In 1975, the Knickerbocker Company, known for making dolls of Joe Raposo's later muse Raggedy Ann, released the first 3 Sesame Street plush toys.

Imagine that, the first plush toys in the same year as Sesame's sixth season.

For the five years prior, there were no Grover dolls on toy store shelves.

The Children's Television Workshop intentionally dragged its feet on this from a desire to produce merchandise that was both high quality and educational, which meant they started with books and records.

Toys came in 1972, initially released by the Topper Company.

The idea of these toys was to continue the educational goals of Sesame, and you can see that from products like Sherlock Hemlock's Hidden Answer jigsaw puzzles, and Sesame Street walking Letters.

But most famously, the Topper line contained hand puppets.

Truly, puppets were the most obvious choice of merchandise for a show populated by Jim Henson's iconic Muppet designs, These Topper puppets came with little instructions explaining all the different types of social readiness learning kids could engage in with their puppets, which ensured the toys fit with CTW's mission statement.

And so there were Topper puppets of Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, Oscar and the Cookie Monster.

These toys would later be joined by Count Von Count, Harry Monster and Roosevelt Franklin.

Yeah, we're headed in an obvious direction here again.

Once again, this merchandise line contains no girls.

You might think I've really lost the plot here, talking this much about Sesame merchandise, but I think Sesame merch is as important to discuss as the show itself.

The book Sesame Street, a Celebration, 40 Years of Life on the Street, quotes Tough Pigs founder Danny Horn as saying.

Who remembers watching TV?

You watch it and then it's over and you turn it off.

But you could carry the toys around with you.

You could sleep with them and break them and find them under the couch six months after you thought they were lost forever.

For kids growing up in the 70s, Sesame Street wasn't ATV show.

It was part of the environment.

We ate off Cookie Monster placemats and slept in Big Bird sheets.

Nobody dreamed of living on Sesame Street.

We didn't have to.

Sesame Street lived with us, so merchandise was crucial in that regard.

The show was as much about reading the monster at the end of this book and playing with your hairy monster gym mobile as it was about watching TV.

Today, experts refer to this kind of project as transmedia, a word that doesn't have to do with us trans girls, but does suggest that the media transcends a simple TV show format.

In other words, it's less about the kind of dolls that Pedro Pascal is protecting and more about the kind of dolls that you can buy at Sesame Place anyway.

As Walwind and Hall write in their academic journal article Race and Rag Dolls, the immersive nature of children's trans media play produces powerful and durable emotional attachments to franchise characters.

We remember the Sesame Gang not only because of their TV appearances, but because of books and toys and clothes and records.

So if you ask me, checking which characters got featured in these transmedia products is a great way to track which characters were most important, both to the workshop itself and to audiences at home.

Unlike Topper or Bombas from last week, Knickerbocker initially only made three rag doll plushies.

You can doubtlessly guess two of them.

The show's immediate breakout stars Ernie and Bert, but the third?

It wasn't Big Bird or the Cookie Monster or Grover.

It was Betty Lou.

It sure seems like this was a statement.

It says for certain that the main girl on Sesame Street in 1975 was pigtailed, peppy Betty Lou on par with Bert and Ernie on toy shelves across the country.

Don't you remember Betty Lou?

Knickerbocker seemed to ask.

All those great Betty Lou sketches and songs and jokes over the years.

You don't.

Well, what if we have it all backwards?

Merch can be cyclical.

The more often that characters appeared in merchandise, the more they'd feel like main characters, even if they weren't always appearing on the show itself.

After all, as Walwind and Hall put it, the scope of licensed products for daily consumption encourages children to eat, drink, sleep, and live in character.

ATV show alone can never do that.

So Betty Lou is a rag doll and that makes her important.

But was Betty Lou ever a main character on the show or just a main character in merchandise lines like this one?

Do we remember Betty Lou because of merch or do we remember Betty Lou because of her appearances on Sesame Street?

Was Betty.

Lou ever a character at all?

I'm Becca Petunia from toughpigs.com.

Today, we'll be looking to answer these questions as we explore more from the early seasons of Sesame Street.

Welcome.

Back.

To a.

Prairie Dawn Companion.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Starlight Hotel takes great pride in presenting the world's favorite 6 year old entertainer, Miss Prairie Dawn, come on, girls.

Girls, girls go do girl stuff.

Yes.

Can you play a song with a beats?

Tracking Betty Lou isn't easy.

My pal Michelle Richardson of the Muppetergy Podcast once joked that this show could be called Finding Betty Elusive, a pun that I think is too tortured even for me.

The problem is simple.

As discussed last week, Betty Lou was made from an Anything Muppet, the one designers call Little Hot Pink, and given a blue gingham dress and a stock pigtailed wig that was used previously in Episode 1 for Frank Oz's Anything Family member.

What Betty Lou wasn't given was a consistent performer or name.

While she eventually would be called Betty Lou on the show, there are plenty of episodes where she has no name at all and others where she's called everything from Wendy to Lucy.

So if I was going to talk about Betty elusive, OK, it's it's kind of growing on me.

If I was going to talk about Betty Lou for this episode, I needed a lot of help.

Firstly, I spent a lot of time chatting with Muppet Wiki admin Tony Whitaker, who helped me sort the wheat.

And by that I mean clips with Betty Lou in them from the chaff.

And by that I mean clips with all those other boring Muppets like Ernie and Bert.

But I also wanted to talk to a guest on this, a puppeteer who knows a lot about making characters out of simple puppet designs.

Join me over here in the Guest.

Corner for a talk with my dear friend Staff Scheer.

All right, it's Showtime, people.

Oh, welcome.

Oh, welcome to our little play Play.

I'm so pleased to introduce my guest today from the creatures of Yes and Puppet Up it's staff Scheer.

Hello Becca, thank you so much for having me back on another podcast.

I'm so excited to do this.

Yeah, staff, I'm really excited that you're here.

You know you are the 1st guest on this podcast, so congratulations but.

Oh, I'd like to thank my mother.

I truly, I truly couldn't think of a person I'm more wanted to have on the show than you.

Because, you know, we're taking a, we're taking a look obviously on this show at sort of the history of female characters on Sesame Street.

So really, who better to talk to than than one of my friends who is a female puppeteer and definitely has a lot of opinions on this stuff, Especially because we're going to be talking today about stuff from the first couple seasons of Sesame Street.

And I always associate your stuff, stuff between the the stuff that you do on on on puppet up and the stuff you do on your own projects, most notably the creatures of yes.

And we'll get to that in a second.

But I associate your stuff with that very old school Muppet feel.

Oh yeah, So it's wonderful.

I definitely thought that that would be a a, a good reason to have you on So stuff do you wanna do you wanna tell everybody a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?

Yeah, yeah, I, as you mentioned, I'm a puppeteer.

I, I've done some stuff for, for Henson and I'm a recurring cast member in puppet up there, you know, at an improv show for adult audiences.

And you know, for anyone who doesn't know in Puppet up we, we don't just do improv.

We also do recreations of Jim and Jane Henson's and Frank Oz's variety show material that they like, you know, did on the Edward Sullivan show and stuff.

And then creatures of yes, the other project of mine and Jacob Graham's that you mentioned is, you know, also vintage oriented.

We film it on cameras from the 1970s and, you know, are basically trying to create a reverse time capsule with it and watching these fantastic clips that you've mined from, you know, the first season of Sesame Street.

I I, I do love this old material and yeah, it, it I'm, I'm glad you think of me when you see this stuff, because I, I see it and my heart just glows.

I I love how puppity the puppets are like Jim just like going like wild with Guy Smiley like just like in some of Jim's early stuff, I feel like he's like making fun of puppets as he.

Does his puppets.

And it's like just fabulous.

And then Betty Lou, of course.

And who's, who's the little like boy version of Betty Lou?

Does that puppet have a name?

Which one are we talking about?

I mean.

We'll get into this.

What colour is he?

