How Caroll Spinney Amassed a Large Net Worth and So Much More From 'Sesame Street'
You may not know Caroll Spinney by name or face, but if you have a kid, were a kid, or spent any time around kids, you'll probably recognize his voice.
Spinney is a puppeteer and the original performer behind some of Sesame Street's most beloved characters, including Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. And, while the 84-year-old stopped puppeteering the characters in 2015 (Big Bird is a huge, heavy puppet to operate, after all), he did continue to be his voice. But today, he's announced to the New York Times that he's retiring completely from Sesame Street after 50 years.
“Big Bird brought me so many places, opened my mind and nurtured my soul,” Spinney in a statement released by the Sesame Workshop. But, he says, it's time to move on. Matt Vogel, who does Count von Count on Sesame Street as well as a bunch of other Muppet characters (including my favorite, the evil Constantine from Muppets Most Wanted), will be taking over the role of Big Bird.
The ability to delight millions of children - and adults, too - all over the world is priceless, and often taken for granted. Luckily, our Big Bird doesn't seem to be overlooked: Caroll Spinney has a net worth of $8 million, according to the website Celebrity Net Worth.
It wasn't always this way: Spinney's first puppet show only brought in $0.32.
Let no one tell you that puppeteering is an easy path to riches. When Spinney put on his first puppet show, he made less than a dollar. Then again, he was only 8 years old at the time. He told The Guardian how that experience set him off on the path to Sesame Street.
When I was eight, I bought my first puppet. It was a monkey, and I paid five cents for it. I collected some scrap wood and built myself a puppet theatre. I made 32 cents with my first show, which I thought was pretty good, and that’s when I knew I would be a puppeteer when I grew up.
Actually, making 32 cents off a five-cent investment is pretty good. Maybe you should start subtlety leaving sock puppets around for your children.
That all changed when Spinney met Jim Henson.
The pair met at - where else? - a puppet show, at the Salt Lake City puppeteers’ festival in 1969. Spinney was performing and, according to The New York Times, it didn't go so smoothly.
Henson watched him try to perform a multimedia show that went gradually awry. As Spinney recalled, Henson came to him afterward to say, “I liked what you were trying to do.” Soon after, Henson invited Spinney to play two Muppet characters that were being developed for Sesame Street which made its debut on public television later that year.
That encounter began a nearly five-decade-long career with show. In the beginning, Spinney says in his memoir, The Wisdom of Big Bird (and the Dark Genius of Oscar the Grouch), he almost left the show because he couldn't find a way to make ends meet in New York City on his Sesame Street salary. He was convinced by one of the puppet builders - a man named Kermit Love - to give it a little more time. Thankfully, he did. And his salary climbed.
A New York Times article from 1998 reported that he made more than $100,000 a year playing Big Bird and Oscar. (It also notes that the show is where he met his wife, Debra, who was a secretary in the Muppet office - Sesame Street really has given him everything.)
At the beginning of the decade, Spinney's salary was more than $300,000.
Since The Sesame Workshop is a nonprofit, it has to release its financial information every year, including a list of the salaries of key employees. In 2010, Spinney made the list, the Atlantic reports, with a whopping salary of $314,072.
However, in the past three years of financial disclosures available on The Sesame Workshop website, Spinney was no longer on the list of highest paid employees. The only performer who made the list was former head writer Joey Mazzarino (salary: $535,033!), who is now working on Jim Carrey's Showtime show Kidding, which is also about the world of children's puppet-based television programming. As of the most recent info available, no writer/performers made the list of highest-paid key employees.
There's Also a Big Bird Book and Movie
If you want to know more about what it's like to see the world through the eyes of a big, yellow, perpetual 6-year-old, Spinney isn't keeping any secrets. In addition to The Wisdom of Big Bird, there's also the documentary I Am Big Bird, where the traces his life and career. The heartwarming doc gives a sense of what it's like to be a part of the Sesame Street family - beyond the salary numbers.
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