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A Prairie Dawn Companion - Betty Lou, Transmedia, and the Smurfette Principle · Muppet Fan Podcasts with ToughPigs.com

• 0:03
  In 1975, the Knickerbocker Company, known for making dolls
• 0:08
  of Joe Raposo's later muse Raggedy Ann, released the first
• 0:13
  3 Sesame Street plush toys. Imagine that, the first plush
• 0:19
  toys in the same year as Sesame's sixth season.
• 0:23
  For the five years prior, there were no Grover dolls on toy
• 0:27
  store shelves. The Children's Television
• 0:30
  Workshop intentionally dragged its feet on this from a desire
• 0:34
  to produce merchandise that was both high quality and
• 0:38
  educational, which meant they started with books and records.
• 0:43
  Toys came in 1972, initially released by the Topper Company.
• 0:49
  The idea of these toys was to continue the educational goals
• 0:52
  of Sesame, and you can see that from products like Sherlock
• 0:56
  Hemlock's Hidden Answer jigsaw puzzles, and Sesame Street
• 1:02
  walking Letters. But most famously, the Topper
• 1:06
  line contained hand puppets. Truly, puppets were the most
• 1:10
  obvious choice of merchandise for a show populated by Jim
• 1:14
  Henson's iconic Muppet designs, These Topper puppets came with
• 1:19
  little instructions explaining all the different types of
• 1:23
  social readiness learning kids could engage in with their
• 1:26
  puppets, which ensured the toys fit with CTW's mission
• 1:31
  statement. And so there were Topper puppets
• 1:34
  of Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, Oscar and the Cookie Monster.
• 1:39
  These toys would later be joined by Count Von Count, Harry
• 1:43
  Monster and Roosevelt Franklin. Yeah, we're headed in an obvious
• 1:49
  direction here again. Once again, this merchandise
• 1:52
  line contains no girls. You might think I've really lost
• 1:57
  the plot here, talking this much about Sesame merchandise, but I
• 2:01
  think Sesame merch is as important to discuss as the show
• 2:05
  itself. The book Sesame Street, a
• 2:09
  Celebration, 40 Years of Life on the Street, quotes Tough Pigs
• 2:13
  founder Danny Horn as saying. Who remembers watching TV?
• 2:18
  You watch it and then it's over and you turn it off.
• 2:20
  But you could carry the toys around with you.
• 2:22
  You could sleep with them and break them and find them under
• 2:25
  the couch six months after you thought they were lost forever.
• 2:28
  For kids growing up in the 70s, Sesame Street wasn't ATV show.
• 2:31
  It was part of the environment. We ate off Cookie Monster
• 2:33
  placemats and slept in Big Bird sheets.
• 2:36
  Nobody dreamed of living on Sesame Street.
• 2:38
  We didn't have to. Sesame Street lived with us, so
• 2:42
  merchandise was crucial in that regard.
• 2:45
  The show was as much about reading the monster at the end
• 2:48
  of this book and playing with your hairy monster gym mobile as
• 2:53
  it was about watching TV. Today, experts refer to this
• 2:58
  kind of project as transmedia, a word that doesn't have to do
• 3:03
  with us trans girls, but does suggest that the media
• 3:07
  transcends a simple TV show format.
• 3:11
  In other words, it's less about the kind of dolls that Pedro
• 3:15
  Pascal is protecting and more about the kind of dolls that you
• 3:19
  can buy at Sesame Place anyway. As Walwind and Hall write in
• 3:24
  their academic journal article Race and Rag Dolls, the
• 3:29
  immersive nature of children's trans media play produces
• 3:33
  powerful and durable emotional attachments to franchise
• 3:37
  characters. We remember the Sesame Gang not
• 3:42
  only because of their TV appearances, but because of
• 3:45
  books and toys and clothes and records.
• 3:49
  So if you ask me, checking which characters got featured in these
• 3:53
  transmedia products is a great way to track which characters
• 3:58
  were most important, both to the workshop itself and to audiences
• 4:03
  at home. Unlike Topper or Bombas from
• 4:07
  last week, Knickerbocker initially only made three rag
• 4:12
  doll plushies. You can doubtlessly guess two of
• 4:16
  them. The show's immediate breakout
• 4:18
  stars Ernie and Bert, but the third?
• 4:22
  It wasn't Big Bird or the Cookie Monster or Grover.
• 4:26
  It was Betty Lou. It sure seems like this was a
• 4:31
  statement. It says for certain that the
• 4:34
  main girl on Sesame Street in 1975 was pigtailed, peppy Betty
• 4:41
  Lou on par with Bert and Ernie on toy shelves across the
• 4:45
  country. Don't you remember Betty Lou?
• 4:49
  Knickerbocker seemed to ask. All those great Betty Lou
• 4:53
  sketches and songs and jokes over the years.
• 4:57
  You don't. Well, what if we have it all
• 5:01
  backwards? Merch can be cyclical.
• 5:05
  The more often that characters appeared in merchandise, the
• 5:09
  more they'd feel like main characters, even if they weren't
• 5:12
  always appearing on the show itself.
• 5:15
  After all, as Walwind and Hall put it, the scope of licensed
• 5:20
  products for daily consumption encourages children to eat,
• 5:23
  drink, sleep, and live in character.
• 5:27
  ATV show alone can never do that.
• 5:30
  So Betty Lou is a rag doll and that makes her important.
• 5:36
  But was Betty Lou ever a main character on the show or just a
• 5:41
  main character in merchandise lines like this one?
• 5:45
  Do we remember Betty Lou because of merch or do we remember Betty
• 5:50
  Lou because of her appearances on Sesame Street?
• 5:54
  Was Betty. Lou ever a character at all?
• 5:58
  I'm Becca Petunia from toughpigs.com.
• 6:01
  Today, we'll be looking to answer these questions as we
• 6:04
  explore more from the early seasons of Sesame Street.
• 6:08
  Welcome. Back.
• 6:09
  To a. Prairie Dawn Companion.
• 6:12
  Ladies and gentlemen, the Starlight Hotel takes great
• 6:16
  pride in presenting the world's favorite 6 year old entertainer,
• 6:21
  Miss Prairie Dawn, come on, girls.
• 6:25
  Girls, girls go do girl stuff. Yes.
• 6:34
  Can you play a song with a beats?
• 6:43
  Tracking Betty Lou isn't easy. My pal Michelle Richardson of
• 6:48
  the Muppetergy Podcast once joked that this show could be
• 6:52
  called Finding Betty Elusive, a pun that I think is too tortured
• 6:58
  even for me. The problem is simple.
• 7:01
  As discussed last week, Betty Lou was made from an Anything
• 7:05
  Muppet, the one designers call Little Hot Pink, and given a
• 7:10
  blue gingham dress and a stock pigtailed wig that was used
• 7:15
  previously in Episode 1 for Frank Oz's Anything Family
• 7:20
  member. What Betty Lou wasn't given was
• 7:25
  a consistent performer or name. While she eventually would be
• 7:29
  called Betty Lou on the show, there are plenty of episodes
• 7:33
  where she has no name at all and others where she's called
• 7:37
  everything from Wendy to Lucy. So if I was going to talk about
• 7:42
  Betty elusive, OK, it's it's kind of growing on me.