He's pink.

He's like literally Betty Lou.

Oh no, that character does not have a name.

OK, so that that absolute blank slate of a whatnot and Betty Lou and like, you know, the beginning, middle and end puppets, I'm sorry, I'm jumping all over.

Maybe, Yeah.

I mean, we'll get to all of this.

You're you're getting, you're we're getting ahead, but we will get to all of this.

Yeah, so without comprehensively listing puppets, I just was really struck by this early material, by the how simple the style of the puppets are.

They're so puppety, so simple, so abstract.

So it's just a joy to watch this stuff.

I mean, like I was saying, you know, again about thinking of you, I'm a big fan of the creatures of, Yes, the project you do with Jacob Graham.

You know, I was lucky enough to attend the New York premiere of the creatures of yes movie, which was a wonderful experience.

And you know, that's that's very much the style of creatures of yes.

Are these very puppity puppets.

Like you said, you know one of the main one of the main characters that Jacob plays is is a little.

I guess you could describe her as a witch, although I'm not sure.

Yeah, sometimes.

She certainly practices witchery.

She.

Practices witchery.

I don't know if she would approve of me calling her a witch, though.

She probably has a a different word for it, but Mary Broom fellow looks a lot honestly like Betty Lou or or Prairie Dawn or this this this pink boy you're talking about?

It's a very similar shape to the puppet and simplicity to it.

And and I love how that simplicity really lets you, you know, expand and build build character and personality so nicely, which is something you guys do a wonderful job of on creatures of yes, and also something that you definitely see a lot of in the early days of The Muppets.

Obviously so many of like the most memorable Muppets come out of this era, you know, Kermit and and and Grover and Bert and Ernie and Rolf and all of these things.

And they all have such simple designs.

But you know, I guess the question and the question, you know, that my, my audience knows we're exploring today because I mentioned it in the the part before I brought you on.

Is Betty Lou a character that has any interesting elements at all, especially when compared to those other characters?

Because because The thing is like Betty Lou is basically the first female Sesame Street Muppet basically.

And and it's just so interesting to think about her sort of in comparison to that stuff.

So before we dive back in, and I know Stoff, you already planted some of the seeds, I do want to ask, you know, Stoff, you are a big Muppet fan.

You grew up with The Muppets.

It, it absolutely.

You know, I know especially Dark Crystal, which you know, I don't know, maybe I'll get to 1 day in a side episode, even though my focus is Sesame.

But but you know, do you remember the character of Betty Lou from like any books you had or episodes or or clips you remember as a kid?

Or do you remember?

I mean, you, you probably remember Prairie Dawn from stuff because she showed up a little more, but you may not even remember that.

And I'm real curious.

Well, I do remember Prairie Dawn.

As for Betty Lou, I will confess this.

I feel comfortable confessing this to you since you're you know who I hope becomes the next Pope Becca.

So, confession time.

I do not remember Betty Lou.

I do not think that I was aware of Betty Lou.

Now, that being said, you know, watching these clips that you sent me to prepare for this, there's a familiarity.

There's there's this sense of nostalgia because, you know, there's there's elements that, you know, you pointed out become things of Prairie Dawns and, you know, Fran Brill is performing her And then, you know, Fran Brill then performed Prairie Dawn, right.

Yeah.

And and Frank Oz is doing her with like, you know, sometimes it's just literally Miss Piggy's voice.

Absolutely.

It's it's a.

Proto.

You know, years before Miss Piggy.

Yeah.

So there's all these recognizable elements that that as I'm watching it probably for the first time because, you know, I don't, I don't think I watched a lot of the first season growing up, but I'm I'm watching this.

They weren't they weren't on reruns.

They didn't rerun these you.

Know, but like, yeah, there there's a there's a kind of pseudo nostalgia that that hits me right away.

And also the sketches are really funny.

Yeah, we're going to get to that in a second, obviously.

But yeah, so you, you were saying, you know, one of the things is this was a character who basically, basically did not appear on the show.

What I sent you, I sent you a bunch of clips from 1969 through 1975.

And we ended at 1975 because in 1975, the first Sesame Street plush toys were released.

And the first 3 Sesame Street plush toys made were Bert, Ernie and Betty Lou.

Wow, wow.

What I sent you was probably about 50% of the sketches that featured Betty Lou at all.

A character who appeared in books, appeared in merch.

I have a lamp in my room, a lamp shade in my office that has like Bert and Ernie and the Count on it, and it also has Betty Lou on it.

I have a little PVC figure of Betty Lou.

You can't see it, but over there I I I can tell you that Betty Lou was around in books and merch, but what I sent you is basically everything Betty Lou did between 1975, everywhere between 1969 and 1975.

She basically will not appear again after the last clip I sent you until the early mid 90s when they attempted to bring her back in an attempt to get more female characters on the show.

I I officially placed my hat in the ring to play Betty Lou.

Or is she recast?

Is she recast?

She currently has no performer.

She hasn't appeared on the show since like 95.

OK, Sesame, if you're listening, I am free.

So let's get into those sketches though, because again, not to not to repeat too much of the preamble.

So the first.

Sketch that I sent you is technically not a Betty Lou's sketch, but the first sketch that I wanted to talk about with you and I want to, you know, bring to the audience's attention as well, was one of those Henson variety show sketches that you were talking about before.

And it's commonly called Happy Girl Meets a Monster AKA.

A The Beautiful Day sketch.

I just enjoy loving a beautiful day, and I enjoy enjoying it too.

Mighty die Dee die snore.

Fresh corundridge.

There are nice things about rainy days, too.

The first version of this was from 1963, although I sent you a clip from 1969 from from a a a a performance.

And in that we have a pink little girl puppet.

It is basically the same anything Muppet that will become Betty Lou and also Prairie Dawn and also, you know, the Bubsy twins and all of these other pink characters with yarn hair.

Just like just like Betty Lou, a similar dress, but I'll be at a different color.

It's not Betty Lou, but it's basically the seeds.

And I thought this was really important to talk about because this is represents sort of like an early era of Henson having little girl characters used in different sketches and used in different commercials.

You know, we see it in Shrinkel and Stretchel, which was an old commercial we see it in.

In Sam and friends occasionally and.

What did you think of this sketch?

I mean, I guess we should tell the audience what happens in the sketch.

You want to take it or should I?

Yeah, I'll.

Why don't I attempt it?

And you can fill in the blanks.

Sure, sure.

So there's a little girl and you know she's a girl because she's pink and voiced by Frank Oz, and she's just like.

I think it might be.

I'm going to pause.

I think it I wrote Frank Oz on the sheet I gave you.

I think it's Jim Henson, though I think both of them are Jim, and it there Jim's performing to a prerecorded track that makes.

Sense, Yeah, yeah.

But anyway, continue.

That's my that's on me because I sent you, I sent you labeling who performed and who performed her and everything.

And I think this one is Jim.

Well, that's wonderful because, you know, everyone celebrates Frank Oz for his fantastic drag performances, but I, I really enjoy gyms as well.

And and, you know, as time went on, I he didn't do them as much, no.

No, no.

No, so so this little pink girl is just like blissing out enjoying a beautiful day and everything that she comments on this wonderfully ugly blue monster who I I you know, I've always liked that monster, but I didn't know who he was.

So I looked him up and it was it was cool to learn that his name is the beautiful day monster from this.

Yeah, entirely because of this sketch.

He's a character.

Folks at home probably would recognize him.

He shows up in the background of a lot of Muppet stuff and early Sesame stuff, and then even modern Muppet stuff.

They rebuilt him for the 2011 movie, so he still shows up from time to time.

It's such a fantastic design and such a great He he had so much like flavour and texture to every scene he's in.

Yes, absolutely.

So yeah, this this fabulous, ugly, belligerent monster, you know, she'll be like, oh, look at the look at this nice thing or that nice thing.

And whatever it is, he either kills it or destroys it or like he's, he's just like messing.

