You know, for a podcast called A Prairie Dawn Companion, we've spent a lot of time talking about characters who aren't Prairie Dawn.

But, you know, this is a show about more than just Prairie Dawn.

Obviously.

It's about female Muppets, and it's about contextualizing those characters.

And while Prairie might be the oldest female Sesame character who still appears somewhat regularly today, it's truly important to realize she's not the oldest out there.

That's Betty Lou, obviously, you learned that two weeks ago.

But if we're talking context, it's essential that we talk about the other female Muppets who appeared in Season 1 before Prairie ever graced our screens.

So I'll tell you now that's what today's episode is going to be about.

As I said last week, prepare to hear a lot about Granny Fanny Nestle Rd.

But also, before I could wrap up Season 1, I felt it essential that we talk a little bit about the broader societal context of women on television during this era.

And I was wondering, how could Becca learn more?

Well, searching around the Internet directed me to the book Hearth and Home Images of Women in the Mass Media.

Edited by Gay Tuchman, Arlene Kaplan Daniels and James Bennett, the book is a collection of thorough scientific observations of women on TV and print.

Now let me be clear.

It's a very dated book, and some of its premises are a little problematic given our modern understanding of gender.

But being very dated doesn't exactly surprise me, because this book is from 1978, and that means there's really no better source to understand the view of women in the media from roughly the same era as early Sesame Street.

So what was television like in the 70s?

Well, the book cites the article Sex Role Stereotyping in Children's Television Programs, published in 1975, and notes that men outnumbered women on children's commercial programming over 2 to one.

And while that's commercial television, not public television, it doesn't seem like PBS was doing much better.

The book sites a pretty scathing indictment of the medium from scholar Muriel Cantor, whose research on public television alongside Caroline Esper was funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The text says.

Cantor asks where are the women in public television?

Her answer, based on a content analysis of programming, is in front of the television set.

Although a higher proportion of adult women appear on children's programming in public television, then, is true of commercial television, Cantor finds both commercial and public television disseminate the same message about women, although the two types of television differ in their structure and purpose.

Television captures societal ideas even when programming is partially divorced from the profit motive.

Yeesh.

So why does it matter that there were so few female characters in kids media and public television in the 70s?

We said in the first episode that representation matters, but what exactly does that mean?

And most importantly, what does any of this have to do with the answer Lady a Jim Henson character who?

Doesn't understand that you need to take the.

Cap off of a bottle of ketchup.

Granny A.

Few little taps here, come here.

Granny, I think if you take the top off the bottle, you'll find that the ketchup will come out.

It will.

Most probably.

That'll make sense in a second.

Anyway, I'm Becca Petunia from Tough Pigs this week.

Tropes, Symbolic Annihilation and Granny Fanny Nestle Rd.

All here on 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 and girls, girls, girls, let's go do girls stuff.

Can you play a song with a beats?

One of the main themes of Hearth and Home is the idea of symbolic annihilation and how that goes hand in hand with a concept called the reflection hypothesis.

To quote the text once again, according to the reflection hypothesis, the mass media reflects dominant societal values.

To attract audiences whose time and attention are sold to commercial sponsors, the television industry offers programs consonant with American values.

Hey, remember how this is a Sesame Street podcast?

I'm sorry, I, I, I know you'd prefer if the reflection hypothesis had to do with saying wubba, wubba, wubba to a monster in the mirror.

But but listen, we'll, we'll get to picture books soon.

Just just stay with me.

The reflection hypothesis says that if ATV show wants to be popular, which is usually the goal of ATV show, even if Sesame has nobler goals than just commercial success, it needs to portray the world in accordance with mainstream values, so the world we see on TV can tell us what audiences at the time valued.

In the case of Sesame, this is sometimes harder to track.

After all, Sesame Street was no stranger to courting controversy during Season 1, which we'll be discussing today.

Again, don't worry, Don't worry, it's coming.

Mississippi banned the show for its positive portrayals of an interracial neighborhood.

So yeah, the show wasn't reflecting the values of that particular segment of American Society, but as a whole.

For our purposes, we can assume that what Sesame portrays women doing is what culture at large expects women to do.

It's kind of that simple.

Symbolic annihilation is the logical parallel.

To quote the books paraphrase of George Gerbner's work, we may say that representation in the fictional world, such as the 1950s ideal family, symbolizes or signifies social existence.

That is, representation in the mass media announces to audience members that this kind of family or this kind of social characteristic is valued and approved.

Conversely, we may say that either condemnation, trivialization, or absence means symbolic annihilation.

In other words, if we're not seeing it on TV, it might as well not exist in society at all.

This is especially meaningful when we talk about female characters on television.

First of all, the dearth of female characters.

Remember, boys outnumber girls over 2 to 1 means women as a whole are trivialized.

Secondly, what kinds of women do appear in the media?

Those that appear are what society values.

Those that don't are effectively annihilated.

This is where we get into tropes.

Here I mean common character types across media.

Because after all, tropes are things that are frequently represented, and things that are frequently represented reflect values and thus are not annihilated.

Tropes can change over time with new things added as culture shifts.

But looking at the contemporaneous Hearth and Home, I can highlight a few.

So when discussing women's magazines, researcher Helen Francois found 4 roles for women single and looking for a husband, housewife, mother, spinster and widowed or divorced soon to remarry.

Furthermore, and related to that, the authors state that women are not important in American Society, except perhaps within the home.

And that's what we're going to see when we discuss the remaining 2 recurring season one female Muppets granny Fanny Nestle Road and Roosevelt Franklin's mother.

What were kids being taught by them?

And of course, we'll take a look at what did and didn't work about them and why they didn't stick around.

Today I'm going to be joined by tough Pigs pal Christie O, known for her amazing Muppet art, her Labyrinth prop replicas, and the hilarious podcast Bad Princess Movies.

Let's go chat with her.

Over in the guest corner all.

Right.

It's Showtime, people.

Oh welcome, oh welcome to our little play, play.

Like I said, my guest today is Christy O Christy, how are you doing today?

Not doing too bad.

It is a rainy day up in my part of Canada, but I have armored myself with a cup of hot chocolate.

Yeah, so I'm I'm doing OK.

I'm at least I'm cozy.

Hot chocolate, that is not the weather that it is right here in rainy New York.

It is not hot chocolate weather here.

But I'm so glad you could be here, Christy.

You know, you obviously should be a familiar, familiar voice, if not a familiar face because this is an audio medium and also you're usually wearing a helmet.

But you should be a familiar, a familiar figure to Tough Pigs listeners.

You've done a lot of work with Tough Pigs in the past, although I guess you're not officially part of the Tough Pigs family, but you're like, you're like a care Bear cousin to the to the to the to the tough Pigs family, I feel like.

And why don't you tell us a little bit, though, about your history, you know, I guess your history with Henson stuff in general.

And then we'll get into Sesame in specific.

So how, how should people know you?

What's your connection to this fandom?

Why did I invite you besides the fact that you're lovely?

Well, I mean, I think First off, what people probably know me best for are one of two things.

Either the Muppet Princess Bride illustrations that I like to draw, or my my bread and butter, or at least where my heart is, are the labyrinth proper because that I like to do labyrinth in general.

That is my area of expertise within the Henson universe, my fixation, my obsession.

So I am slightly out of my depth here because my history with Sesame Street is pretty shallow.