• 7:46
  If I was going to talk about Betty Lou for this episode, I
• 7:50
  needed a lot of help. Firstly, I spent a lot of time
• 7:54
  chatting with Muppet Wiki admin Tony Whitaker, who helped me
• 7:58
  sort the wheat. And by that I mean clips with
• 8:01
  Betty Lou in them from the chaff.
• 8:04
  And by that I mean clips with all those other boring Muppets
• 8:07
  like Ernie and Bert. But I also wanted to talk to a
• 8:11
  guest on this, a puppeteer who knows a lot about making
• 8:15
  characters out of simple puppet designs.
• 8:18
  Join me over here in the Guest. Corner for a talk with my dear
• 8:22
  friend Staff Scheer. All right, it's Showtime,
• 8:27
  people. Oh, welcome.
• 8:33
  Oh, welcome to our little play Play.
• 8:46
  I'm so pleased to introduce my guest today from the creatures
• 8:50
  of Yes and Puppet Up it's staff Scheer.
• 8:54
  Hello Becca, thank you so much for having me back on another
• 8:57
  podcast. I'm so excited to do this.
• 8:59
  Yeah, staff, I'm really excited that you're here.
• 9:02
  You know you are the 1st guest on this podcast, so
• 9:06
  congratulations but. Oh, I'd like to thank my mother.
• 9:11
  I truly, I truly couldn't think of a person I'm more wanted to
• 9:15
  have on the show than you. Because, you know, we're taking
• 9:19
  a, we're taking a look obviously on this show at sort of the
• 9:23
  history of female characters on Sesame Street.
• 9:27
  So really, who better to talk to than than one of my friends who
• 9:32
  is a female puppeteer and definitely has a lot of opinions
• 9:37
  on this stuff, Especially because we're going to be
• 9:41
  talking today about stuff from the first couple seasons of
• 9:46
  Sesame Street. And I always associate your
• 9:49
  stuff, stuff between the the stuff that you do on on on
• 9:53
  puppet up and the stuff you do on your own projects, most
• 9:57
  notably the creatures of yes. And we'll get to that in a
• 10:00
  second. But I associate your stuff with
• 10:02
  that very old school Muppet feel.
• 10:05
  Oh yeah, So it's wonderful. I definitely thought that that
• 10:10
  would be a a, a good reason to have you on So stuff do you
• 10:14
  wanna do you wanna tell everybody a little bit about
• 10:16
  yourself and the work that you do?
• 10:18
  Yeah, yeah, I, as you mentioned, I'm a puppeteer.
• 10:23
  I, I've done some stuff for, for Henson and I'm a recurring cast
• 10:28
  member in puppet up there, you know, at an improv show for
• 10:32
  adult audiences. And you know, for anyone who
• 10:37
  doesn't know in Puppet up we, we don't just do improv.
• 10:42
  We also do recreations of Jim and Jane Henson's and Frank Oz's
• 10:48
  variety show material that they like, you know, did on the
• 10:51
  Edward Sullivan show and stuff. And then creatures of yes, the
• 10:57
  other project of mine and Jacob Graham's that you mentioned is,
• 11:01
  you know, also vintage oriented. We film it on cameras from the
• 11:06
  1970s and, you know, are basically trying to create a
• 11:11
  reverse time capsule with it and watching these fantastic clips
• 11:17
  that you've mined from, you know, the first season of Sesame
• 11:22
  Street. I I, I do love this old material
• 11:27
  and yeah, it, it I'm, I'm glad you think of me when you see
• 11:31
  this stuff, because I, I see it and my heart just glows.
• 11:37
  I I love how puppity the puppets are like Jim just like going
• 11:45
  like wild with Guy Smiley like just like in some of Jim's early
• 11:50
  stuff, I feel like he's like making fun of puppets as he.
• 11:53
  Does his puppets. And it's like just fabulous.
• 11:57
  And then Betty Lou, of course. And who's, who's the little like
• 12:03
  boy version of Betty Lou? Does that puppet have a name?
• 12:07
  Which one are we talking about? I mean.
• 12:09
  We'll get into this. What colour is he?
• 12:11
  He's pink. He's like literally Betty Lou.
• 12:13
  Oh no, that character does not have a name.
• 12:16
  OK, so that that absolute blank slate of a whatnot and Betty Lou
• 12:22
  and like, you know, the beginning, middle and end
• 12:24
  puppets, I'm sorry, I'm jumping all over.
• 12:25
  Maybe, Yeah. I mean, we'll get to all of
• 12:27
  this. You're you're getting, you're
• 12:28
  we're getting ahead, but we will get to all of this.
• 12:30
  Yeah, so without comprehensively listing puppets, I just was
• 12:34
  really struck by this early material, by the how simple the
• 12:39
  style of the puppets are. They're so puppety, so simple,
• 12:42
  so abstract. So it's just a joy to watch this
• 12:44
  stuff. I mean, like I was saying, you
• 12:47
  know, again about thinking of you, I'm a big fan of the
• 12:51
  creatures of, Yes, the project you do with Jacob Graham.
• 12:54
  You know, I was lucky enough to attend the New York premiere of
• 12:59
  the creatures of yes movie, which was a wonderful
• 13:03
  experience. And you know, that's that's very
• 13:06
  much the style of creatures of yes.
• 13:09
  Are these very puppity puppets. Like you said, you know one of
• 13:13
  the main one of the main characters that Jacob plays is
• 13:18
  is a little. I guess you could describe her
• 13:21
  as a witch, although I'm not sure.
• 13:23
  Yeah, sometimes. She certainly practices
• 13:26
  witchery. She.
• 13:27
  Practices witchery. I don't know if she would
• 13:29
  approve of me calling her a witch, though.
• 13:31
  She probably has a a different word for it, but Mary Broom
• 13:36
  fellow looks a lot honestly like Betty Lou or or Prairie Dawn or
• 13:41
  this this this pink boy you're talking about?
• 13:44
  It's a very similar shape to the puppet and simplicity to it.
• 13:49
  And and I love how that simplicity really lets you, you
• 13:53
  know, expand and build build character and personality so
• 13:58
  nicely, which is something you guys do a wonderful job of on
• 14:02
  creatures of yes, and also something that you definitely
• 14:06
  see a lot of in the early days of The Muppets.
• 14:10
  Obviously so many of like the most memorable Muppets come out
• 14:13
  of this era, you know, Kermit and and and Grover and Bert and
• 14:19
  Ernie and Rolf and all of these things.
• 14:23
  And they all have such simple designs.
• 14:26
  But you know, I guess the question and the question, you
• 14:29
  know, that my, my audience knows we're exploring today because I
• 14:32
  mentioned it in the the part before I brought you on.
• 14:36
  Is Betty Lou a character that has any interesting elements at
• 14:43
  all, especially when compared to those other characters?
• 14:47
  Because because The thing is like Betty Lou is basically the
• 14:54
  first female Sesame Street Muppet basically.