He does take out a gun and shoot the.

Birds bird, she's like the bird is singing so beautiful.

And he shoots the bird.

You're right, it was not even like a cartoon gun like he takes out like a metal gun.

Yeah, no, he brutally murders a bird.

And, you know, I, I read some major themes of female empowerment in this sketch.

I, I thought it was a very auspicious beginning for the Betty Lou puppet because, you know, she's, she's staying like cool and collected while interacting with this, you know, monster that's like, you know, three to four times as big as she is and.

Or it is 3 to 4 times as big as she is in the beginning, but.

Yeah, right.

As she starts talking about how much, how wonderful he is and how beautiful he is, he starts shrinking and it's an incredible puppetry effect because some of it is done without cuts.

Right, right, just backing the puppet away from the camera.

There's some backing the puppet away and it looks like there's like some like with or behind or within the fur almost.

There's one point where it looks like 1 comes out from the fur.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I have to, I, I have to rewatch it.

But there is definitely some backing away.

But she she shrinks him down to size and then smacks him with a family swatter and and he's like you.

Got to talk your troubles down to a size where you can handle them.

And it's, it's, it's a really cute, cute sketch.

And I like what you're saying about like, this idea of like female empowerment because on the one hand, it's just like, this is just, you know, oh, she's so happy and so girly and she loves the beauty of nature.

But like, she's assertive and taking charge of this situation in a way that I really liked.

Yeah, yeah, she and it's also like, you know, there's like, I I feel like it's working on multiple levels and some of them are heady levels.

Like she recognized this pattern that this monster is like basically the antithesis to anything that's like has positive, that she has a positive attitude towards.

So she takes a positive attitude towards him, recognizing that he's ruined everything that she feels positively towards.

So it will somehow ruin him when she's positive towards him.

So this is that's like really high level.

And but then it's, you know, it's, it's like there's because of the abstract style, there's room for this like high level cognition with what while still doing like simple Punch and Judy, like swatting the the cute little monster with a fly swatter after she shrinks him down.

So again, I I loved this and in my mind I felt like this had to be included and had to be addressed, even though it's not on Sesame Street and also not really Betty Lou.

The character is not named in this.

Apparently in Jim Henson's Red Book, she's referred to as Little Girl Sue or Suzy, and in a later TV special, a Muppet puppet play from 1969.

This I just think is an amazing fun fact, so I have to say it.

And then we'll get into the real Betty Lou stuff in a second.

Harry the Hipster calls her Insipidia.

That is, that is amazing.

And you you did have to include that.

I, you know, I wish, I wish we had seen more of Insipidia and, and because I like this assertiveness and, and again, it, it feels almost like we're already seeing the subversion of the like typical girly girl character.

Yeah.

And it's also, you know, I, I feel like something I want to like, you know, put into this conversation is like Betty Lou threw a drag lens.

Because This is why.

This is why I have you around.

This is why I have you around.

Oh, it's good to know why I'm around.

But yeah, the, you know, as, as Ru Paul famously asserted, we're all born naked and the rest is drag.

And, you know, in this early material, we're seeing Betty Lou as somewhat literally a drag character in that she's being performed by men.

But then I would, I would say that in some of the later material, which I, I, you know, won't spoil yet, but even once she's played by Fran Brill, like, you know, it's, I would argue it is still in a sense drag performance because of the ways that they're playing with and subverting these little girl tropes of being pink and being happy and being.

La La La La La La la.

LA, you know, it's like they're not just doing it.

They're not just saying, yeah, the girls are pink and they go La, La, La, La, La, La, LA.

You know, they're like, yeah, they're like they're performing gender and they're and they're playing with the cliches that like were available in like children's entertainment and television at that time.

Well, let's actually jump ahead.

Jump ahead into Sesame Street then.

So we talked a little bit actually last time.

Not you.

You weren't there stuff.

But we talked a little bit last time about the anything Muppets of the early Sesame Street years, which were, you know, really just utility players.

Different parts could be attached.

They'd be performed by different people.

They'd be dubbed in different ways.

And for a while we saw a bunch of that with with characters that looked like Betty Lou.

Sometimes they were purple, sometimes they were pink.

Like Insipidia.

They're like kind of Betty Lou, but not Betty Lou.

One of the first, I mean some of the first one times that we we really see a character who is like definitely going to be Betty Lou is like everyone likes ice cream, which I didn't ask you to watch, but it's it's a song with again, that anything Muppet, not given a name, not anything but she sings.

It's kind of fun, but the first sketch that I.

And and I assume that that song that like the message is like contempt for people with lactose intolerance is is that is that correct?

It is.

You know it's.

Like just toughen up and eat some ice cream.

You baby, you're you're not going to get tolerant if you don't like take in a lot of dairies.

So just listen.

The first episode of Sesame Street, which we discussed on the previous episode, spends about 15 straight minutes just talking about the dairy industry.

Oh my gosh.

Really.

So maybe you're right.

I was just messing around.

They, they, they, Oh my gosh, they, they were just like, drink milk.

It's good for your bones for like 15 minutes.

No, they sing a gentle Simon and Garfunkel esque song about a cow that takes about 8 1/2 minutes and then Ernie drinks milk and talks about how much he likes it.

Wow, my family have been dairy farmers for 400 years so I need to watch this.

I'll send it to you.

I'll send.

It to you.

OK.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Stuff I didn't know.

I didn't know that your family was dairy farmers.

I do want to talk about that.

The real first.

The real first Betty Lou sketch that I.

Think you're keeping us on track?

I'm really trying.

Here's the thing I know from our other I was actually listening to our other podcast recording the one we did on Yolanda the other day where we went on a slight tangent about how Muppet Classic Theatre makes you transgender.

We did.

We did release that to the public, saying that that is a thing that happened.

Yeah, so, so I knew that I had to be a little organized.

So I want to talk about this sketch, which weirdly teams Betty Lou then named Lucy Jones.

She doesn't have a name of a definitive name yet Teams her up once again with the so-called Beautiful Day Monster.

Yeah.

The chemistry between them is undeniable.

Oh, that Big Blue monster and that little pink girl.

Yeah.

So I want to this is of course, pick your Pat, pick your pet.

In just a few moments, a lovely little girl will get to choose one of these animals for her very own pet.

Pick Your Pet was a early Guy Smiley game show, although I believe he's called Sunny Friendly in this one.

Still, that's right.

Yeah, and he is out there, man.

He sure is.

So it's it's, it's kind of like the dating game or something where.

It's very much the dating game.

Yeah, where Lucy Jones gets again, Betty Lou will just call her for the sake of consistency.

Gets given the traits of a couple of different pets.

You know, 1 is a dog, one is Baskerville, the dog from the Purina commercials.

The other is of course Little Bird and then the third is the Beautiful Day Monster and she has to choose which one she wants as a pet and she chooses the Beautiful Day monster.

To spoil the end of this clip that is from 1970.

So I think I can safely spoil a clip from 55 years ago.

Yeah, if you're not caught up on that then just quit the Muppet fandom.

Exactly.

Just leave.

You're not wanted.

But one thing that's really cute, one thing that's no, no, no, please, please, please.

One thing that's really cute here is that Betty Lou is extremely excited that she has this ugly giant blue monster as her pet now.

And you can see that you picked a big, ugly, horrible monster.

He's beautiful, Beautiful.

Hello, Pat Head.

Yeah, there's, you know, I, I see what you're saying about, you know, I, I, I, I, I'm totally with you on the argument that in a sense, Betty Lou doesn't have a fixed character, that there's an amorphousness to her, you know, being played by different people, having different character traits based on the situation that she's in.

But there's something that's really wonderful and trick story about that.

And like her, the simple design of the character supports it.

And you know, like, I feel like you can read tea leaves with her, like you, if you, if you want to take the opposite approach and be like, OK, this is the material.

Sometimes she's like this and sometimes she's like this.

So who is she?