I, you know, I was a 90s kid, so I watched Sesame Street growing up.

I remember some of my earliest memories being just watching Sesame Street or playing with some of the merchandise.

So I have just the faintest nostalgic love of, you know, characters like Big Bird, obviously Grover, but you know, the the main characters.

So it I'll say it's been interesting right off the bat.

You getting me on the show because it was an opportunity to actually dig into some of the Sesame Street stuff that I I probably did not watch enough as a kid to really see these characters that we're going to be talking about today.

And I even if I did, I certainly do not remember any of them.

Well, that's the interesting thing about, you know, some of the characters we're going to talk about is like, unless you actively sought this stuff out in like the YouTube era or the tape trading era, you wouldn't have seen these characters because they weren't re airing these sketches pretty much past the the early 1980s.

This stuff did not stick around these these characters.

And again, we're going to get into them in a second, but these characters really didn't make it past like season season 1 and season 2.

We are not seeing any new material with these characters after Sesame's second season.

And, and that's kind of a ridiculous thing because, you know, one of the things that we've been talking so much about is just how few female characters there were on Sesame Street.

And, you know, here we have these female characters and they just don't stick around.

They, they, they existed and then they they didn't.

But at the same time the question is.

Like, well, are we?

Did we need these particular characters?

Are we better off without a granny?

Fanny Nestle Rd.

But I guess let's, let's start talking actually about the, the character of the three we're going to be chatting about.

Actually, I should say we're going to be talking about 3 characters today, Roosevelt, Franklin's mother, Granny, Fanny Nestle Road and Franny.

And I'll get into those characters because my guess is you listening at home heard Franny and you go, what is that character?

We'll get into it, but we're going to start with the character of those three who appeared first, which is Roosevelt Franklin's mother.

So Roosevelt Franklin's mother first appeared in February 1970, which was the first season of Sesame Street.

That is 3 months after Sesame Street began.

And of course, Sesame Street being Sesame Street, that was already 68 episodes into the show's run.

Because I don't frankly understand it either.

Christy, how much do you know about Roosevelt Franklin is, I guess, the question here, because I feel like to understand Roosevelt Franklin's mother, we need to understand Roosevelt Franklin.

And it's kind of tough to talk about the history of Sesame Street without talking about Roosevelt.

Peter Piper picked a Peck of pickled pig feet.

But my name is not Peter Piper, It's Roosevelt Franklin, and I live on Sesame Street.

I I do know a little bit because I did watch the street gang documentary that came out a few years ago and and he was mentioned in there.

So I'm not, I'm not a documentarian on Frank Roosevelt, Franklin, but I am, yeah, aware of who, who his character was.

Now, as a Canadian, how much do you know about Franklin Roosevelt?

Not very much.

I knew I messed up by inviting you onto this podcast, but no now.

So what's important to realize about Roosevelt Franklin is while Roosevelt Franklin was not in the 1st.

Episode of Sesame.

Street.

In fact, I believe his first appearance was February 1970.

In this same sketch.

Roosevelt Franklin quickly became sort of the show's first breakout star.

I guess other than Bert and Ernie, who absolutely would, you know, Ernie would have the first Billboard charting single from Sesame Street and all of these things.

But Roosevelt Franklin was an incredibly popular character.

And the thing about Roosevelt Franklin is he is basically a little kid.

He's a, a tiny anything Muppet, kind of the same sort of shape as Prairie Dawn or Betty Lou, who we talked about two weeks ago, except he's purple.

He's got a stripy shirt and he is just incredibly cool.

Is I guess what you can say about Roosevelt.

Franklin.

Roosevelt Franklin was absolutely supposed to be black.

Even though Roosevelt Franklin is not black in color, he's purple, but he was overdubbed with audio from the then Gordon Matt Robinson and Roosevelt Franklin was an incredibly popular character.

He had the first character specific Sesame Street album, which is the year of Roosevelt Franklin.

And you might be wondering, well, if he's the first breakout, then why didn't he last?

And frankly, there was a lot of controversy around Roosevelt Franklin and particularly Roosevelt's friends in Roosevelt Franklin Elementary, which we were going to talk about in this episode.

And then I was like, we are not going to have time because I've got, you know, I don't know, 40 to 50 minutes planned just on Granny Fanny Nestle Rd.

But.

The the important.

Thing is, because of this this sort of pushback, Sesame started pulling back on Roosevelt Franklin stuff and first there was no new Roosevelt Franklin stuff and then they eventually stopped rerunning Roosevelt Franklin stuff.

In fact, the last sketch with Roosevelt Franklin's mother to be re aired was in 1987.

These clips were not reshown after 1987.

So you were talking about being a 90s kid and not knowing this and that's why?

Yeah.

Yeah, makes sense.

So Roosevelt Franklin, you know, in a lot of his early sketches, really the 1st 4 Roosevelt Franklin sketches, he's paired with his mother.

So we checked out those 4 sketches and you know, Christy, seeing as you're kind of new to this scene.

Let's talk about these songs, sketches, whatever you want to call them.

In general.

What did you think of the Roosevelt Franklin sketches?

You.

Know I, I mean, they're cute, they're catchy, I can see why he was such a popular character 'cause he is just a fun little kid to watch.

And especially the way he's puppeteered him just bouncing around the screen, so much energy, like it's hard not to love him.

I wonder where he is.

Where is he now?

Where is that Roosevelt?

Franklin?

This somebody call me by my first and last name.

Yes, I called you and it's about time you got here too.

Now will you please come on and recite your number?

All right, I'll do that.

When I do, you know I'm going to count them just for.

You.

Well, let's see if you know them for sure.

I'm not so sure you even know you know I know.

I know, I know, I.

Know reminds me a lot of my little nephew, especially when he gets particularly rambunctious and there's when he's in that mode, there's nothing you can do but just stand back and just watch him run around.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely how he feels.

And and I love the energy that that he sort of he sort of brings whenever he's there, you know, I will say.

So he is Matt Robinson both on the album and on the on the show.

But on the album, his voice is a little higher.

I was a little surprised watching these, just how deep Roosevelt Franklin's voice is.

But, you know, Roosevelt Franklin is the star of these sketches.

His his mother is secondary.

And you know, I don't even know Roosevelt Franklin's mother's name.

No one knows Roosevelt Franklin's mother's name.

That's that's The thing is so as part of the the wonderful, the materials that you assembled for this podcast is you also provided a lot of images from books and other materials that she appeared in.

And there's a set of finger puppets.

And that really hit home because you have all these other characters with their names underneath the finger puppets.

And then you just have Roosevelt Franklin's mom.

And that's just how she's referred to.

She has no name, it's just her title.

I vaguely remember us talking about on the Tough Pigs discord at one point.

Like can we change her Muppet wiki page to Misses Franklin?

But we can't even say for certain that she has the same last name as Roosevelt Franklin.

We don't know.

So.

I should say Roosevelt Franklin's mother, just like Roosevelt was performed by Matt Robinson.

Roosevelt Franklin's mother was performed on the show by Loretta Long who was Susan.

Weirdly, on the album she's re performed by Rosalyn Cash, who was an basically just a general stage screen actress who didn't really do anything else with The Muppets.

And kind of the.

Interesting thing to me about Roosevelt Franklin's Mother is that, well, like you said, there isn't that much really to say.

And even going into those story books that we looked at and we looked at a couple of different story books, Roosevelt Franklin's Mother appears in 123456.