• 15:01
  And and it's just so interesting to think about her sort of in
• 15:04
  comparison to that stuff. So before we dive back in, and I
• 15:08
  know Stoff, you already planted some of the seeds, I do want to
• 15:11
  ask, you know, Stoff, you are a big Muppet fan.
• 15:14
  You grew up with The Muppets. It, it absolutely.
• 15:18
  You know, I know especially Dark Crystal, which you know, I don't
• 15:22
  know, maybe I'll get to 1 day in a side episode, even though my
• 15:26
  focus is Sesame. But but you know, do you
• 15:32
  remember the character of Betty Lou from like any books you had
• 15:39
  or episodes or or clips you remember as a kid?
• 15:44
  Or do you remember? I mean, you, you probably
• 15:49
  remember Prairie Dawn from stuff because she showed up a little
• 15:53
  more, but you may not even remember that.
• 15:55
  And I'm real curious. Well, I do remember Prairie
• 15:59
  Dawn. As for Betty Lou, I will confess
• 16:04
  this. I feel comfortable confessing
• 16:06
  this to you since you're you know who I hope becomes the next
• 16:10
  Pope Becca. So, confession time.
• 16:14
  I do not remember Betty Lou. I do not think that I was aware
• 16:19
  of Betty Lou. Now, that being said, you know,
• 16:23
  watching these clips that you sent me to prepare for this,
• 16:28
  there's a familiarity. There's there's this sense of
• 16:32
  nostalgia because, you know, there's there's elements that,
• 16:37
  you know, you pointed out become things of Prairie Dawns and, you
• 16:41
  know, Fran Brill is performing her And then, you know, Fran
• 16:46
  Brill then performed Prairie Dawn, right.
• 16:49
  Yeah. And and Frank Oz is doing her
• 16:52
  with like, you know, sometimes it's just literally Miss Piggy's
• 16:56
  voice. Absolutely.
• 16:57
  It's it's a. Proto.
• 16:58
  You know, years before Miss Piggy.
• 17:00
  Yeah. So there's all these
• 17:01
  recognizable elements that that as I'm watching it probably for
• 17:07
  the first time because, you know, I don't, I don't think I
• 17:09
  watched a lot of the first season growing up, but I'm I'm
• 17:11
  watching this. They weren't they weren't on
• 17:13
  reruns. They didn't rerun these you.
• 17:15
  Know, but like, yeah, there there's a there's a kind of
• 17:18
  pseudo nostalgia that that hits me right away.
• 17:21
  And also the sketches are really funny.
• 17:24
  Yeah, we're going to get to that in a second, obviously.
• 17:28
  But yeah, so you, you were saying, you know, one of the
• 17:31
  things is this was a character who basically, basically did not
• 17:37
  appear on the show. What I sent you, I sent you a
• 17:44
  bunch of clips from 1969 through 1975.
• 17:49
  And we ended at 1975 because in 1975, the first Sesame Street
• 17:58
  plush toys were released. And the first 3 Sesame Street
• 18:04
  plush toys made were Bert, Ernie and Betty Lou.
• 18:09
  Wow, wow. What I sent you was probably
• 18:15
  about 50% of the sketches that featured Betty Lou at all.
• 18:21
  A character who appeared in books, appeared in merch.
• 18:26
  I have a lamp in my room, a lamp shade in my office that has like
• 18:32
  Bert and Ernie and the Count on it, and it also has Betty Lou on
• 18:36
  it. I have a little PVC figure of
• 18:39
  Betty Lou. You can't see it, but over there
• 18:42
  I I I can tell you that Betty Lou was around in books and
• 18:47
  merch, but what I sent you is basically everything Betty Lou
• 18:53
  did between 1975, everywhere between 1969 and 1975.
• 19:01
  She basically will not appear again after the last clip I sent
• 19:05
  you until the early mid 90s when they attempted to bring her back
• 19:13
  in an attempt to get more female characters on the show.
• 19:17
  I I officially placed my hat in the ring to play Betty Lou.
• 19:22
  Or is she recast? Is she recast?
• 19:25
  She currently has no performer. She hasn't appeared on the show
• 19:27
  since like 95. OK, Sesame, if you're listening,
• 19:31
  I am free. So let's get into those sketches
• 19:38
  though, because again, not to not to repeat too much of the
• 19:41
  preamble. So the first.
• 19:43
  Sketch that I sent you is technically not a Betty Lou's
• 19:47
  sketch, but the first sketch that I wanted to talk about with
• 19:52
  you and I want to, you know, bring to the audience's
• 19:54
  attention as well, was one of those Henson variety show
• 19:59
  sketches that you were talking about before.
• 20:02
  And it's commonly called Happy Girl Meets a Monster AKA.
• 20:07
  A The Beautiful Day sketch. I just enjoy loving a beautiful
• 20:12
  day, and I enjoy enjoying it too.
• 20:16
  Mighty die Dee die snore. Fresh corundridge.
• 20:27
  There are nice things about rainy days, too.
• 20:32
  The first version of this was from 1963, although I sent you a
• 20:38
  clip from 1969 from from a a a a performance.
• 20:46
  And in that we have a pink little girl puppet.
• 20:53
  It is basically the same anything Muppet that will become
• 20:58
  Betty Lou and also Prairie Dawn and also, you know, the Bubsy
• 21:02
  twins and all of these other pink characters with yarn hair.
• 21:06
  Just like just like Betty Lou, a similar dress, but I'll be at a
• 21:10
  different color. It's not Betty Lou, but it's
• 21:14
  basically the seeds. And I thought this was really
• 21:17
  important to talk about because this is represents sort of like
• 21:22
  an early era of Henson having little girl characters used in
• 21:29
  different sketches and used in different commercials.
• 21:32
  You know, we see it in Shrinkel and Stretchel, which was an old
• 21:34
  commercial we see it in. In Sam and friends occasionally
• 21:39
  and. What did you think of this
• 21:41
  sketch? I mean, I guess we should tell
• 21:43
  the audience what happens in the sketch.
• 21:48
  You want to take it or should I? Yeah, I'll.
• 21:52
  Why don't I attempt it? And you can fill in the blanks.
• 21:54
  Sure, sure. So there's a little girl and you
• 21:57
  know she's a girl because she's pink and voiced by Frank Oz, and
• 22:04
  she's just like. I think it might be.
• 22:06
  I'm going to pause. I think it I wrote Frank Oz on
• 22:08
  the sheet I gave you. I think it's Jim Henson, though
• 22:10
  I think both of them are Jim, and it there Jim's performing to
• 22:15
  a prerecorded track that makes. Sense, Yeah, yeah.
• 22:20
  But anyway, continue. That's my that's on me because I
• 22:23
  sent you, I sent you labeling who performed and who performed
• 22:27
  her and everything. And I think this one is Jim.
• 22:30
  Well, that's wonderful because, you know, everyone celebrates
• 22:33
  Frank Oz for his fantastic drag performances, but I, I really
• 22:37
  enjoy gyms as well. And and, you know, as time went
• 22:40
  on, I he didn't do them as much, no.