Like if if you start from the presupposition that she has a character, one of the things you would say is she seems to have some kind of affinity for monsters.

This is absolutely something that that I, I, I realized in going through these is at least especially early on in the, the Frank Oz stuff and then a little bit at the end that we'll talk about.

When we're, when we're done.

There is that sense of subversion, right, that that Betty Lou is this pink girly girl character, but she she has this this sort of relationship with the beautiful day monster.

If we're if we're taking Insipidia as like the the logical first step here.

And you know, there's another sketch later that I'll jump ahead slightly.

It's called Wendy Goes Shopping and it's again Frank Oz, and I feel like that's the one where she sounds most like Miss Piggy.

Totally.

But in that sketch, this this would have been the same year in 1970.

She keeps getting distracted by how much she loves to look at worms.

Yeah, yeah.

Look at that, It's a little worm.

Hello, little worm.

Hello there.

Oh how cute the little worm is.

And, and I felt like there's something that you could do with the fact that, like, she likes monsters and worms, but she's also this girly, girly character.

Yeah, yeah, there's absolutely something there.

And you know, the, you know, I, we don't have to jump here, but I, I, I see a connective through line all the way to that, that song later on about how women can be anything, you know?

Yeah, I will.

I I do want to save those for last.

OK.

So, so we'll hold on that, we'll put a pin in that, but there's a through line for a lot of stuff.

A lot of stuff from the 1975, the 3/19/75 clips.

I feel like there's a through line to all three of them, or at least two of them here.

But that'll be a good teaser so people keep listening.

But.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Oh well, the monster thing is definitely the three.

Line yeah, that's the other one.

But you know so well other than that, were there any of these other like Frank Oz era clips that you wanted to discuss that you thought there was anything interesting in?

Otherwise, we'll start getting into when Fran Brill took over, which was pretty much in the second season of Sesame.

Street.

Yeah, well, I guess the the only thing I'll oh, there's oh, there's all these Frank Oz ones.

OK, just because we didn't mention it the the Mr.

and Misses game.

Oh, yes, as you pointed out, like it's not about her.

She's just kind of a, you know, playing the lovely assistant role to Guy Smiley on this game show about a couple and it's a couple of monsters now.

Oh my gosh, there's so much drag here because Frank Oz is doing like this female Grover prototype has as like the the the wife of this monster couple and it's and it's the beautiful day monster.

It's the beautiful day monster again, yeah.

And he's and like these monsters are like, really like wild and like, you know, like, you know, like doing like alarming, somewhat threatening stuff.

And, and Betty Lou has to like, you know, because she like, is moving the monsters around the set.

She's like dealing with them very fearlessly.

So even though it's not about her, you still see this juxtaposition of the delicate little girl who's just like, yeah, whatever.

I'm.

I'm leading this giant blue monster that could eat me into this booth.

That's fine.

And that that sketch, the Mr.

and Missus game, which again, is is clearly like a riff on like the newly weds game or something like that was the first time she's called Betty Lou.

It Guy Smiley says her name once She has no lines in the sketch.

That sketch is also really interesting because even though it's the beautiful day monster who says it, that sketch is cited by some of the Sesame Street team.

It it's mentioned in the book St.

Gang that that sketch is actually the origin of Cookie Monster's personality.

Yeah, that's.

Right.

Frank Oz is playing the Beautiful Day Monster in that.

And Guy Smiley tells the Beautiful Day Monster that he could win, you know, like a fabulous all expense paid vacation or a cookie.

And the Beautiful Day Monster just gets so excited that he can win a cookie.

That nothing else matters.

Oh, boy.

What?

What?

What do you think, dear?

Oh, it's a dear house.

Oh, you want a Hawaiian vacation and new car and new house and new money?

Yeah, I do.

But, well, you decide, dear.

You know how you love cookies, Cookie.

Yeah.

And that was apparently the moment when the Sesame writers were like, we need to make a whole character that just acts like that all the time.

Yeah, Oh my gosh.

You know, I and I had read about this sketch, but I'd never seen it until I until you sent it to me.

And it's it's so good.

You know, obviously anyone who wants to see the origin of Cookie Monster should watch it.

But also like the way that Jim Henson and Frank Oz take it so seriously.

It's so stupid and they're taking it so seriously.

Guy Smiley isn't like, what are you doing?

Like you should take the prize.

That's like new money in a new house and new car.

Like clearly like he's like everyone's giving space for beautiful day monster to make this really important and difficult decision about whether to like become upper middle class or to have a cookie it.

Needs to be clear, it is a cookie.

It's not even like Guy Smiley offers him a lifetime supply of cookies.

Yeah, it is one cookie.

And this whole drawn out, let's do another episode about that female proto Grover, because if there's more of her, she's she's.

Unfortunately, no.

Alas.

But wait, let's give her a shout out.

I love how she's so supportive of her, of her bizarre husband.

Because if you haven't seen this clip, none of this is going to make any sense to you.

We're not doing a great job of describing it, I guess.

Or maybe we're doing too good of a job.

Hopefully we're making it sound intriguing at the.

There is there is a moment where when when beautiful day monster is trying to decide she's like, well, dear, I know how much you love cookies.

Yeah, and he's like, you know, Yeah.

And the he leaves space.

He's like, well, you would like a new car, right?

She's like, and you and you would like a whole bunch of money, right?

And a new house well, and and that's when she's like, oh, but I do know that you love cookies so I, I really want you to make this decision and I really.

Appreciate that they're there for each other.

That's a really healthy couple.

Yeah.

I mean, listen, he objectively made the wrong choice.

Like I, I also have a really complex, mostly almost entirely negative feeling about late stage capitalism.

But I I do understand that I I live in a society where I need that money to be able to access goods and services.

You know, yeah, I suppose that with the resources made available to him with an unspecified fortune, he would be able to procure more than one cookies, correct.

I, I guess, I, I guess you're right that it, it was not a, it was not a self optimizing choice for sure.

Yeah, I mean again, and I and I do appreciate though I do appreciate his, his, you know, looking past material material like it's a cookie is also a material good.

Yeah, you know it.

Gosh, now I want to see like the, the like backstage documentary where you get to see Betty Lou be like, I can't believe he chose the cookie.

This is, is no one going to is no one going to say anything about it?

Because I, I think Betty Lou, like, knows, you know, like she knows this is silly.

Well, and that that's, that's an interesting thing too, because I feel like, I feel like, and this, this takes us into this takes us into the, the Fran Brill era in, in season 2.

And for the record, I, I think this is the first time I've actually said Fran Brill on this podcast because in episode 1, we only talked about season 1 of or episode 1 of the show.

And Fran Brill joined the show in season 2.

She was hired by Jim Henson.

She was the first female puppeteer hired by Jim Henson or the first female like Muppet puppeteer.

I mean, obviously they were female puppeteers long before.

And and that's his partnership with Jane.

Yeah, well, and I was about to say Jane was never hired per SE.

So usually they say Bran was the first one who he hired versus Jane obviously.

And we talked about Jane in the first episode too.

Jane obviously was such an important collaborator and and and contributor and all of these things.

But it's a different relationship is what I'm what I'm trying to trying to say here.

So Rand Brill takes over in season 2 Betty Lou.

She takes over Betty Lou from Frank Oz.

She also takes over Little Bird, who didn't really have a super consistent performer and does a few other roles.

She introduces Prairie Dawn and we're going to be talking about Prairie Dawn soon on this show, but not in this episode.

You got, you got to make.

You got to make the people wait.

Yeah, yeah, you can't just lead with Prairie Dawn bursting out of the gate.

Exactly.

No.

Then no one would listen.

But no one will listen to future episodes.

I mean, but part of part of The thing is after season 2, Fran Brill did not work full time on Sesame Street for years.

She would often do books and records or come in or like books on tape or, or records occasionally would do sketches.

But she was not around that much after this season, which is why you start to see Betty Lou start to be performed by other people again after season 2.