Roosevelt, Franklin's Mother appears in eight books from 1971 to 1980.

I showed you scans from from all of them and I don't believe she has a line of dialogue in any of them.

No, I I don't remember any.

She's there.

She's carrying bricks in Grover and the Everything in the Whole World Museum from 1974.

She has a livery stable in Tales of Sesame Gulch.

She needs her plants watered in the Sesame Street Dictionary, but I really can't say much about her.

No, and it's unfortunate because I mean there there's no reason why she couldn't have been a fully fledged character.

I guess that goes I'm sure that probably could be said for everybody that you're going to profile on this podcast.

But like the little glimpses that you get of her in the sketches with Roosevelt Franklin, like I, I want to see more She, she seems like again, and maybe I'm just drawing comparisons to my own family, but, you know, thinking of my sister and watching her interact with my nephew, you know, that's, that's Roosevelt Franklin's mom is, is she's kind of gently trying to guide him into, you know, remembering his alphabet, remembering the days of the week, how to spell his own name.

It's all stuff that you you see mom's doing as part of that wonderful process of trying to prepare your child for the world, and yet she's doing it in such a fun way that it's all just a game to him.

And that's such a lovely thing to see.

Moms, do you know?

Doesn't an E come right after D?

Yes, and then come to happen the G.

Roosevelt, Franklin, what you say?

After the GE, come to HIJ.

Halfway home.

Halfway home?

Go ahead.

Well, and that's that's what's.

So great about her is it really does feel like and obviously I would have loved to have seen more than 4 songs with her.

She's in also a a a an instrumental bit called hand clapping number that I did not ask you to watch, I don't think because there's nothing to say about it.

She shows up in one one street scene on Sesame Street where she has no lines.

So it's really just this, but one of the.

Things that that I really enjoyed is, again, you know, I'm not a mom, but I'm a teacher.

And it really does seem like she's trying to meet Roosevelt Franklin on his level.

Like, you get the sense that like, she's got an energetic kid who likes to sing, and that means she's going to be energetic and she's going to sing too, you know?

And.

She's, she's encouraging her son and, and, you know, not trying to stifle that energy, just trying to, you know, direct it a little bit so that it's, you know, slightly less destructive maybe.

And then I say that 'cause that energy from a a small child can be very destructive.

And, and you know, let me let me be clear here too.

You know, Christy, you and I are also both white and Roosevelt, Franklin's mother is clearly supposed to be coded as a black character.

So is Roosevelt.

When we get to talking about Roosevelts classmates, I'll do the same introduction again because they also seem to be coded as black characters.

I'm aware that my knowledge on a lot of the, the sort of cultural stereotypes and cultural aspects that are being portrayed by Roosevelt, Franklin and his mother are going to be limited.

And, and frankly, I would love to loop back to talking about Roosevelt Franklins mother and his classmates, you know, with a, with a different guest in the future, because I recognize that our sort of knowledge basis is a little small.

But it's interesting that you're pointing out that sort of energy and, and you're you're jokingly referring to it as destructiveness, because that was something that a lot of the complaints about Roosevelt Franklin were tied into were that he and his friends were a little too raucous, a little too like a little too loud and and sometimes disrespectful.

And I kind.

Of.

I kind of really like, again, I can only speak for myself that Roosevelt, Franklin's mother, is again, like meeting him there rather than, you know, objecting to it.

So that's something that, you know, I would love to discuss more with someone who maybe knows a little more.

And I recognize that, you know, I can read all that I want from all of my different, you know, academic theory books and I can watch every Roosevelt Franklin clip.

I'm never going to never going to understand it, you know, the same way that that that a black person would.

But that idea of Roosevelt Franklin's mother is just a strong mother.

I loved this quote, which is from the Sesame Street unpaved TV special.

Loretta Long, who again did the voice for Roosevelt, Franklin's mother, said this what I loved about Jim Henson.

You know what I loved about him when we were doing Roosevelt Franklin and he watched me do the voice over for the mother and I said Roosevelt Franklin sure does know his ABC's and he totally rewired the mother puppet so she could put her hand on her hip.

I thought that was.

So.

Cool that he respected that, that that's what a mother would do.

And you know, you can see it.

She always has her hand on her hip.

And that is a really neat character touch that you don't really see from any of the other Muppets, you know, especially like Roosevelt's arms kind of just flail around.

I don't even know if he has arm rods.

But it's, it's a, it's a little fun, a little fun note.

And I think if she has any personality, it's conveyed both through, you know, Loretta Long's wonderful performance and that one silly little, you know, choice to, to pin her arm up like that.

What I do want to mention, and I'm sorry, I feel like I'm talking so much, Christy, but we'll, we'll, we'll get back to you in a second.

But what I do want to mention is, you know, bringing it back to the conversation that I started the episode with.

And you weren't there for this, Christy, So you're going to have to listen later.

OK.

Well, we were talking about the 1978 feminist media criticism book Hearth and Home that I was reading to to sort of get an understanding of contemporary understanding of media criticism.

And there was one we were, we were talking using it a little bit about tropes and the idea that like their standard things that we see female characters being time and time again.

And one of the things mentioned was that there's 4 roles for adult women.

It's single and looking for a husband, housewife slash mother, spinster and widowed or divorced soon to remarry.

And, you know, Loretta Long was even saying like, this is what a mother should be.

It's interesting that, you know, again, here we are.

We have our first adult female character that we've talked about.

And she fits so cleanly into one of those four boxes.

Another thing worth noting is they went a little deeper later in the book to talk about black characters on TV, and they note that at least situation comedies, they didn't do a specific breakdown on black characters in children's media.

I was looking for it, but it wasn't in this book.

But on situation comedies, they noticed that Black women are usually restricted to the family sphere.

When black women appear in plots, they're usually involved in the family.

And again, that's exactly what we see with Roosevelt Franklin here, that they also mentioned that that's the space where black women were portrayed as having power was when dealing with their own family.

And she does kind of have a sense of dominance in in that family family structure.

It's just interesting that she falls so cleanly into all of these things that this book is saying is like the stereotypical character.

Yeah, well, and I mean again, it's even in her name.

She's just Roosevelt Franklin's mom.

That's the extent of her character.

It's what defines her.

That's it.

We never see her without Roosevelt Franklin.

No.

And surely, again, we're imagining there's got to be stuff that she's doing when he's at school.

Or, you know, what are her own hobbies?

What does Roosevelt Franklin's mom do in her downtime?

I think it's time that someone who's more qualified to talk about this than me writes A writes an amazing fanfic about Roosevelt, Franklin's mother.

But for now, you have anything else to say about her, Or can we move on to a very bizarre character?

I I'm OK to move on.

So let's talk about Granny Fanny Nestle Rd., a character who 1st appeared 2 months after Roosevelt Franklin's mother in April 1970, specifically in the 112th.

Episode of Sesame.

Street because they just kept going with these, Christy.

I feel like there got a there had to be a period of time where Jim Henson just legitimately did not sleep.

It's possible, you know, we, we hear that he knocked out mostly the inserts on Sesame Street and he would like come in for a week and just do like a week straight of these inserts.

Because that's the thing about Sesame Street is you've got these like 2 separate types of scenes.

You have the sort of comedy or song inserts where we're like, in different places, you know, which is usually just a blank space in front of a brick wall or, you know, versus, like, the actual scenes on the set of Sesame Street.