• 22:42
  No, no. No, so so this little pink girl
• 22:46
  is just like blissing out enjoying a beautiful day and
• 22:49
  everything that she comments on this wonderfully ugly blue
• 22:53
  monster who I I you know, I've always liked that monster, but I
• 22:56
  didn't know who he was. So I looked him up and it was it
• 23:00
  was cool to learn that his name is the beautiful day monster
• 23:04
  from this. Yeah, entirely because of this
• 23:06
  sketch. He's a character.
• 23:08
  Folks at home probably would recognize him.
• 23:11
  He shows up in the background of a lot of Muppet stuff and early
• 23:15
  Sesame stuff, and then even modern Muppet stuff.
• 23:19
  They rebuilt him for the 2011 movie, so he still shows up from
• 23:22
  time to time. It's such a fantastic design and
• 23:26
  such a great He he had so much like flavour and texture to
• 23:29
  every scene he's in. Yes, absolutely.
• 23:32
  So yeah, this this fabulous, ugly, belligerent monster, you
• 23:38
  know, she'll be like, oh, look at the look at this nice thing
• 23:40
  or that nice thing. And whatever it is, he either
• 23:44
  kills it or destroys it or like he's, he's just like messing.
• 23:49
  He does take out a gun and shoot the.
• 23:51
  Birds bird, she's like the bird is singing so beautiful.
• 23:55
  And he shoots the bird. You're right, it was not even
• 23:57
  like a cartoon gun like he takes out like a metal gun.
• 24:01
  Yeah, no, he brutally murders a bird.
• 24:05
  And, you know, I, I read some major themes of female
• 24:10
  empowerment in this sketch. I, I thought it was a very
• 24:13
  auspicious beginning for the Betty Lou puppet because, you
• 24:17
  know, she's, she's staying like cool and collected while
• 24:22
  interacting with this, you know, monster that's like, you know,
• 24:26
  three to four times as big as she is and.
• 24:29
  Or it is 3 to 4 times as big as she is in the beginning, but.
• 24:33
  Yeah, right. As she starts talking about how
• 24:36
  much, how wonderful he is and how beautiful he is, he starts
• 24:41
  shrinking and it's an incredible puppetry effect because some of
• 24:44
  it is done without cuts. Right, right, just backing the
• 24:49
  puppet away from the camera. There's some backing the puppet
• 24:51
  away and it looks like there's like some like with or behind or
• 24:55
  within the fur almost. There's one point where it looks
• 24:57
  like 1 comes out from the fur. Oh yeah.
• 25:01
  Yeah. Yeah, I have to, I, I have to
• 25:03
  rewatch it. But there is definitely some
• 25:05
  backing away. But she she shrinks him down to
• 25:10
  size and then smacks him with a family swatter and and he's like
• 25:15
  you. Got to talk your troubles down
• 25:17
  to a size where you can handle them.
• 25:21
  And it's, it's, it's a really cute, cute sketch.
• 25:24
  And I like what you're saying about like, this idea of like
• 25:27
  female empowerment because on the one hand, it's just like,
• 25:31
  this is just, you know, oh, she's so happy and so girly and
• 25:34
  she loves the beauty of nature. But like, she's assertive and
• 25:38
  taking charge of this situation in a way that I really liked.
• 25:42
  Yeah, yeah, she and it's also like, you know, there's like, I
• 25:50
  I feel like it's working on multiple levels and some of them
• 25:53
  are heady levels. Like she recognized this pattern
• 25:57
  that this monster is like basically the antithesis to
• 26:02
  anything that's like has positive, that she has a
• 26:06
  positive attitude towards. So she takes a positive attitude
• 26:09
  towards him, recognizing that he's ruined everything that she
• 26:14
  feels positively towards. So it will somehow ruin him when
• 26:17
  she's positive towards him. So this is that's like really
• 26:21
  high level. And but then it's, you know,
• 26:25
  it's, it's like there's because of the abstract style, there's
• 26:29
  room for this like high level cognition with what while still
• 26:36
  doing like simple Punch and Judy, like swatting the the cute
• 26:40
  little monster with a fly swatter after she shrinks him
• 26:42
  down. So again, I I loved this and in
• 26:47
  my mind I felt like this had to be included and had to be
• 26:50
  addressed, even though it's not on Sesame Street and also not
• 26:53
  really Betty Lou. The character is not named in
• 26:58
  this. Apparently in Jim Henson's Red
• 27:00
  Book, she's referred to as Little Girl Sue or Suzy, and in
• 27:07
  a later TV special, a Muppet puppet play from 1969.
• 27:12
  This I just think is an amazing fun fact, so I have to say it.
• 27:15
  And then we'll get into the real Betty Lou stuff in a second.
• 27:19
  Harry the Hipster calls her Insipidia.
• 27:25
  That is, that is amazing. And you you did have to include
• 27:29
  that. I, you know, I wish, I wish we
• 27:31
  had seen more of Insipidia and, and because I like this
• 27:36
  assertiveness and, and again, it, it feels almost like we're
• 27:42
  already seeing the subversion of the like typical girly girl
• 27:48
  character. Yeah.
• 27:50
  And it's also, you know, I, I feel like something I want to
• 27:55
  like, you know, put into this conversation is like Betty Lou
• 28:01
  threw a drag lens. Because This is why.
• 28:05
  This is why I have you around. This is why I have you around.
• 28:09
  Oh, it's good to know why I'm around.
• 28:13
  But yeah, the, you know, as, as Ru Paul famously asserted, we're
• 28:22
  all born naked and the rest is drag.
• 28:24
  And, you know, in this early material, we're seeing Betty Lou
• 28:29
  as somewhat literally a drag character in that she's being
• 28:32
  performed by men. But then I would, I would say
• 28:35
  that in some of the later material, which I, I, you know,
• 28:39
  won't spoil yet, but even once she's played by Fran Brill,
• 28:45
  like, you know, it's, I would argue it is still in a sense
• 28:49
  drag performance because of the ways that they're playing with
• 28:53
  and subverting these little girl tropes of being pink and being
• 28:57
  happy and being. La La La La La La la.
• 28:59
  LA, you know, it's like they're not just doing it.
• 29:02
  They're not just saying, yeah, the girls are pink and they go
• 29:05
  La, La, La, La, La, La, LA. You know, they're like, yeah,
• 29:08
  they're like they're performing gender and they're and they're
• 29:12
  playing with the cliches that like were available in like
• 29:16
  children's entertainment and television at that time.
• 29:19
  Well, let's actually jump ahead. Jump ahead into Sesame Street
• 29:22
  then. So we talked a little bit
• 29:25
  actually last time. Not you.
• 29:27
  You weren't there stuff. But we talked a little bit last
• 29:32
  time about the anything Muppets of the early Sesame Street
• 29:35
  years, which were, you know, really just utility players.
• 29:41
  Different parts could be attached.
• 29:44
  They'd be performed by different people.
• 29:45
  They'd be dubbed in different ways.
• 29:47
  And for a while we saw a bunch of that with with characters
• 29:52
  that looked like Betty Lou. Sometimes they were purple,
• 29:55
  sometimes they were pink. Like Insipidia.