It's a little unusual, but you know, we're going to get into a little bit more of this in the future because I need to do a little bit more research into why this was exactly.

She did some other acting and other voiceover roles in this time.

We'll we'll take a deeper look.

But right now I, I didn't want to address.

So Fran Brill is here, and Fran Brill, I think has a pretty different take on Betty Lou a lot of the time.

The first sketch with Fran Brill as Betty Lou to air is the beginning, middle and end sketch that you talked about earlier.

Oh.

Yeah, all stories have a beginning and an end.

And here to demonstrate this to you are my friends.

Beginning and end.

Hey there.

How are you?

Hi.

Now which one of you guys is beginning and which is end?

Oh, well, I say I'm beginning.

Yes.

And I'm end.

I see.

OK fellas, let's hear your story.

And it's so funny to me, and I wrote this in my notes, and, you know, I shared my notes with you.

This sketch feels to me a lot like the kind of thing that we would later associate with Fran Brill's signature character, Prairie Dawn, where she's like kind of the host and kind of doesn't have the patience for what's going on.

We see by the end, which very much to me is what I associate with Fairy Dawn and her pageants that she would always do and her her kind of letter of the day stuff with Cookie Monster.

We'll, we'll get into that.

Obviously not now this is about Betty Lou, but in this Betty Lou tries to explain beginning, middle and end with the help of three characters who are, I guess, the personification of beginning, middle and end.

Yeah, yeah.

And.

Things don't go ideally because beginning and end can't get their acts in order and middle can't shut up.

The fearsome dragon was standing guard at the tower where the witch had imprisoned the three Knights who had eaten the magic radish at the banquet to celebrate the success of the enchanted fairy who had dispelled the curse of the dismal druid which the witch of the Western would wove the incredible invisible cloak which only lived happily ever after.

This is true.

This is true.

Yeah.

And it's.

I mean, it's kind of.

Oh, I was going to say, it's like the first time we're seeing Betty Lou as a straight man in the vaudevillian sense.

I, which is the only sense I talk about straightness in.

Same.

Yeah, but I guess she's a bit of a straight man all the way back as Insipidia as, you know, like she.

Technically a different character, Technically a different.

Character, but yeah, but Little Pink Puppet being like representing the forces of order rather than the forces of chaos.

Which again, I feel like become so much of like Prairie Dawn's whole thing later on and the duos of Prairie Dawn and Grover and Prairie Dawn and Cookie Monster that we'll start to see, you know, in the in like in the 80s and 90s up up through today.

But that idea of like this little pink character as the straight man?

Yeah.

Which there's something there and I feel like if we really wanted to get Gendery on this, and I know you and you know me, so we're going to there's something to be said about how like.

Women are not the.

Fun ones.

Women are the sensible ones is like something that I feel like you could that's like the negative read you could have on this, right.

And you know, I'm clearly not saying that I believe that.

But like there is that kind of stereotype of like the nagging wife or like the the the babysitter or the teacher or any of those kind of like sensible roles that are always foils to a character who just wants to have fun.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

And that's, you know, this speaks very much to why I, I don't feel regarding your observation that she doesn't have a fixed character.

I agree.

And I don't see that as a criticism.

I see that as a strength because in a sketch like this where you know, if, if you're trying to like, ask about implicit cultural messages in it, you would walk away saying, oh, they're saying that girls can't be funny, but at least she is.

Pretty funny too, for what it's worth, the straight man role is funny because The Muppets have always been very good at making sure that the straight man was still funny.

Oh yeah, well, and, and you know, they, they're literally better than humans are doing deadpan when they, when they look at the camera, they, they, they're just really good at not moving their faces.

So they're, they're deadpan is just superlative.

So she's funny in her own way, but you know, yeah, she's, she's the the while she doesn't get to be the wild and crazy one, she is the smartest person in the room.

So there's you can see female empowerment from that angle.

And then because the character is not fixed, you do get to see her be a loose cannon at other times in other sketches.

I like that.

God, You're warming me up.

You're warming me to Betty Lou.

You're warming me to Betty Lou.

Yeah, yeah, the the the amorphousness is, is a strength.

She's she's, she's like a generic female Loki.

Well, I don't know if maybe we're getting too far there, but you know, not.

Far enough.

And that's why I invite you on to things, you know, But one of the, one of the, the most interesting things is that in this era, Betty Lou starts appearing on what we what we call the street scenes of Sesame Street.

So we talked a little bit actually about this in the first episode too.

But for folks just jumping on the way Sesame Street was was filmed and was conceived and all of these things and is still put together this way is that you have certain scenes that are filmed on the Sesame Street set with the human characters with Gordon and Maria and and and Susan and Linda and everybody.

And then you have other things that are filmed as interstitial segments that are are sort of mixed throughout the episode, right?

The street scenes, the so-called St.

scenes were different in every episode.

Every episode has different St.

scenes, has unique St.

scenes.

Whereas the sketches could kind of be shuffled up and dealt throughout the episodes.

They're they'd appear multiple times in a season.

Some of them would continue to run for decades as, as sketches that you would see.

And So what that means is that in, in season 2, we see Betty Lou get involved in the so the so-called lot of Sesame Street a little bit more.

And in particular, there's one scene that I I sent you where she has to count how many nails are in a board that I thought was incredibly boring.

Betty Lou?

Yeah, Betty Lou.

You see what we have here?

A board.

A board and in the board are what?

Those sharp things.

Those are nails.

Those sharp things are nails.

That's right.

But why?

But why?

But why?

Why do you have the nails in the board?

Well, because they're in different arrangements.

You see, we're nailing them in and they all wound up in different shapes.

Yeah, counting the nails.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not the most exciting scene.

I mean, I, I love, again, that they're taking something very simple and stupid so seriously.

Like there's a certain comedy in that it.

But not, I don't know, I feel like calling it comedic is maybe a little generous.

And yeah, and it feels like in a lot of these these these St.

scenes.

And I think I only sent you two of those three of those St.

scenes there.

There's more that I didn't send you because so many of these are just like completely nothing Like Betty Lou is here because we need someone to count the number of nails and be polite and say, yes, I can count the number of nails and then count the number of nails or Betty Lou.

Betty Lou wants to sort blocks into two piles of blocks.

I didn't send you that one, but that was another one of the clips that I that I found.

Betty sounds like it just sums up the modern woman's whole situation.

You know who among us doesn't want to count a lot of blocks?

See, I thought you were going to say that it kind of sums up the the modern woman's situation because Betty Lou just has to be nice and polite and just, you know, yes, and, but yes, and not in the comedic way.

Just be like yes I would love to count blocks.

That that that that would be a more apt observation.

Yeah, she she is long-suffering and it.

Is really funny.

Gordon absolutely does not remember Betty Lou's name or or anything.

The scene opens and he goes what?

You had Mary, Mary, Betty Lou.

Which is they just had to keep that in because they filmed like over 100 episodes a season.

So they just had to keep going and not not cut.

Yeah, wow.

Maybe she did grow up to become Mary Broom Fellow.

Me.

Oh, well, I'll have to.

I'll have to have Jacob on and and ask, ask him at one point.

Yeah, Yeah, but this ends with this kind of era basically ends.

There's there's two other Fran Brill clips that I I sent you, but it basically ends with building a box, which is from episode 1, five nine from season 2.

Would you believe this is the only episode from now until the early 90s?

In 1970, Episode 159, Building a Box is the only episode where Betty Lou appears in more than one scene.

More than one street scene.

Wow.

Is this one?

I'm with her.

I.

You know, if we all just voted for Betty Lou, none of this would have happened.

Stuff.

Absolutely, absolutely.

And, well, you know.

Wait, wait, stop.

You don't know this, but there is a book called I Want to Be President from the 90s, maybe the 80s.

I could look it up right now that stars Betty Lou.

Oh my gosh.

Well, this I, I mean perfect, Yes, I mean.