And these sketches would be the things that would get rerun and repeated in so many episodes.

Unfortunately for Granny Fanny Nestle Rd.

The Answer Lady Sketches only got repeated from 1970 to 1972.

OK, yeah, so yet another character that I you know, as again as a 90s kid, I would not have seen hide nor hair of Granny Fanny.

Well, you might have, because the one time she's with Guy Smiley and Here Is Your Life did re air until 1992, but that was the only one of her sketches that made it past Sesame's third season.

I can still remember oak tree when he was just a little acorn.

Oh no.

That's not.

Yes, that's the person who planted you in the ground when you were just an acorn all the way from the farmhouse down the road.

Granny Fanny.

Nestle Rd.

Oh, Granny.

It's so nice.

And it's and it's not even one that she was like a main focus of.

Correct.

She has like no character in that one as opposed to the others, which I got to say, Granny has a strong character.

I know what Granny Fanny's deal is.

Christy, let's talk.

Generally about Granny and then we'll get into some of the specific episodes and I'm sure I'll have media criticism stuff to say about her because I know myself.

But what's the deal with Granny?

Fanny Nestle Rd.

Can you tell the audience who probably also doesn't know this character?

So Granny Fanny.

So OK, part of this, I think I was starting to head cannon a little bit with Granny Fanny I.

Love that I'm ready.

She appears to just be this little old lady who probably would prefer to be left of her own devices.

But for some reason a strange announcer keeps coming into her her home and asking her questions on how to do things.

And Granny, being ever so helpful, does her best to come up with a solution for the problem, only for her solution to be either create a new problem or just completely cause a new issue.

Aren't you just?

Aren't you just sweetie pies for coming to visit your old granny Fanny?

And do you have a household hint for us today, Granny?

I don't know, do I?

Yes, you do.

Oh, I do.

Of course you're right.

I'm sorry young fella, I just remembered.

I think that's good.

I I, I do question that it feels like Granny granny wants to be doing this.

I I don't think it's completely being forced on her by weird voiced guy Smiley I.

Those early, like the earliest 2 sketches that you gave me, that's I think where I kind of get the impression that she's maybe this isn't quite what she set out to do with her day because she always kind of seems a little surprised that she's being tasked with a new problem to try and solve.

That is fair.

And, and let's actually let's talk a little bit about those first two sketches.

So there's a real distinction.

There's only 6 answer Lady Sketches, but those first two are distinctly different because they use older puppets than the than the later ones.

So in the first two sketches, Jim Henson plays the answer Lady Granny Fanny Nestle Rd., Which is a little odd because that means Frank Oz plays Guy Smiley in those two sketches, which feels a little odd.

But it just goes to show how much things were in flux in season 1 of Sesame Street that they they would be like, yeah, OK, you can be Guy Smiley today.

I'll say he's never referred to as Guy Smiley, but he's ATV announcer and he looks identical to Guy Smiley.

Muppet Wiki credits him just as Granny Fanny's announcer, so I have no other knowledge about him.

Now, Christy, this is.

Going to be a a weird deep cut question that you might actually know the answer to.

Did you recognize the Granny Fanny Nestle Rd.

puppet in in the 1st 2 sketches?

So here's I actually I ended up looking it up on Muppet Wiki.

OK, so you do know?

Yeah, and it was, wasn't it?

Like a Southern Colonel.

It's the southern Colonel.

It's the Southern Colonel who so some Muppet fans.

If you're a real, you know, Hubble, Wah All Star, you might remember that the Southern Colonel was an early sort of ad character that Jim performed, like Wilkins and Wonkins for the Southern Bread Company.

I'd do anything for Southern bread.

I'd even go to Yankee Stadium.

But.

Smarter than Yankee?

You know, I might even like it up here.

But I feel like where everybody knows the Southern Colonel from because it goes around the Internet all the time, or at least it used to.

And I played a clip from this in episode 1 of this show is the performance where Jim is demonstrating how anything Muppets can get their features changed and become other characters.

That is the.

Southern Colonel that he's using to demonstrate that with.

And this demonstration starts with Jim saying, here's a character we have who's a Southern Colonel.

We have a lot of fun playing with the character when we're developing A puppet and we have here a Southern Colonel type character that we've he's worked similar to Ralph and some of our other characters.

He's a he's a two person puppet and in this one I'm working the left hand and the head.

And I'm working the right hand.

Here's that sound.

That's right.

I've never really figured that out before.

Son of a gun.

He can be anything because where he ended up was in Goat Corners, Michigan as the Answer Lady, now Granny.

I really like Jim Henson's performance of Granny Fanny Nestle.

Room, Yeah.

I do want to say it is funny.

Yes, I I have to admit, I kind of imprinted on this first version of Granny Fanny like a little duckling, because she actually reminded me a lot of my paternal grandmother, even like her.

How the Southern, the Southern Colonel puppet looks as Granny Fanny.

That actually resembles my grandma quite a bit.

And the cadence in Jim's voice, that kind of slower pace.

And it, I, I, yeah, again, I, I kind of just ended up loving her a little bit.

So the idea is, you know, I actually wrote in my notes that Granny is kind of like if Mr.

Noodle could talk because the whole point is like she gets asked a simple question like Granny, what do you do when your dishes are dirty and granny's like.

Let me show you yes.

I have found a.

Very simple solution here.

What you do is you just throw The Dirty dishes away, you see, you just get rid of The Dirty dish.

When a dish gets dirty, you just throw it away, you see.

Nothing to do with dirty dishes.

OK.

Throwing them away, you see.

And so that's the best way to do it, and you'll solve the problem in a big hurry, you see.

And the announcer needs to be like, no granny Fanny, you need to wash them.

I, I love her solution to sharpened pencil because it's especially her, her concern is that this sharpened pencil, it's so sharp, you're going to hurt yourself on it.

And so you have to snap off the, the tip so that you can't, I guess, potentially wound yourself on this pencil.

One thing I really loved about that is that she specifically addresses the ladies out there with this, this pencil tip.

That was such an odd choice, I thought.

You girls know what I'm talking about, But you know, I, I do think it's interesting because it is clearly supposed to be like a, a women's TV show, right?

Like this would be the kind of thing that like housewives would watch, right?

And I, I don't know a lot about this kind of TV show, whether it existed or not, but you get the sense that like helpful home.

Tips.

And it's talked about a lot in the book I was reading, but helpful home tips were the domain of women where it's like commercials would be like women.

You know how you're always having problems with your toaster, you know, etcetera, etcetera.

It was always just assumed that like if it's house stuff, women are going to be involved.

I think my problem with these sketches, these first two in particular, is they go on so long.

In each one granny has to solve like 4 problems and I'm like, you know, there's a saying, you get an improv and stuff like that.

Like too short to suck.

Like things are always fun.

Things are always funnier when they're shorter.

You know, I say that as someone who's recording, you know, I don't know, multiple hour and a half long podcast episodes on anything Muppets with wigs.

But you know, it is it is definitely the case that like if it was just the pencil or just The Dirty dishes, not only would there have wound up being more of these granny Fanny sketches, but also they probably would have been funnier.

Yeah, yeah.

And I guess they did learn from it, because the later sketches do for the most part 0 in on one specific problem that she has to solve.

Right.

So that gets us into the the the, the sort of second set where they redesigned the granny puppet.