• 29:57
  They're like kind of Betty Lou, but not Betty Lou.
• 30:03
  One of the first, I mean some of the first one times that we we
• 30:07
  really see a character who is like definitely going to be
• 30:11
  Betty Lou is like everyone likes ice cream, which I didn't ask
• 30:15
  you to watch, but it's it's a song with again, that anything
• 30:20
  Muppet, not given a name, not anything but she sings.
• 30:24
  It's kind of fun, but the first sketch that I.
• 30:27
  And and I assume that that song that like the message is like
• 30:33
  contempt for people with lactose intolerance is is that is that
• 30:36
  correct? It is.
• 30:38
  You know it's. Like just toughen up and eat
• 30:40
  some ice cream. You baby, you're you're not
• 30:42
  going to get tolerant if you don't like take in a lot of
• 30:46
  dairies. So just listen.
• 30:48
  The first episode of Sesame Street, which we discussed on
• 30:51
  the previous episode, spends about 15 straight minutes just
• 30:57
  talking about the dairy industry.
• 30:59
  Oh my gosh. Really.
• 31:00
  So maybe you're right. I was just messing around.
• 31:04
  They, they, they, Oh my gosh, they, they were just like, drink
• 31:09
  milk. It's good for your bones for
• 31:11
  like 15 minutes. No, they sing a gentle Simon and
• 31:15
  Garfunkel esque song about a cow that takes about 8 1/2 minutes
• 31:20
  and then Ernie drinks milk and talks about how much he likes
• 31:24
  it. Wow, my family have been dairy
• 31:27
  farmers for 400 years so I need to watch this.
• 31:34
  I'll send it to you. I'll send.
• 31:35
  It to you. OK.
• 31:35
  Thank you. Thank you.
• 31:36
  Stuff I didn't know. I didn't know that your family
• 31:38
  was dairy farmers. I do want to talk about that.
• 31:42
  The real first. The real first Betty Lou sketch
• 31:48
  that I. Think you're keeping us on
• 31:50
  track? I'm really trying.
• 31:52
  Here's the thing I know from our other I was actually listening
• 31:56
  to our other podcast recording the one we did on Yolanda the
• 32:02
  other day where we went on a slight tangent about how Muppet
• 32:07
  Classic Theatre makes you transgender.
• 32:11
  We did. We did release that to the
• 32:14
  public, saying that that is a thing that happened.
• 32:17
  Yeah, so, so I knew that I had to be a little organized.
• 32:21
  So I want to talk about this sketch, which weirdly teams
• 32:25
  Betty Lou then named Lucy Jones. She doesn't have a name of a
• 32:31
  definitive name yet Teams her up once again with the so-called
• 32:35
  Beautiful Day Monster. Yeah.
• 32:38
  The chemistry between them is undeniable.
• 32:40
  Oh, that Big Blue monster and that little pink girl.
• 32:42
  Yeah. So I want to this is of course,
• 32:45
  pick your Pat, pick your pet. In just a few moments, a lovely
• 32:59
  little girl will get to choose one of these animals for her
• 33:02
  very own pet. Pick Your Pet was a early Guy
• 33:07
  Smiley game show, although I believe he's called Sunny
• 33:10
  Friendly in this one. Still, that's right.
• 33:12
  Yeah, and he is out there, man. He sure is.
• 33:17
  So it's it's, it's kind of like the dating game or something
• 33:23
  where. It's very much the dating game.
• 33:24
  Yeah, where Lucy Jones gets again, Betty Lou will just call
• 33:29
  her for the sake of consistency. Gets given the traits of a
• 33:34
  couple of different pets. You know, 1 is a dog, one is
• 33:39
  Baskerville, the dog from the Purina commercials.
• 33:42
  The other is of course Little Bird and then the third is the
• 33:46
  Beautiful Day Monster and she has to choose which one she
• 33:49
  wants as a pet and she chooses the Beautiful Day monster.
• 33:54
  To spoil the end of this clip that is from 1970.
• 33:57
  So I think I can safely spoil a clip from 55 years ago.
• 34:02
  Yeah, if you're not caught up on that then just quit the Muppet
• 34:06
  fandom. Exactly.
• 34:07
  Just leave. You're not wanted.
• 34:09
  But one thing that's really cute, one thing that's no, no,
• 34:12
  no, please, please, please. One thing that's really cute
• 34:15
  here is that Betty Lou is extremely excited that she has
• 34:20
  this ugly giant blue monster as her pet now.
• 34:26
  And you can see that you picked a big, ugly, horrible monster.
• 34:32
  He's beautiful, Beautiful. Hello, Pat Head.
• 34:40
  Yeah, there's, you know, I, I see what you're saying about,
• 34:45
  you know, I, I, I, I, I'm totally with you on the argument
• 34:49
  that in a sense, Betty Lou doesn't have a fixed character,
• 34:54
  that there's an amorphousness to her, you know, being played by
• 34:57
  different people, having different character traits based
• 35:00
  on the situation that she's in. But there's something that's
• 35:03
  really wonderful and trick story about that.
• 35:06
  And like her, the simple design of the character supports it.
• 35:09
  And you know, like, I feel like you can read tea leaves with
• 35:13
  her, like you, if you, if you want to take the opposite
• 35:17
  approach and be like, OK, this is the material.
• 35:19
  Sometimes she's like this and sometimes she's like this.
• 35:22
  So who is she? Like if if you start from the
• 35:25
  presupposition that she has a character, one of the things you
• 35:28
  would say is she seems to have some kind of affinity for
• 35:31
  monsters. This is absolutely something
• 35:34
  that that I, I, I realized in going through these is at least
• 35:38
  especially early on in the, the Frank Oz stuff and then a little
• 35:43
  bit at the end that we'll talk about.
• 35:45
  When we're, when we're done. There is that sense of
• 35:48
  subversion, right, that that Betty Lou is this pink girly
• 35:54
  girl character, but she she has this this sort of relationship
• 35:59
  with the beautiful day monster. If we're if we're taking
• 36:02
  Insipidia as like the the logical first step here.
• 36:07
  And you know, there's another sketch later that I'll jump
• 36:10
  ahead slightly. It's called Wendy Goes Shopping
• 36:14
  and it's again Frank Oz, and I feel like that's the one where
• 36:18
  she sounds most like Miss Piggy. Totally.
• 36:22
  But in that sketch, this this would have been the same year in
• 36:25
  1970. She keeps getting distracted by
• 36:28
  how much she loves to look at worms.
• 36:31
  Yeah, yeah. Look at that, It's a little
• 36:37
  worm. Hello, little worm.
• 36:40
  Hello there. Oh how cute the little worm is.
• 36:45
  And, and I felt like there's something that you could do with
• 36:50
  the fact that, like, she likes monsters and worms, but she's
• 36:55
  also this girly, girly character.
• 36:58
  Yeah, yeah, there's absolutely something there.
• 37:01
  And you know, the, you know, I, we don't have to jump here, but
• 37:07
  I, I, I see a connective through line all the way to that, that
• 37:12
  song later on about how women can be anything, you know?