We'll talk about that when we we get to the 90s.

So like, let's.

Talk about.

It well, unless I have you back.

On your Betty Lou.

Episode.

Yeah, maybe you should.

But regardless, I look forward to that conversation.

I mean, this building a box sketch, like, you know, if you wanted to be critical, you could be like, oh, you know, she's she's very upset and she needs comfort from all these other characters.

So it's just female stereotypes.

But what I love about the sketch is that all of these human actors and bigger puppets are attending seriously to the needs of this sweet, soft, vulnerable girl who's like, not apologizing for for being sad that she can't take her cat on the train.

She's like, she's like, you know, present with her feelings and grown men and and older characters are like, OK, don't worry, we're going to we're going to fix this.

We can help you.

And they're taking her very seriously and making space for her softness and vulnerability.

And I do want that in a president.

Well, so so just you, you got a little ahead of yourself again in this in this clip, in this this episode, Betty Lou wants to take her cat, who we later learn is named Samantha on a train to visit her grandma.

And that's.

Bigger than her.

The cat is absolutely bigger than her, which I kind of think is adorable.

I wish my cat was bigger than me, I'm going to be honest.

You wouldn't survive a day.

They're they're ruthless heart.

No.

But that's listen, but that's OK.

Yeah, yeah, she died as she lived.

Loving cats but but, but Betty Lou wants to take Samantha on the train.

She can't unless Samantha has a box.

She's crying because Samantha doesn't have a box and so Gordon brings in a construction worker for a Carpenter friend of his to help her build a box.

Now staff, I didn't send you the entire episode.

You only saw about 1/3 of Betty Lou watching in awe as carpenters build a box.

I thought you maybe got the point after the amount that I sent you.

I did.

I did.

I I agree completely.

I like, I love how you're describing it as such an important thing that like these adults are making time for her and they never say like Betty Lou, just don't take your cat with you to your grandma's house.

What a weird thing to want to do.

Like, yeah, they, they never say that.

They never say.

Ask your mom or something like that like they they do take time for her.

But I feel.

Like that says more about Sesame Street being a really special show that always wanted to give children, kind of like the benefit of the doubt that it says about Betty Lou the character.

Yeah, that's true.

You know, this is a good, this is a good time to I think to to bring up to bring up some, some, some terminology from media criticism.

OK, so so stuff you're you get to be here for a media criticism terminology corner.

I'm excited to.

Learn.

Stuff.

Are you familiar with the phrase the Smurfette Principle?

Oh, well, I, I won't pretend that I've heard that before, but the, the, the, the name makes me think of, you know, the fact that the fact that the, the neutral Smurf is, is a male Smurf and that, you know, Smurfette is, is a feminized Smurf.

So.

So is the Smurfette principle that the principle that that characters are male unless they're specifically signified to be female?

Basically so.

So this actually showed up.

This phrase showed up first.

I learned shows up first in 1991.

A good year.

That's the year I was born, so it was a very good year, yeah.

There you go, very good year.

So this shows up in 1991 in an essay by Katha Pollitt in the New York Times.

This essay, she describes the frustration that she has as a parent.

Now she's a poet and an essayist, but she's talking about the frustration that she has as a parent with finding female characters for her daughter to identify with on on on TV shows for children.

And she mentions this idea here, right?

That contemporary she, I'm going to quote it here.

Contemporary shows are either essentially all male like Garfield, right?

If you think about it.

I mean, I guess Arlene exists, but Garfield Arlene wasn't in every episode.

Well, and Arlene is just a smurfette of.

Well, and we'll get to that in a second.

Like Garfield or are organized on what I call the Smurfette principle, a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined.

In the worst cartoons, the ones that blend seamlessly into the animated serial commercials, the female is usually a little sister type, a Bunny in pink dress and hair ribbons who tags along with the adventurous bears and Badgers.

Yes, Oh my.

God, then it goes on.

I'm going to, I'm going to cut out.

She gives some more examples.

She references Muppet Babies and Baby Piggy, although she does seem to ignore that Skeeter existed.

But Skeeter barely existed.

But.

Anyway, she she ends with the with the crux of this message here, right, which is the message is clear.

And this is a quote again, the message is clear.

Boys are the norm, girls the variation.

Boys are central, girls peripheral.

Boys are individuals, girls types.

Boys define boys define the group, its story and its code of values.

Girls exist only in relation to boys.

No, we don't necessarily see that girls exist only in relation to boys element with with Betty Lou.

But it is interesting that again, at this point, Betty Lou is basically the Smurfette, right?

She's basically the little sister type, right?

And especially in this episode, she feels like just the little sister type where it's like she needs to be helped by the characters who can do things.

Yeah, And you know, I think considering her as the Smurfette, I think that's so interesting in relation to, you know, this fact you dropped earlier in our conversation about how over represented she was in merchandise.

Because, you know, people of all genders are watching Sesame Street and and want to see themselves in it.

So when they're buying stuff, the, you know, like, I'm sure that the marketing people, we're like, OK, who, who's who, who are we going to sell to?

The girls?

Betty Lou.

Only Betty Lou.

OK, great.

So we're just going to go all in on Betty Lou.

She technically exists.

It's so funny because that just didn't reflect on like the amount of times she appeared on the show itself.

Right.

No, there's such a disparity.

And and again, I do think it's a little, again, it's a little more intentional.

You know, Paulette describes right like these, these worst cartoons, right where it again, where she's like it blends seamlessly into animated serial commercials.

I don't think that's what's going on here.

I don't think Betty Lou only exists in relation to the boys.

Per SE, but it is this interesting thing where it's like.

You have a group of male characters and then you have Betty Lou.

And what's interesting to me, going back to what you were saying stuff about like how Betty Lou can be so many different things.

On the one hand, that's positive.

On the other hand, I feel like, isn't that because there's nobody else to be the dependable girl, the smart girl, the needy girl, you know, the the emotional girl, she has to be all of these things.

You could have all of those girl characters and instead you just have her.

That's so interesting.

So it's this interesting contrast and and I love what you're saying.

Like this wasn't like a gotcha to get you to say all of these positive things and then be like, but I was reading theory and it made me think differently.

Like, no, this isn't like a gotcha, but it's just such an interesting place to be in right now, yeah.

Yeah, I'm so glad to have gained this vocabulary around the Smurfette principle.

Did you say principle?

Because I feel like I can add this for my experience as a puppeteer.

People always gender puppets male unless they have like red lips and eyelashes and purple eyeshadow.

You are going to love stuff.

You are going to love this podcast because believe me, we talked about that in the first episode.

I asked the question, Was there ever any doubt that when Jim Henson drew the sketch of the character that would become Cookie Monster, was there ever any doubt that that character would be a male puppet?

Right.

Oh my gosh.

That's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, obviously if you need a female Cookie Monster, you're just going to put a wig on the puppet and.

What did we and what did we say about the beautiful day Monster's wife?

You were like, she looks kind of like Grover, except she's got a wig and eyelashes.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh, is she that first green Grover puppet?

No, it's it's slightly different, but it's it's a very similar build.

It's a very similar build for sure.

Like you are you are right to identify.

I mean, it's their early, their early Henson Celine builds a lot.

There's a lot of shared elements.

You know, when it comes down to it, Ernie looks like Rolf.

Because again, they're all.

Just like, wow, Ernie does look like Ralph.

There are three genders.

Burn, burn Ernie and Ralph.

Yeah, yeah.

But anyway, the the point still stands.

It's, it's interesting to sort of see that at play And the, the word that we used, I got, I have to get my notes.

I'm going to cut.

This or maybe I won't cut this folks.

I don't memorize everything.

That's why I have a notes Notes app here.

The the word that we used to describe what staff is talking about about gendering puppets is called androcentrism, and we talked about androcentrism on the first episode.

It's the idea that by default a character is male unless you explicitly say that that character is.

Female.

Wow.