She kind of looks like the Count.

She's got like the Count base but with an old woman wig as opposed to this weird pink BLOB that is the Southern Colonel.

And the announcer now doesn't look like Guy Smiley.

I mean looks a little like Guy Smiley because he's got the same head shape, but looks different than Guy Smiley.

But most importantly, the announcer is now Jerry Nelson.

But even odder is the fact that Granny Fanny is Carol Spinney in one of Carol's only other recurring characters other than Big Bird and Oscar.

He's got a range I guess.

Granny Fanny, Nestle Rd.

I think Carol's Granny Fanny is a little more annoying.

Yeah.

And also feels a little less intelligent.

Yeah, and, and again, like I said, I really liked that first Granny, that iteration of her.

And so seeing the second version, it felt like an imposter has taken over.

She's so she's yeah, she's very energetic.

I almost feel like she feels less like a real grandma to me.

But that is, again, based on my perception of my own grandma and how she would act.

But Granny Fanny, her, her zooming around that that little set of theirs.

It's just, it doesn't feel I I like the slower pace of of Jim's Granny.

That's amazing.

You see I have the same problem.

You do.

Oh, yes, indeed, he's so.

I have two little kittens and they look so much alike I can't tell them apart.

Oh.

My.

And Jim does come back and perform Granny one more time in in the telephone sketch.

But yeah, Carol's is a little zanier.

Yeah, and also her.

Her solutions actually start to make sense, although she's missing an obvious problem, like with the kitten sketch.

She's talking about trying to solve the problem of I have two kittens and they're they're indistinguishable.

How do I tell these kittens apart?

And her, her solution is to propose getting them two different callers, which makes a lot of sense.

That's a very sensible solution, Granny.

But then the announcer points out, well, Granny, actually these kittens are distinguishable.

There's a Gray one and there's an orange one.

I don't know.

That almost felt like a little strange with the setup of the previous shorts that I'm for some reason I get I'm I'm hearing to so strictly this is the granny Fanny cannon.

I cannot deviate from this now.

I'm picturing you and Anthony Strand did an article.

I need to find it.

I don't remember the title, but Anthony Strand once did an article where he pretended to be a Sesame Street viewer to the premiere episode of season 2 of Sesame Street and complaining about all of the changes that had been made.

Like what is this new performer Jerry Nelson and what is he doing on my show?

So I'm picturing you Christy, like going on social media and like doing hashtag not my Nestle Rd.

like to.

Like I liked, I liked the Southern Colonel's face shape for Granny Fanny.

I, I don't know, I kind of like that more angular, the bigger jaw.

Like she kind of felt more unique.

Well, yeah, I mean it is a cause again, the the second redesign is just the Count.

It's the the the Lavender Live Hand anything muppet the same as Count or Mumford.

And even even when you think of a stereotypical grandma in cartoons, a lot of the times they have that same kind of style of hair with the bun, the glasses.

Not my granny Fanny.

Not your Granny Fanny.

It is interesting though, you know, and I, I, I mentioned this, the the second of Carol's Granny Fanny sketches is the one where Granny claims that how she remembers the alphabet is that she has a bag that has everything that starts with a different letter of the alphabet in it.

That sketch was confusing because she doesn't do the whole alphabet and then at one point stops doing the letters in order, which was confusing and concerning to me.

Careful there, Granny An.

Umbrella in that.

Hey, yeah, hey.

You word.

Yeah, my goodness, that that box must be pretty heavy.

Granny, of course, ahead.

Of my tree.

I said careful there Granny, look out now.

Look out there, Granny, careful.

Well, that's, that's all the time we have for today, folks.

Be sure to tune in TuneIn next week when here.

We go.

We're going to put a pin in that because as we'll see in Granny's surprisingly long life, having a bag with many things in it becomes Granny's predominant character trait for a period there, which is kind of weird.

And then of course, the only other one worth noting, as we did, is that there she does appear on Here Is Your Life Oak Tree, which is a guy Smiley sketch, this time the real guy Smiley.

She's in it for probably about 45 seconds.

Yeah, yeah.

Does not indicate anything.

It is clear that they just wanted an old woman and decided that they were going to use Granny Fanny and refer to her as Granny Fanny.

They probably just could have not, and then no one would have be talking about this sketch on my podcast.

And she was kind of upstaged too, by that oak tree puppet.

That was a great puppet.

That was a great puppet, although it was deeply concerning when the table and chair showed up and they were like, we're a table and a chair.

We used to be your friends.

Oh God.

But the.

Thing about Granny Fanny is while there were no new Granny Fanny sketches made after 1972, Granny continued to appear in books through 1986.

There was a 14 year period where you could see Granny Fanny in books but not on the show Sesame Street.

She also, and I don't have as much information on Sesame Street Live, but friend of the pod Tony Whitaker was letting me know that she did appear in various Sesame Street Live shows for a while again up through the 80s.

This.

Character who again, no one remembers because how could any of us remember this character who didn't appear in any new stuff after 1972?

I guess it's like you said though, is that when you need a grandma puppet, you pull out Granny Fanny.

But that's less true of books, you know, like, and that's what's interesting to me is like, there was something.

Something that someone liked about Granny Fanny or felt obligated.

To use about Granny Fanny, you know, well, let's talk about some of these books.

So there's there's an appearance in 1974's Big Bird's busy book where she is on a Guy Smiley game show with Harry Monster.

Looking for something that starts with the letter D and Christy.

How does Granny try to solve this problem?

She pulls out her purse and she starts digging through, looking for things that start with the letter D.

So it's again, it's it's that joke.

And I'm like, OK, I get why you used Granny Fanny here, because we've established Granny's thing is that she has a purse.

Yes, this is an appropriate use of the Sesame Street cannon.

The Lure.

Uh huh.

Exactly.

I I I gave it 2 thumbs up on my letterboxed review of picture books in 1974.

Christy, do you have this?

Problem with your purse?

Cuz you know what I can kind of relate to Granny Fanny.

Yeah, see, and I'm I'm kind of anti purse I.

No kidding.

Yeah, I I am one of those few.

I need to have my items in a specific pocket so that I could tell by weight if I've had them or not.

So I I'm more of a pocket or a pouch person, not a big purse person.

The problem is like dresses don't usually have pockets and I usually wear dresses OK.

Yes.

Anyway, so yeah, I can relate to Granny Fanny.

Then she shows up the same year in the bizarrely titled See No evil, Hear, No evil, Smell No Evil, Scratch and Sniff book.

Surprisingly prominent role trying to solve the problem of the stinky clubhouse.

Christy, how does Granny try to solve this problem?

She once again, she pulls out her bag and starts going through the contents.

Yeah, you know what?

I didn't think about it until you pointed it out.

But yeah, there's a lot of bag related stuff here.

We see her show up the colored the wrong color in the Sesame Street family album.

We see her show up in Spanish in Una Sopresa.

She shows up in the Sesame Street cookbook helping Betty Lou make some kind of television food, and she's on the cover of three different coloring books in cover in the late 70s.

I didn't notice that she was on the cover.

Nope, she is on the cover of three coloring books.

Really was a Granny Fanny fan.

Let's take a take a quick look though at from around the same period, the Sesame Street film strips, which were a series of film strips in 1976 distributed to schools.

The ideas that they were semi interactive film strips.