• 37:17
  Yeah, I will. I I do want to save those for
• 37:19
  last. OK.
• 37:20
  So, so we'll hold on that, we'll put a pin in that, but there's a
• 37:24
  through line for a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff from the 1975,
• 37:28
  the 3/19/75 clips. I feel like there's a through
• 37:32
  line to all three of them, or at least two of them here.
• 37:35
  But that'll be a good teaser so people keep listening.
• 37:38
  But. Oh yeah, yeah.
• 37:40
  Oh well, the monster thing is definitely the three.
• 37:42
  Line yeah, that's the other one. But you know so well other than
• 37:47
  that, were there any of these other like Frank Oz era clips
• 37:51
  that you wanted to discuss that you thought there was anything
• 37:54
  interesting in? Otherwise, we'll start getting
• 37:57
  into when Fran Brill took over, which was pretty much in the
• 38:00
  second season of Sesame. Street.
• 38:03
  Yeah, well, I guess the the only thing I'll oh, there's oh,
• 38:08
  there's all these Frank Oz ones. OK, just because we didn't
• 38:11
  mention it the the Mr. and Misses game.
• 38:14
  Oh, yes, as you pointed out, like it's not about her.
• 38:17
  She's just kind of a, you know, playing the lovely assistant
• 38:21
  role to Guy Smiley on this game show about a couple and it's a
• 38:27
  couple of monsters now. Oh my gosh, there's so much drag
• 38:31
  here because Frank Oz is doing like this female Grover
• 38:34
  prototype has as like the the the wife of this monster couple
• 38:40
  and it's and it's the beautiful day monster.
• 38:41
  It's the beautiful day monster again, yeah.
• 38:44
  And he's and like these monsters are like, really like wild and
• 38:48
  like, you know, like, you know, like doing like alarming,
• 38:55
  somewhat threatening stuff. And, and Betty Lou has to like,
• 38:59
  you know, because she like, is moving the monsters around the
• 39:03
  set. She's like dealing with them
• 39:04
  very fearlessly. So even though it's not about
• 39:07
  her, you still see this juxtaposition of the delicate
• 39:10
  little girl who's just like, yeah, whatever.
• 39:13
  I'm. I'm leading this giant blue
• 39:14
  monster that could eat me into this booth.
• 39:17
  That's fine. And that that sketch, the Mr.
• 39:20
  and Missus game, which again, is is clearly like a riff on like
• 39:24
  the newly weds game or something like that was the first time
• 39:29
  she's called Betty Lou. It Guy Smiley says her name once
• 39:35
  She has no lines in the sketch. That sketch is also really
• 39:38
  interesting because even though it's the beautiful day monster
• 39:41
  who says it, that sketch is cited by some of the Sesame
• 39:47
  Street team. It it's mentioned in the book
• 39:51
  St. Gang that that sketch is
• 39:53
  actually the origin of Cookie Monster's personality.
• 39:58
  Yeah, that's. Right.
• 40:00
  Frank Oz is playing the Beautiful Day Monster in that.
• 40:03
  And Guy Smiley tells the Beautiful Day Monster that he
• 40:07
  could win, you know, like a fabulous all expense paid
• 40:11
  vacation or a cookie. And the Beautiful Day Monster
• 40:16
  just gets so excited that he can win a cookie.
• 40:21
  That nothing else matters. Oh, boy.
• 40:24
  What? What?
• 40:25
  What do you think, dear? Oh, it's a dear house.
• 40:29
  Oh, you want a Hawaiian vacation and new car and new house and
• 40:34
  new money? Yeah, I do.
• 40:37
  But, well, you decide, dear. You know how you love cookies,
• 40:44
  Cookie. Yeah.
• 40:47
  And that was apparently the moment when the Sesame writers
• 40:51
  were like, we need to make a whole character that just acts
• 40:55
  like that all the time. Yeah, Oh my gosh.
• 40:58
  You know, I and I had read about this sketch, but I'd never seen
• 41:01
  it until I until you sent it to me.
• 41:04
  And it's it's so good. You know, obviously anyone who
• 41:09
  wants to see the origin of Cookie Monster should watch it.
• 41:12
  But also like the way that Jim Henson and Frank Oz take it so
• 41:19
  seriously. It's so stupid and they're
• 41:21
  taking it so seriously. Guy Smiley isn't like, what are
• 41:24
  you doing? Like you should take the prize.
• 41:27
  That's like new money in a new house and new car.
• 41:30
  Like clearly like he's like everyone's giving space for
• 41:34
  beautiful day monster to make this really important and
• 41:37
  difficult decision about whether to like become upper middle
• 41:41
  class or to have a cookie it. Needs to be clear, it is a
• 41:46
  cookie. It's not even like Guy Smiley
• 41:48
  offers him a lifetime supply of cookies.
• 41:51
  Yeah, it is one cookie. And this whole drawn out, let's
• 41:55
  do another episode about that female proto Grover, because if
• 42:00
  there's more of her, she's she's.
• 42:01
  Unfortunately, no. Alas.
• 42:04
  But wait, let's give her a shout out.
• 42:06
  I love how she's so supportive of her, of her bizarre husband.
• 42:11
  Because if you haven't seen this clip, none of this is going to
• 42:14
  make any sense to you. We're not doing a great job of
• 42:17
  describing it, I guess. Or maybe we're doing too good of
• 42:19
  a job. Hopefully we're making it sound
• 42:21
  intriguing at the. There is there is a moment where
• 42:23
  when when beautiful day monster is trying to decide she's like,
• 42:28
  well, dear, I know how much you love cookies.
• 42:32
  Yeah, and he's like, you know, Yeah.
• 42:35
  And the he leaves space. He's like, well, you would like
• 42:38
  a new car, right? She's like, and you and you
• 42:42
  would like a whole bunch of money, right?
• 42:45
  And a new house well, and and that's when she's like, oh, but
• 42:50
  I do know that you love cookies so I, I really want you to make
• 42:53
  this decision and I really. Appreciate that they're there
• 42:56
  for each other. That's a really healthy couple.
• 42:59
  Yeah. I mean, listen, he objectively
• 43:02
  made the wrong choice. Like I, I also have a really
• 43:07
  complex, mostly almost entirely negative feeling about late
• 43:12
  stage capitalism. But I I do understand that I I
• 43:16
  live in a society where I need that money to be able to access
• 43:20
  goods and services. You know, yeah, I suppose that
• 43:26
  with the resources made available to him with an
• 43:29
  unspecified fortune, he would be able to procure more than one
• 43:36
  cookies, correct. I, I guess, I, I guess you're
• 43:40
  right that it, it was not a, it was not a self optimizing choice
• 43:44
  for sure. Yeah, I mean again, and I and I
• 43:47
  do appreciate though I do appreciate his, his, you know,
• 43:51
  looking past material material like it's a cookie is also a
• 43:55
  material good. Yeah, you know it.
• 43:59
  Gosh, now I want to see like the, the like backstage
• 44:04
  documentary where you get to see Betty Lou be like, I can't
• 44:08
  believe he chose the cookie. This is, is no one going to is
• 44:11
  no one going to say anything about it?
