to live with his grandmother. But before he left, he sold the store to Mr. Handford, so that makes Mr. Handford my new boss."
Gordon also recited a letter David sent to Elmo:
Dear Elmo,
How are you? Living on a farm is lots of fun. The country is beautiful, the air is fresh and clean, and there are even more horses and cows than there are on Sesame Street.
Love, David
PS: Say hello to everyone on Sesame Street.
Unlike Mr. Hooper's death, David went to an imaginary farm in Florida, even though in real life, the actor who played him went to an institution in upstate New York and died. Initially, Calloway's cause of death was unknown. A coroner's report later revealed that he died of excited delirium syndrome (EDS), "typically diagnosed postmortem in young adult males, disproportionally Black men, who were physically restrained at the time of death."
*****
I might be giving Dulcy Singer too much credit as Calloway's savior. I have no way of knowing how guileless she was, whether she feared lawsuits or public excoriation if she fired Calloway after the Nashville stuff. Maybe she didn't like the optics of her being a white executive firing a young black man from a show that had such a good history of progressiveness. Maybe it was a business decision, after all. She's, like, 90 now. I'll probably never know.
But I desperately want Dulcy Singer's support of Northern Calloway to be an extraordinary feat of compassion: that there was this powerful woman in charge of the country's biggest children's show who decided to fight for him despite his potential for psychotic mayhem because she determined it was the humane thing to do. And this was 1980! The vocabulary on mental health was still sparse, and those who suffered from it were considered deviants. It's truly next level is it not? Oh, and by the way: the decision not to lie to children about Mr. Hooper's death was also made by – you guessed it – Dulcy Singer. She possessed an awe-inspiring level of compassion. I want to extract some of the goodness from her heart and place it in my own. Become more thoughtful, less afraid.
Then on Sunday, I walked down to the little shopping district with my three-year-old and two-year-old toddling along. I heard some commotion behind us when a man – tall, disheveled, gesticulating, and loudly muttering scary nonsense – burst through the slow-walkers in his way. He shouted at one person, right into their face. If that man turned our direction and yelled at us or bumped us, I probably would have killed him. My children were stained with ice cream, oblivious to the potential threat, and I was pumped up with Dad Muscles and vibrating with fear. Because what if that man carried an iron rod and started swinging it as David did?
It sucks to walk through the world this way. I want to be better about that, but it's gonna take some time.
*****
One last thing: In that "Naming Barkley" episode, one of the final scenes with the Sesame Street humans is eerie – full of that luridness I'd mentioned up top. David's about to knock on Big Bird's door, but he hears Big Bird talking to what he thinks is an imaginary friend – the brown furry elephant-seeming puppet, Mr. Snuffleupagus. But David hears two different voices behind the door – Big Bird's and another deeper and raspier one. He's convinced this other voice is, in fact, the Mr. Snuffleupagus.
David runs and gathers the rest of the Sesame Street humans and tells them what he's heard. They're skeptical, yet they're taken in by David's excitement and his assurance that the existence of Mr. Snuffleupagus will finally be revealed. They follow him over to Big Bird's nest behind the door and walk into it only to find ... nothing there. Everyone's annoyed, especially Mr. Hooper, who yells at David, "Are you alright?!”
The rest of the cast slowly walks out to scold and mock David for his wild imagination, his foolishness – his craziness. David hangs his head in shame and follows the others out the door. He hears the voice again, though. This time, he thinks better of causing another scene. He just puts his hands behind his back, whistles softly, and walks away.
*****