Which is a a literal opposite of of like biological truth that we're all female embryos until some get, you know, an extra dosage of testosterone that that makes them develop along male lines instead.

But it's part of this sort of, you know, a patriarchal, male centered society that we all live in.

Yes, Wow.

Oh my gosh.

You're going to love my Sesame Street podcast.

I definitely.

I mean, clearly I am, yes.

So let's let's start let's start taking taking this this Betty Lou story in for in for a bit of a landing because Betty Lou after Fran Brill temporarily stops appearing as regularly, Betty Lou also stops appearing as regularly occasionally shows up performed by Frank Oz Jerry Nelson performs her like once the the I sent you a sketch called I Love you where surreal a boy thinks Betty Lou has a crush on.

Him.

And that felt very weird to me because again, that definitely felt like women are here because we can have crushes on them.

Yeah, yeah, totally.

And obviously that is why we're here.

But we're here for other things.

Well, listen, I know that everybody has a crush on me.

I just want them to also appreciate me for other reasons.

Right, like your love of ice cream and your your dislike of people with lactose intolerance.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, but then you can also have a crush on me.

It's fine.

Right, right.

You contain multitudes.

But then she doesn't show up a ton.

And then in 1975.

And I wish I knew if this was before or after the release of the Betty Lou Ragdoll.

Unfortunately, I just know this was all in 1975.

It's harder to track the exact month and day that a toy is released than an episode of TV.

Betty Lou shows up in 3 songs in that season.

Season 6.

Three songs performed by Marilyn Sokol, or at least the vocals are performed by Marilyn Sokol.

We know that Marilyn Sokol briefly did some puppeteering work, but she did not like it as much.

But stuff.

Do you know where else you probably know Marilyn Sokol from what other?

What was her big?

What was her big Henson role was while Frank Oz does the puppetry of Ma Otter in Emmett Otter's jug band Christmas, she is the voice of Ma Otter.

She dubbed over Ma Otter.

And.

Of course, Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas is released two years after these clips.

Oh wow, OK, so so was she doing Betty Lou's voice before she did Ma Otter?

Yes.

OK, OK.

Wow, Wow.

Yes, because these are these clips, these three songs we're going to talk about just to kind of wrap this, wrap this up, wrap our our our sort of early years of Betty Lou talk up.

We're all from 1975.

Emmett Otter premieres in 1977.

Wow.

So the first of the first of these songs, chronologically speaking, is the subway.

It's one of my all time favorite Sesame Street songs.

So good it slaps on the subway it.

Will go right by your local address, swang to and pro which is the only way to go.

On the subway, Subway and Marilyn Sokol has a couple versus as Betty Lou.

I don't think there's really anything to say about Betty Lou in this clip.

I have one thing to say.

She has one of her lines in the song Is Your Thumb is in My Eye because it's a crowded subway.

And you know, there's been so much discourse in more recent years about man spreading on public transportation.

And we've talked about this, you know, through line of of Betty Lou as like amorphous slash universal girl character, that one of her traits is that she's long-suffering.

And like, yeah, she's not, she's not mad.

She's not like, what's wrong with you?

Get your thumb out of my eyes.

She's just like, it's relatively polite for someone who has a thumb in their eye.

It's true, it is.

It is.

Also, it's a weird assortment of characters.

I don't think the placement of Betty Lou says or means anything.

Like Kermit and Bert are basically the only main characters there, right?

Like.

It's trippy, which is a weird duo, but it's a fun song.

It's where I wanted to mention it because again, it does seem to be the first first time Marilyn Sokal performs the vocals, Sokal vocals, Sokal vocals.

And then the second clip I included felt really important for us to discuss here because it's it's the song women can be.

Look at the things that we women can do.

We can be clowns, we can be cooks, we can be bus drivers, we can ride books.

Just look around you.

It's easy to see there's nothing we women can't be.

And this is a super interesting song.

It's a bunch of just female anything Muppet puppets, including Betty Lou, performed by a bunch of people, including Jane Henson in a rare, rare Sesame Street vocal appearance.

A rare vocal appearance period from Jane Henson.

She barely, she barely performed vocals on Sam and Friends.

We do know she did occasionally, but we don't have any of those clips.

It's it's she's doing vocals.

And also, bizarrely enough, EGOT winner Rita Moreno is one of the anything Muppets.

It's actually two of the anything Muppets, I believe.

And it's just a bunch of female Muppets talking about all the different things women can be.

Yeah.

And, and yeah, it's exhaustive.

You know, they're covering every career path.

It's it's, it's really like just a song about like, you know, yeah.

That it's, it's got a very clear central message of, of women can do any job that you can think of.

I I, I felt like this was like proto glop glorious ladies of puppetry.

Yes.

I was like, oh, this is like the spiritual ancestor of glorious ladies of puppetry.

Y'all, y'all and glop should perform should perform this.

Oh my gosh, yes.

I I need to send this clip to, to Donna and Colleen and Alice.

Make sure they're aware of it.

I'm sure they are.

Probably, but who knows, just in case they aren't.

But it's great.

And you know, it's, it's so funny because you know, for all of this that we're talking about like sometimes maybe not having the best messages for, for, for, for women with some of the stuff we were talking about with Smurfette, but sometimes.

Having great messages for for women.

This is just such a positive thing.

Pretty, pretty early in, in, in this wave of, of feminism.

You know, again, obviously, what would this be in the 70s, like the second wave of feminism, right?

Who can keep track of the waves of feminism?

This was like the beginning of a, of a sort of new women's movement.

And I really like that this is out there.

I mean, again, like we're we're talking, you know, so much of the dialogue today has been like, is Sesame Street gone woke?

And it's like, no, this was here.

This was here in Season 6.

And like, you just weren't paying attention.

Not you stuff.

You you were paying attention.

Well, I'm not sure I was paying attention in 1976.

Okay, you're not.

You're not an ageless being.

I kind of always assumed you were.

I, you know, the if I, if I have memories from past lives, they're primarily repressed.

Oh, well, I just wanted to say the, the line that resonated with me the most in women can be, which I think is repeated twice and maybe is sang by Betty Lou, is women can be clowns.

And you know, with women can be leaders.

Women can be lion tamers, You know, all of these fierce or, or like, I don't know, male dominated fields, but comedy is also male dominated.

And, you know, like, and I, I think when women are excluded from, from comedic spaces, it's, you know, for, for similar reasons to why they're excluded from these other male dominated fields, which is that, you know, to be funny, you have to have permission to take up space.

And so, yeah, that just as a female clown that that I was like, yes.

Yes, I was about to say you have clown training.

I don't know if the if the the audience knows that.

I mean, I know that because we're friends, but.

Yeah, now, now they now they know that, yes.

So I can confirm that women can be clowns.

But again, you are absolutely right.

And that is something we've been talking about, like, do women have the permission to be funny?

Does Betty Lou have the permission to be funny?

And the answer is sometimes, sometimes.

And the last song I want to talk about, because it is possibly, I would say a top 10 Sesame Street song for me is I Want a Monster to Be My Friend, a classic Sesame Street song just simply credited to little girl.

But it is definitely Betty Lou.

Oh yeah.

About Betty Lou singing about how much she wants to befriend a monster no matter what and it's this amazing like, burlesque number.

Yeah, I want a monster to be mad.

I want a monster to be my friend.

I want to get for my own pit a real life monster with every tender.

I'd love to.

I'd love to perform this as a burlesque number.

Can I just?

Can I just say that?

Can can I just somehow commit you to that?

Can I just paint you to a corner where you have to do that?

Stuff.

Do you know any?

Do you know any burlesque?

Burlesque shows looking looking for performers.

You know, I haven't really stayed up to date with that scene.

I used to be moving in in the, you know, Venn diagram between underground clown and burlesque in Brooklyn.

But I could, I could poke some of those contacts and I could hook you up.

I mean, I think the world needs this, this performance of yours, of this as a burlesque number.