So for the younger kids in the audience, and by that I mean people Christie and my age because Christie, were they showing film strips when you were in grades?

No, we had VC, we had AVCR like we had the VCR on a cart.

You know that they would.

They would bring around big, big giant CRTTV perched upon the high cart.

You know, when it was time to for me to watch Jack and the Beanstalk, the real story, in my elementary school music class, which we absolutely did, I have vivid memory of watching Brian Henson's Jack and the Beanstalk, The real story.

They would bring that CRT around, but film strips were, you know, simpler.

There was a, it was literally just like a projector that would show still images and there would be an audio track that you would have to sync up separately and would play along.

So in this case, you've got still images of the Sesame Street characters and an audio track that would play and would indicate when it was time for the teacher to change the slide.

And there's some cases too in the 4th of July, one that we'll talk about in a second, where the film strip tells the teacher to to stop and like, OK, now let's.

Discuss.

So, Christy, let's discuss.

Granny shows up in two of these, and in neither of them does she really have any of the traits we've come to sort of establish for Granny, Fanny Nestle wrote.

No, not at all.

The Ernie Learns to skate one actually was I, I, I really liked her character in it.

But yeah, she felt like a completely different person there.

She's so OK, so I guess we'll start with Ernie Learns to Skate.

Ernie Learns to Skate is a film strip about Ernie.

You know, I, I know I, I told you to jump in in the middle because I was like, don't waste your time on the beginning.

But Ernie is being bullied at the park for not knowing how to ice skate.

And Granny sees him, you know, struggling to skate.

And she offers him, like, some really good advice.

Like, look, you know, you gotta keep trying, you know, like, you're gonna just give up and cry about it.

Or are you gonna?

Are you gonna?

Yeah.

Fiddle stitch.

You're giving up too soon, and I won't allow it.

I don't care.

I'm angry.

No.

You listen to me.

If you want to have a temper tantrum, you just go off by yourself.

It hurts my ears.

I'm sorry, Granny.

I wasn't mad at you.

I know you weren't.

But Burt and I are trying to help you.

That's right.

You've got to cooperate.

Now put your.

That's, that's kind of what I liked about her is that she, you know, she is trying to encourage him, but she's she's also got a bit of an edge to her still.

Like when Ernie starts having a bit of a temper tantrum, she very quickly tells him, like, you're not going to be doing that in front of me.

You know, you're going to calm down and you're going to try again.

And she's, you know, telling him about how, like, you don't become a champion skater overnight.

Even the best skaters still fall every so often.

It's all very sensible advice from someone who we previously see struggle to get ketchup out of a bottle because she forgot to take the lid off.

Dating's a lot easier than pouring ketchup, let me tell you.

No, I'm kidding.

But it is a really nice character.

And it's it's Jerry Nelson here doing a kind of.

I mean, Jerry Nelson had like 1000 voices, but also you can picture all of Jerry Nelson's voices Somehow Those are both true.

It's a kind of old lady Jerry Nelson voice.

If you're picturing what Jerry Nelson would sound like as an old lady, you're picturing it correct.

Also, I've already played an audio clip because that's how my podcast works.

Again, I really liked her, but just like it's not necessarily Granny Fanny and at this point it isn't acting like Granny Fanny and also isn't sounding like Granny Fanny.

I don't understand why they didn't just make up another character.

Like it's so strange that they specifically chose this character for a film strip.

It's not even like it's what we had this puppet lying around.

It's like what you had to you could have drawn anyone.

Could have been hairy.

Monster teaching Ernie how to skate.

If you only had Jerry Nelson in the studio, yeah.

I guess it's it's maybe the trope of the the wise old woman you know coming in dispense her wisdom.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

But again, I loved it.

I I really liked this character, even if it is so different than the Granny Fanny who doesn't seem to realize that one of her cats is orange and one of her cats is.

Gray.

Despite not being colorblind.

Like you can't even use that excuse because she does realize eventually anyway.

Now Christy, the 4th of July 1 was probably very confusing to you because the 4th of July is a holiday that we have here in America.

Oh, OK, so we we have a little different here.

We celebrate the 1st of July, you know.

This is weird.

First of all, Granny is performed by Richard Hunt here.

Second of all, Granny's thing is that she's excited to be playing Betsy Ross on the 4th of July float, and she wants the float to be painted turquoise with a little bit of purple.

Mixed in.

Well, that's just the thing I came to see you about.

I've been making my Betsy Ross costume, you know, and it's almost finished.

Oh, you're going to make a Super Betsy Ross Granny, I could just see you now riding on the float and sewing the first American flag.

Ah yes, it will be quite a thrill.

Now I wanted to tell you about the color the float should be painted.

I think it should match my costume, sort of a Violet with just a hint of turquoise.

Won't that be lovely?

Which is called brown.

I didn't think of that.

He's just picturing it you.

Can't mix those colors.

You can't mix them.

They don't mix.

What was your thought on Granny Fanny in this?

Did you have a thought on Granny Fanny in this?

I truly have no opinions about this 4th of July film strip.

I mean, again, like she's just kind of a different character here.

It feels like she very picky about the color of the float.

She kind of does the this is maybe another stereotype of old people is that they have opinions and they believe their opinions are the correct ones.

I mean, she doesn't get totally nasty about it, but she is very insistent that this parade float needs to be turquoise with a a hint of Violet.

It is interesting though, you know, because it is.

She's fighting with Biff, who wants the float to be float colored, which is brown according to Biff, which again is what turquoise plus purple would.

If you mix those colors together, you'd probably get brown.

So maybe they should have just.

But what's interesting is that this is like a really childish argument between 2 Sesame Street characters who are like 100% indisputably supposed to be adults.

Yeah, yeah, and, and the argument is solved by Big Bird, who I forget canonically he's like 766.

Yeah, he's 6.

But also also the, the, the kids at home, because this is where Big Bird is like, OK, you can pause the tape, you know, and, and talk it over.

And he tells them that they should compromise.

And I'm like, oh, so like perp, you know, turquoise and brown stripes.

And he's like, no, we're going to compromise by making it red, white and blue.

And I'm like, well, that's just what you want, baby bird.

That's not.

I'm going to try that from now on.

If I'm in an argument, let's compromise by doing things my way.

We move from there into, like I said, three coloring books where Granny Fanny appears on the cover in different vehicles.

She's on a unicycle in one of them.

Oh, she's knitting while on a unicycle in the From Here to There coloring book.

So yeah, this enters a strange era for Granny Fanny where suddenly her things become, well, two things, vehicles and fitness.

Because in the late 70s, early 80s, everything I could find of Granny Fanny involved her on a unicycle, or in a helicopter, or driving a school bus, or swimming in the ocean, or going for a jog.

She's got an impressive range of hobbies and and driver's licenses.

But again, now we're completely, we're completely away from what was established as, as as Granny Fanny.

I mean, I would like to think of her as a helicopter pilot.

Well, that's kind of rad.

I mean, that's The thing is like, should I be complaining that this character is is well-rounded?

But I guess I just don't.

I don't feel like I really know Granny Fanny.

No, it it very much just feels like somebody had a a big folder or big book of all the available Sesame Street characters and they would flip through it and they landed on the Granny Fanny page and thought, OK, I'll draw this one into the book.

That is absolutely what it feels like, you know?

It is interesting though, because again, going back to our to our discussion of tropes from earlier, no, the helicopter pilot is admittedly not a trope and it is interesting that Granny Fanny did become a helicopter pilot.