• 44:13
  Because I, I think Betty Lou, like, knows, you know, like she
• 44:17
  knows this is silly. Well, and that that's, that's an
• 44:21
  interesting thing too, because I feel like, I feel like, and
• 44:24
  this, this takes us into this takes us into the, the Fran
• 44:28
  Brill era in, in season 2. And for the record, I, I think
• 44:33
  this is the first time I've actually said Fran Brill on this
• 44:37
  podcast because in episode 1, we only talked about season 1 of or
• 44:43
  episode 1 of the show. And Fran Brill joined the show
• 44:47
  in season 2. She was hired by Jim Henson.
• 44:51
  She was the first female puppeteer hired by Jim Henson or
• 44:56
  the first female like Muppet puppeteer.
• 44:58
  I mean, obviously they were female puppeteers long before.
• 45:02
  And and that's his partnership with Jane.
• 45:05
  Yeah, well, and I was about to say Jane was never hired per SE.
• 45:09
  So usually they say Bran was the first one who he hired versus
• 45:13
  Jane obviously. And we talked about Jane in the
• 45:16
  first episode too. Jane obviously was such an
• 45:19
  important collaborator and and and contributor and all of these
• 45:24
  things. But it's a different
• 45:26
  relationship is what I'm what I'm trying to trying to say
• 45:29
  here. So Rand Brill takes over in
• 45:33
  season 2 Betty Lou. She takes over Betty Lou from
• 45:38
  Frank Oz. She also takes over Little Bird,
• 45:41
  who didn't really have a super consistent performer and does a
• 45:46
  few other roles. She introduces Prairie Dawn and
• 45:50
  we're going to be talking about Prairie Dawn soon on this show,
• 45:53
  but not in this episode. You got, you got to make.
• 45:55
  You got to make the people wait. Yeah, yeah, you can't just lead
• 45:59
  with Prairie Dawn bursting out of the gate.
• 46:01
  Exactly. No.
• 46:02
  Then no one would listen. But no one will listen to future
• 46:06
  episodes. I mean, but part of part of The
• 46:09
  thing is after season 2, Fran Brill did not work full time on
• 46:18
  Sesame Street for years. She would often do books and
• 46:24
  records or come in or like books on tape or, or records
• 46:29
  occasionally would do sketches. But she was not around that much
• 46:34
  after this season, which is why you start to see Betty Lou start
• 46:39
  to be performed by other people again after season 2.
• 46:43
  It's a little unusual, but you know, we're going to get into a
• 46:46
  little bit more of this in the future because I need to do a
• 46:49
  little bit more research into why this was exactly.
• 46:54
  She did some other acting and other voiceover roles in this
• 46:58
  time. We'll we'll take a deeper look.
• 47:00
  But right now I, I didn't want to address.
• 47:03
  So Fran Brill is here, and Fran Brill, I think has a pretty
• 47:07
  different take on Betty Lou a lot of the time.
• 47:11
  The first sketch with Fran Brill as Betty Lou to air is the
• 47:16
  beginning, middle and end sketch that you talked about earlier.
• 47:20
  Oh. Yeah, all stories have a
• 47:22
  beginning and an end. And here to demonstrate this to
• 47:26
  you are my friends. Beginning and end.
• 47:29
  Hey there. How are you?
• 47:31
  Hi. Now which one of you guys is
• 47:33
  beginning and which is end? Oh, well, I say I'm beginning.
• 47:36
  Yes. And I'm end.
• 47:38
  I see. OK fellas, let's hear your
• 47:41
  story. And it's so funny to me, and I
• 47:44
  wrote this in my notes, and, you know, I shared my notes with
• 47:47
  you. This sketch feels to me a lot
• 47:50
  like the kind of thing that we would later associate with Fran
• 47:55
  Brill's signature character, Prairie Dawn, where she's like
• 47:59
  kind of the host and kind of doesn't have the patience for
• 48:03
  what's going on. We see by the end, which very
• 48:07
  much to me is what I associate with Fairy Dawn and her pageants
• 48:11
  that she would always do and her her kind of letter of the day
• 48:15
  stuff with Cookie Monster. We'll, we'll get into that.
• 48:18
  Obviously not now this is about Betty Lou, but in this Betty Lou
• 48:25
  tries to explain beginning, middle and end with the help of
• 48:29
  three characters who are, I guess, the personification of
• 48:32
  beginning, middle and end. Yeah, yeah.
• 48:36
  And. Things don't go ideally because
• 48:40
  beginning and end can't get their acts in order and middle
• 48:45
  can't shut up. The fearsome dragon was standing
• 48:48
  guard at the tower where the witch had imprisoned the three
• 48:51
  Knights who had eaten the magic radish at the banquet to
• 48:54
  celebrate the success of the enchanted fairy who had
• 48:56
  dispelled the curse of the dismal druid which the witch of
• 48:59
  the Western would wove the incredible invisible cloak which
• 49:02
  only lived happily ever after. This is true.
• 49:08
  This is true. Yeah.
• 49:09
  And it's. I mean, it's kind of.
• 49:14
  Oh, I was going to say, it's like the first time we're seeing
• 49:17
  Betty Lou as a straight man in the vaudevillian sense.
• 49:23
  I, which is the only sense I talk about straightness in.
• 49:27
  Same. Yeah, but I guess she's a bit of
• 49:30
  a straight man all the way back as Insipidia as, you know, like
• 49:36
  she. Technically a different
• 49:38
  character, Technically a different.
• 49:39
  Character, but yeah, but Little Pink Puppet being like
• 49:44
  representing the forces of order rather than the forces of chaos.
• 49:48
  Which again, I feel like become so much of like Prairie Dawn's
• 49:53
  whole thing later on and the duos of Prairie Dawn and Grover
• 49:58
  and Prairie Dawn and Cookie Monster that we'll start to see,
• 50:01
  you know, in the in like in the 80s and 90s up up through today.
• 50:07
  But that idea of like this little pink character as the
• 50:11
  straight man? Yeah.
• 50:14
  Which there's something there and I feel like if we really
• 50:18
  wanted to get Gendery on this, and I know you and you know me,
• 50:23
  so we're going to there's something to be said about how
• 50:27
  like. Women are not the.
• 50:30
  Fun ones. Women are the sensible ones is
• 50:33
  like something that I feel like you could that's like the
• 50:37
  negative read you could have on this, right.
• 50:41
  And you know, I'm clearly not saying that I believe that.
• 50:44
  But like there is that kind of stereotype of like the nagging
• 50:48
  wife or like the the the babysitter or the teacher or any
• 50:53
  of those kind of like sensible roles that are always foils to a
• 50:59
  character who just wants to have fun.
• 51:02
  Yeah, yeah, totally. And that's, you know, this
• 51:07
  speaks very much to why I, I don't feel regarding your
• 51:11
  observation that she doesn't have a fixed character.