But it's it's, it's fun and it takes us all the way back to, I mean, technically all the way back to Insipidia if we're counting her.

But if we're not, it takes us all the way back to pick your pet right where it's like Betty Lou's thing is that she likes monsters.

But, you know, and this, this is, you know, as with all the best comedy, there's, there's truth here, this love of monsters.

You know, like growing up, I understood my own transness as a monstrous trait.

You know, it was explained to me that that trans women were monsters.

And so I was like, oh, I'm, I'm a monster.

I need to keep this part of myself secret.

So yeah, this little girl being like, I love monsters.

I don't know, you know, going back to the drag lens, like seeing this through the lens of drag, having this, you know, kind of universal stand in for any girl, this, this, this representative of femininity saying I love monsters.

I'm like, oh, good, I'm, you know, I'm a monster.

I I belong here too.

It's an interesting, it's an interesting, an interesting end.

And pretty much from then until the 90s, we will not really see Betty Lou on the TV show Sesame Street.

Wow, bring her back, bring her back.

Well, we'll talk about what she was doing in the 90s when we when we get there.

But I'll, I'll, I'll wait until we get there.

You know, I feel like we kind of addressed a lot of the other questions I was, I was going to ask because we said so much here, right?

But what do you think?

What do you think works about Betty Lou and what I guess we already talked about what you think works.

That universality is really her, her greatest strength and her greatest weakness in a lot of ways, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and there's some, you know, if you take a character like Bert, for instance, he's always the straight man, just the way there's always, always a little child.

And that's that's a strong thing about their characters.

But yeah, like, you know, that this amorphousness, this ability to be the straight man or the loose cannon and to be specifically a child or to just be a broader, like this is what's required for this scene.

And I'm bringing this female presence here that's similar to Kermit.

You know who who can can be the red nosed clown or the straight man and can put on a wig and be Kermina or can be Kermit.

So there's there's, you know, is she?

Yeah.

She's tapping into that early abstract Salmon Friends quality where, you know, like that level of abstraction and universality in the Salmon Friends era that was a core part of the Muppet aesthetic was that none of them was, none of them were allowed to be recognizable as human or animal or as a specific species.

They they all had to be abstracts.

And like, she's definitely like coming directly out of that lineage.

Absolutely.

And again, that's why I felt like it was important to start with the the insipidia clip.

Yeah.

You know, I, I keep saying that Betty Lou is going to come back in the 90s and we'll get to, we'll get to that later on this podcast, not this episode.

We're going to we're going to start wrapping up.

I've kept stuff long enough, but But here's what's really interesting.

Remember I mentioned the article about the Smurfette principle from 1991 and we talked about some of the shows that they referenced, like Garfield.

Here's how the article ends.

Or I guess the middle of the article.

Then the end.

Pollock goes on to try the same test on public television and talks about how Sesame Street she says it's amazing how well they divide the humans based on race and gender.

But she said The Muppets are absolutely the stars and quote the important ones.

The ones with real personalities who sing on the music videos, whom kids identify with and cherish in dozens of licensed products, are all male.

I know one little girl who was so outraged and heartbroken when she realized that even Big Bird, her last hope, was a boy that she hasn't watched the show since.

And then she goes on.

She goes on.

She talks about some other stuff.

And then Pilot talks to Dulce Singer, the executive producer of Sesame Street at the time, who says when asked about the all male Muppets, says we're working on it.

And of course, Paulette, who's kind of got a sarcastic, cynical bent, goes.

After all, the show has only been on the air for 1/4 of a century.

These things take time.

The trouble is, our preschoolers don't have time.

My funny, clever, bold, adventurous daughter is forming her gender ideas right now.

In the year 1991, Rosita will be added to Sesame Street.

Rosita by the early 90s, Zoe will be added and Betty Lou will return.

And it's hard not to feel like it's partly in response to this New York Times article.

Yeah.

Wow, I mean, that's what an important dialogue that there's.

Gosh, you know, I'm so glad you like shared that text from the article.

So much of it speaks for itself.

So I just want to add that I I love that Big Bird is androgynous enough that a little that the the the straw that broke the camel's back for this one little girl was realizing that Big Bird was a dude.

I Yeah.

Do you know how many people?

Do you know how many people I know casual Muppet fans who think Big Bird is a girl.

I could probably do a whole episode on Big Bird.

Trans Big Bird have me on as a guest.

This great stuff.

I'd say you have to become a Co host but I know you don't have the time.

I'll make the time.

Stuff I will definitely be having you back because it's always such a delight.

Where?

Where can people find your work on the Internet?

Oh well, my first plug is always going to be the creatures of Yes.

On YouTube you can simply search creatures of Yes and find our channel.

There's so much to watch on there already and more exciting material being released in the future.

I think the movie The movie should be out online by this point, by the time this drops.

Hopefully.

This will probably be the fall.

Yeah, I imagine the movie will be out.

Yes, our first feature length movie.

We're recording this well in advance, but excellent.

Yes, yeah, and the movie is wonderful.

I can't recommend the creatures of Yes stuff enough.

Mary Mary Broom Fellow is one of my one of my favorite characters in in modern media.

She is an icon, yes.

So yeah, you, you can see my heart and soul there on that Channel with my dear friend Jacob Graham.

And I'm also on Instagram as Stoffsheer.

One word under score.

Trans puppeteer.

Stoffsheer Trans Puppeteer.

And let me be clear, Stoff is spelled STOPH and Scheer is spelled SCHEER.

We'll have links in the show notes, obviously, but you know.

Stroffscher means fabric scissors in German, which I did not know when I chose this name.

No kidding.

Yeah.

But thank you so much for being here.

It's truly always a pleasure.

It really is.

And like I said, I couldn't have asked for anyone better to talk about the 60s and early 70s and abstract puppets and all of that with.

Oh my gosh, this.

Yeah, this was lovely.

Becca, thank you so much.

Thank you.

This is exciting.

I I can't wait to go back and listen to your first episode and listen to everything that follows this.

I'm.

You've really turned me on to some exciting stuff here.

Yeah, and and ultimately stuff.

I hope you find a monster to be your friend.

Oh, I, I have, I have some monsters who are my friends.

Thank you stuff.

Thank you, Becca.

So that's Betty Lou in the 1960s and 1970s.

As I said in the episode, Betty Lou did appear more often than this, but not much.

And after 1975, when she had been cemented in ragdoll form and had begun appearing in books, she basically vanished from the show proper, consigned to transmedia.

There are a few future Betty Lou clips and a lot of book appearances that we'll discuss later.

Or maybe we won't.

There's not much else to say besides what has already been said.

Betty Lou remains A cipher until 1993, when she returns to the show, 2 years after Dulce, Singer said.

We're working on it, but for now, it's good that we have our first major recurring female character.

That's a step.

And as mentioned, in 1970, Jim Henson hired a female puppeteer named Fran Brill who would not only play Betty Lou in some of those sketches we discussed, but also bring to life new characters like Prairie Dawn and one day, one of the most important female Muppets, Elmo's best friend, Zoe.

Next week, folks, get this.

Next week, I sit down with Fran Brill to talk about the early days of her career and what she thinks of Sesame's work representing girls on screen.

Fran Brill, you guys.

Fran Brill.

It, it's happening.

Oh, I oh, my God.

I can't wait.

I'll.

I'll see you then.

I really.

AM.

Quite a Prairie Dawn Companion is a production of toughpigs.com.

It is written, produced, edited and hosted by Becca Petunia, an executive produced by the Tough Pigs Muppet Fan podcast executive producer Johannes.

Thanks to Scott Hanson, Shane Keating, Tony Whitaker and the Whole Muppet Wiki team for helping me with research.

The book St.

Gang by Michael Davis was also indispensable.

Thanks to Katie Lynn Miller, Michael Richardson, and Eli Lee for help with script revisions.

Follow Tough Pigs on social media.

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Oh, you're beautiful, yo.