I can say that that is not something discussed in any of the theory I was reading.

But we are here at the kind of spinster slash widower or widow character, rather spinster character.

It's also worth noting that, you know, one of the things the book talks a lot about, like I was saying, is the idea that like, a woman's space is in the home.

And women were not usually portrayed on TV as having jobs.

And we do have Granny Fanny having presumably a job here.

But Grannys job is the home.

Grannys job is teaching other people about the home.

And again, like these helpful home tips for ladies and again, that fits right into these these tropes here where it's like.

Of.

Course the old lady character is going to share friendly tips about home.

That is what an old lady does.

And it isn't until she just starts making cameos and picture books that we start to see more of her than that.

You know, unicycling and helicopters and swimming in the ocean.

But that's not really the character that was portrayed in the in the bulk of what you would assume people were seeing.

Yeah, and again, and it doesn't feel like it's a purposeful decision to make Granny have these activities as hobbies again.

It just feels like somebody wanted to draw an old grandma character and decided to put her in.

But she sticks.

Around 1981, she's in the Sesame Street Circus of Opposites alongside Rodeo Rosie, who we'll be talking about in two weeks on this show.

I guess that's a spoiler, but we'll be talking about Rodeo Rosie in two weeks.

And this is also the this is really interesting because this book Sesame Street Circus of Opposites first book to feature Elmo.

So it's a real changing of the guards here where Granny Fanny is leaving us just as Elmo is entering.

And I gotta say.

I get.

Why Elmo was a more popular character than Granny Fanny Nestle?

Wrote.

I'm sorry, Granny.

One day, one day people will accept you like I accept you.

And then the final appearance of Granny Fanny ever was in a magazine story from 1986, a Sesame Street Holiday story.

Rover's Gift?

Oh, OK, that's well, that's a nice one to end it on, I guess.

Can you can you talk a little bit?

Did you read Grover's gift?

I know I I shared with you some scans from it.

Yeah, so it's it's essentially the gift of the Magi story with, but this time with Big Bird and Cookie Monster who want to get gifts for each other.

Granny Fanny has a a store that sells custom T-shirts for teddy bears and so just such a specific.

But it also sells.

It also sells other things because she's, she's teaching Grover how to make latkas there, right?

Oh.

Yeah, that's right.

So it also sells potatoes.

Like, yeah, well, you got to diversify a little bit.

Teddy bear T-shirts and latkas.

But so she so cookie monster buys he trades his jar of cookies for AT shirt for Radar and then a big bird trades Radar for oh, I think it was a cookie jar.

Sorry.

Yes, he trades the cookie jar for Radar.

And then at the very end, Grover comes in and he gifts them the gifts that they traded into Granny.

It's interesting because it really feels like Granny Fanny is supposed to be Mr.

Hooper in this.

Yeah.

Especially like, have you seen Christmas Eve on Sesame Street?

I It's been a long time.

OK, well no, no, no, it's OK.

I'm not here to to to judge anyone for what they have or haven't seen.

But one of the famous scenes from that is a gift of the Magi retelling with Bert and Ernie.

Bert sells his paper clips to Mr.

Hooper to buy a soap dish for Ernie.

Ernie sells rubber ducky to Mr.

Hooper to buy a box for Bert's paper clips.

And again, you've got this idea of Granny Fanny as a a kindly store owner on Sesame Street.

This also seems to suggest, as I said that Miss that Granny Fanny Nestle Rd.

is Jewish.

And as as a Jewish woman, I, I want to, I want to welcome Granny Fanny to the family.

Thank you Granny.

But again, you once again feel like this is just like we chose a character out of a bag, you know, like why is it Granny Fanny?

And by this point?

Again, we are 14 years.

Removed from new granny Fanny sketches.

Yeah, and she's still showing up.

You know, what I love the most about this story is that I thought it was building to a conclusion where Granny Fanny comes in and, and she gives Cookie Monster and Big Bird their respective treasures back, you know, and, and she, she says something about the meaning of Christmas and but no, that's Grover that comes in.

So Granny Fanny was totally fine holding on to Radar and Cookie Monsters Cookies.

Christy, I am.

So glad you pointed this out because Granny Fanny in my notes I wrote she is a less nice Mr.

Hooper because in Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, it ends with Mr.

Hooper showing up in Bert and Ernie's apartment and being like, I wanted to give you guys your paper clips and rubber ducky.

Granny is just fine with it.

And presumably Grover had to buy these things back from from Granny.

Yeah, I think so.

Granny, Granny Fanny probably just forgot because that's also that.

You know what?

Character.

You know what that is it, that that's it.

She She suddenly reverted back to Season 1 Granny Fanny.

She forgot she was so busy picking up specks of dust with a tweezer and putting them into her dust jar.

Anything else to say about Granny Fanny?

No, I think that's pretty much it.

I, you know, I guess I was surprised by how much that I, I came to love her.

Again, that is based on her resemblance to my paternal grandma.

Even her forgetfulness is very much something my grandma did.

So I came into this podcast not knowing who Granny Fanny was, and now I think I might be one of her only fans.

But not her only fans.

No, no, never.

So I want to talk about one final character today because we're going to spend probably all of two minutes talking about this character.

So as I said.

Granny, Fanny Roosevelt, Franklin's mom, and Betty Lou, who we talked about in our second episode, were the only recurring named female Muppets on Season 1 of Sesame Street.

The only other one who could potentially fall into this bowl, this bucket I guess is the better word for it, is Little Bird.

Why?

Why are you barking at me?

Oh, I thought maybe you were some kind of little dog, you know?

Well, I'm not a dog.

Oh, sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep.

But little bird isn't female.

I need to stress this.

Little Bird was only females.

Sometimes it was some writing confusion.

Most likely.

Fran Brill, who started performing Little Bird in season 2, said that she always intended Little Bird to be a boy.

He doesn't get referred to as a girl until later in the 70s, so he doesn't count.

But just in case somebody at home is like, well, what about Little Bird?

No, Little Bird doesn't count.

Stephen 2, as we discussed last week on this show, is when Fran Brill joins the show and Fran Brill takes over performing Betty Lou.

And in season 2, she'll also get her own character named Prairie Dawn.

But shortly after she gets Prairie Dawn, Fran Brill gets a character named after Fran Brill, Franny.

And Franny asks, what if Prairie Dawn was kind of boring?

Hey Frannie, you've been learning about all different kinds of musical instruments today, haven't?

You.

Oh yeah, I sure.

Am the glasses that Gordon had right?

Right.

And the recorder.

Oh yeah, that was neat.

You made that out of a pipe.

Yeah, and an old broomstick, right?

Do you know how to make a kazoo A kazoo?

No, I know what it is.

It's another instrument.

That's right.

How can you make one?

Kind of boring and and sort of just sometimes mumbled to herself a little bit or gets talked over.

So I should just say, before we get into the one Franny episode we're going to discuss, Franny is a green anything Muppet.

So looking kind of like Lefty the Salesman or Sherlock Hemlock, except she literally has Prairie Dawn's wig.

It is the same wig, presumably, that they put on Prairie Dawn and she wears a dress and is a soft spoken little girl who appeared in three episodes of season 2 of Sesame Street.

Now I mentioned we only watched 1, and that's because two of her three appearances are what we refer to as the lost episodes of Sesame Street.

You can read more about this on Muppet Wiki, but there are some episodes that even Muppet Wiki does not have access to and two of those three feature Franny.

So we can only talk about 1 episode from March 12th, 1971.

Again in season 2 it is music day and Franny is kind of mumbly and gets talked over.

I don't love it.

I as someone who is kind of awkward, I kind of love Freddie specifically because she got talked over and, you know, she just kind of haunts the background of of the.

Episode The funniest thing the the clip that I sent you.

So the episode is about Gordon and Gordon's friend the Carpenter who we previously talked about in our second episode on Betty Lou as making helping Betty Lou build a box.

But Gordon and Gordon's Carpenter friend are teaching the kids how to make musical instruments.

And fun fact, this is the episode that the song What Makes Music that would later be featured on one of the Sesame Street disco albums is from.

But Franny doesn't sing What makes music, so I didn't send you that.

Franny kind of just stands around and makes suggestions of what to do, gets talked over, gets explained how to make a kazoo too.

But in the clip that I sent you, it literally begins with Franny going.

And a couple others that you've never heard before.

Huh.

Oh, no, never.

Look, wait a minute.

Just play the alphabet song right?

Yeah, just no.

And that, that kind of gave me, out of all the videos that you sent me, that absolutely was the biggest laugh of the night for me.

Gordon goes, no, we already did the alphabet song.

Ridiculous, ridiculous.

You know, I, I get the sense and I'd love to follow up with with some of the wiki team who who has access to some of the early scripts, but I get the sense a lot of this was ad libbed and that is absolutely how it feels.

Where like Fran Brill was like, oh, have my character suggest a song too.

And just like Gordon wasn't ready and like knew there wasn't time to do it.

So it was just like, no, no, just.

Shoots her down mercilessly.

But there's not much else to say.

She she's not a character who lasted.

She's kind of boring.

We're gonna, you know, we're gonna take take a whole episode next week to talk about some early Prairie Dawn stuff.

But I wanted to knock out Franny because technically she counts as a recurring female character.

A recurring female.

Muppet.

And I was like, well, the exposition has to go somewhere.

What if, What if we're missing some absolute gold in those those lost episodes though, that completely redeem her character?

Well, Christy, I got good news for you.

Oh.

I have descriptions.

So.

I'm gonna read you these descriptions and you're gonna tell me if they sound like gold, OK?

Episode 231 March 30th, 1971 Franny comes to Hooper's store to run an errand for her mother, ordering 7 plastic coffee cups.

She does a quick She does a quick errand around the corner while Mr.

Hooper puts them in a box.

When Franny returns, she doesn't think that all the cups fit into the box, but Mr.

Hooper assures her that there are still 7 by counting them.

Franny asks to have them placed back in the box.

Then again, can't believe they all fit.

Mr.

Hooper senses this is going to go on for a while.

Christy, did we miss Gold?

Yeah.

I mean, I'm not, I'm not going to lie in my head I could see if I could picture Mr.

Hooper getting madder and madder and madder, and that would make me laugh a lot.

OK, now here's another one and I forgot to write down this episode number so I apologize, but Branny comes to Mr.

Hooper's to buy 2 dollies.

Mr.

Hooper has four dollies.

And Franny can't decide which ones to buy.

She's able to classify them into many groups of potential purchase, such as size or skin color.

She finally decides to get the two dollies wearing overalls, but tells Mr.

Hooper to hold off on wrapping them until her birthday in three months.

OK.

That's funny.

I like that.

Yeah.

I wish we were talking about that episode.

Well, I do not have access to that episode and believe me, I asked to the I asked the wiki team.

I thank them in every episode.

They could not help me access the episode where Franny buys 2 dollies.

At last, maybe one day.

Anything else you want to say about Franny?

Do you want to list dolls you have access to on your desk?

I mean, I've got Magna Anjuman from Digimon.

No kidding.

Any other?

Any other thoughts on any of these?

Any of these three characters?

Our granny, Fanny Nestle Road and friends episode.

No, I, I think I'm good.

Thank you so much for having me on this.

Thank you so much for being on this, Christy.

It's truly such a pleasure.

I always love hanging out.

And again, I I figured, you know, if I was gonna send the clips anyway, I could send them to someone who doesn't know Granny Fanny.

Nestle Rd.

Well, I'm glad I know her now.

Christy, do you have any anything you'd like to plug for the audience?

I guess if you just want to check out my Muppet Princess Bride illustrations or my Labyrinth prop replicas, you could feel free to check me out.

I'm on Instagram, Tumblr, Blue Sky, couple other places but those are the main ones and I'm there as KO makes things.

Christy, do you also want to, do you also want to plug your podcast or does that go in a separate sphere?

Oh man, OK, well if you want to see the unfiltered, usually me after having just chugged A7 up.

Christy, yes, I do have a podcast that I host with my friend Bree and we talked about bad Princess movies.

Basically just any goofy silly movie, sometimes good ones that feature a Princess we like to chat about and have a silly time.

So that is just the bad Princess Movies podcast.

I I do swear a lot on it.

Just gonna say because I feel like a lot of the Tough Pigs podcasts, I don't remember.

I don't think you guys swear a lot, and I definitely swear a bunch on my we.

Don't it's it's like one thing that we've kind of, we've kind of all agreed not to do.

That doesn't mean that, you know, you guys aren't allowed to on your podcast.

I don't know.

It's just something, it just feels weird, like I'm doing a show about bear in the Big Blue House.

It feels like maybe I should.

Because you're not.

Anyway, Christy, thank you so much for being here.

It's it's always a pleasure talking to you.

Thank you so much for all of your help on all of our Pride Month stuff.

We're recording this shortly after Pride Month, so thank you for that, and I'm glad I I gave you a new favorite Muppet character Season 1, Granny Fanny, Nestle wrote.

Thank you.

And there you have it.

Between this episode and our earlier ones, now you know everything about every single recurring female Muppet who appeared in Season 1 of Sesame Street, plus Franny from Season 2.

And that's it, you know, season 1 brought us Betty Lou, who might not be a character at all.

Granny Fanny, who's fun but doesn't last.

Roosevelt's mother, who only exists as a mother.

In Season 1, we'd also meet Big Bird's grandmother, Granny Bird, but she's only in one episode in Season 1, so we'll talk more about her later on.

For now, I want to remind you just how dire this is when compared to the classic, unforgettable male characters introduced in this season.

Ernie, Bert, Big Bird, Oscar Guy, Smiley, Cookie Monster.

It's not that the writers and performers and builders of Season 1 couldn't make strong characters, but when it came to women and girls, audiences had extremely little, causing a strange symbolic annihilation of many types of women.

Which takes us to Season 2.

As we discussed last week, Fran Brill joined the show in Season 2.

At first, she'd mostly play Betty Lou, but in 1971 she began playing a second pink little girl, and, well, it's kind of shocking how quickly that character developed into someone special.

And, you know, that's a very long word you're spelling there.

You got a lot of letters, little girl, you know.

Oh.

Yes, well, it is moderately extensive.

Moderately extensive, very heavy talk.

Next week on A Prairie Dawn Companion, I talk about Prairie Dawn in the 1970s with a very special guest.

I hope you're all pageant ready.

See you soon, I really.

AM.

Quite 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, Mikhail Richardson, and Eli Lee for help with script revisions.

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