• 51:15
  I agree. And I don't see that as a
• 51:19
  criticism. I see that as a strength because
• 51:22
  in a sketch like this where you know, if, if you're trying to
• 51:27
  like, ask about implicit cultural messages in it, you
• 51:31
  would walk away saying, oh, they're saying that girls can't
• 51:33
  be funny, but at least she is. Pretty funny too, for what it's
• 51:38
  worth, the straight man role is funny because The Muppets have
• 51:43
  always been very good at making sure that the straight man was
• 51:46
  still funny. Oh yeah, well, and, and you
• 51:49
  know, they, they're literally better than humans are doing
• 51:52
  deadpan when they, when they look at the camera, they, they,
• 51:56
  they're just really good at not moving their faces.
• 51:59
  So they're, they're deadpan is just superlative.
• 52:02
  So she's funny in her own way, but you know, yeah, she's, she's
• 52:06
  the the while she doesn't get to be the wild and crazy one, she
• 52:11
  is the smartest person in the room.
• 52:13
  So there's you can see female empowerment from that angle.
• 52:17
  And then because the character is not fixed, you do get to see
• 52:20
  her be a loose cannon at other times in other sketches.
• 52:25
  I like that. God, You're warming me up.
• 52:27
  You're warming me to Betty Lou. You're warming me to Betty Lou.
• 52:30
  Yeah, yeah, the the the amorphousness is, is a strength.
• 52:35
  She's she's, she's like a generic female Loki.
• 52:41
  Well, I don't know if maybe we're getting too far there, but
• 52:44
  you know, not. Far enough.
• 52:47
  And that's why I invite you on to things, you know, But one of
• 52:51
  the, one of the, the most interesting things is that in
• 52:55
  this era, Betty Lou starts appearing on what we what we
• 53:01
  call the street scenes of Sesame Street.
• 53:05
  So we talked a little bit actually about this in the first
• 53:08
  episode too. But for folks just jumping on
• 53:11
  the way Sesame Street was was filmed and was conceived and all
• 53:16
  of these things and is still put together this way is that you
• 53:20
  have certain scenes that are filmed on the Sesame Street set
• 53:26
  with the human characters with Gordon and Maria and and and
• 53:30
  Susan and Linda and everybody. And then you have other things
• 53:36
  that are filmed as interstitial segments that are are sort of
• 53:39
  mixed throughout the episode, right?
• 53:43
  The street scenes, the so-called St. scenes were different in
• 53:48
  every episode. Every episode has different St.
• 53:51
  scenes, has unique St. scenes. Whereas the sketches could kind
• 53:55
  of be shuffled up and dealt throughout the episodes.
• 53:59
  They're they'd appear multiple times in a season.
• 54:02
  Some of them would continue to run for decades as, as sketches
• 54:08
  that you would see. And So what that means is that
• 54:13
  in, in season 2, we see Betty Lou get involved in the so the
• 54:18
  so-called lot of Sesame Street a little bit more.
• 54:23
  And in particular, there's one scene that I I sent you where
• 54:29
  she has to count how many nails are in a board that I thought
• 54:35
  was incredibly boring. Betty Lou?
• 54:37
  Yeah, Betty Lou. You see what we have here?
• 54:41
  A board. A board and in the board are
• 54:44
  what? Those sharp things.
• 54:47
  Those are nails. Those sharp things are nails.
• 54:49
  That's right. But why?
• 54:51
  But why? But why?
• 54:52
  Why do you have the nails in the board?
• 54:54
  Well, because they're in different arrangements.
• 54:57
  You see, we're nailing them in and they all wound up in
• 55:00
  different shapes. Yeah, counting the nails.
• 55:04
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 55:05
  Not the most exciting scene. I mean, I, I love, again, that
• 55:08
  they're taking something very simple and stupid so seriously.
• 55:12
  Like there's a certain comedy in that it.
• 55:15
  But not, I don't know, I feel like calling it comedic is maybe
• 55:18
  a little generous. And yeah, and it feels like in a
• 55:22
  lot of these these these St. scenes.
• 55:25
  And I think I only sent you two of those three of those St.
• 55:29
  scenes there. There's more that I didn't send
• 55:32
  you because so many of these are just like completely nothing
• 55:37
  Like Betty Lou is here because we need someone to count the
• 55:42
  number of nails and be polite and say, yes, I can count the
• 55:47
  number of nails and then count the number of nails or Betty
• 55:52
  Lou. Betty Lou wants to sort blocks
• 55:56
  into two piles of blocks. I didn't send you that one, but
• 55:59
  that was another one of the clips that I that I found.
• 56:02
  Betty sounds like it just sums up the modern woman's whole
• 56:06
  situation. You know who among us doesn't
• 56:08
  want to count a lot of blocks? See, I thought you were going to
• 56:12
  say that it kind of sums up the the modern woman's situation
• 56:15
  because Betty Lou just has to be nice and polite and just, you
• 56:20
  know, yes, and, but yes, and not in the comedic way.
• 56:24
  Just be like yes I would love to count blocks.
• 56:27
  That that that that would be a more apt observation.
• 56:31
  Yeah, she she is long-suffering and it.
• 56:34
  Is really funny. Gordon absolutely does not
• 56:37
  remember Betty Lou's name or or anything.
• 56:42
  The scene opens and he goes what?
• 56:44
  You had Mary, Mary, Betty Lou. Which is they just had to keep
• 56:51
  that in because they filmed like over 100 episodes a season.
• 56:54
  So they just had to keep going and not not cut.
• 56:57
  Yeah, wow. Maybe she did grow up to become
• 57:01
  Mary Broom Fellow. Me.
• 57:03
  Oh, well, I'll have to. I'll have to have Jacob on and
• 57:07
  and ask, ask him at one point. Yeah, Yeah, but this ends with
• 57:14
  this kind of era basically ends. There's there's two other Fran
• 57:18
  Brill clips that I I sent you, but it basically ends with
• 57:23
  building a box, which is from episode 1, five nine from season
• 57:30
  2. Would you believe this is the
• 57:35
  only episode from now until the early 90s?
• 57:41
  In 1970, Episode 159, Building a Box is the only episode where
• 57:47
  Betty Lou appears in more than one scene.
• 57:52
  More than one street scene. Wow.
• 57:56
  Is this one? I'm with her.
• 57:58
  I. You know, if we all just voted
• 58:01
  for Betty Lou, none of this would have happened.
• 58:03
  Stuff. Absolutely, absolutely.
• 58:06
  And, well, you know. Wait, wait, stop.
• 58:08
  You don't know this, but there is a book called I Want to Be
• 58:14
  President from the 90s, maybe the 80s.
• 58:19
  I could look it up right now that stars Betty Lou.
• 58:23
  Oh my gosh. Well, this I, I mean perfect,
• 58:28
  Yes, I mean. We'll talk about that when we we
• 58:30
  get to the 90s. So like, let's.
• 58:32
  Talk about. It well, unless I have you back.
• 58:34
  On your Betty Lou. Episode.
• 58:37
  Yeah, maybe you should. But regardless, I look forward
• 58:40
  to that conversation. I mean, this building a box
• 58:44
  sketch, like, you know, if you wanted to be critical, you could
• 58:50
  be like, oh, you know, she's she's very upset and she needs
• 58:54
  comfort from all these other characters.
• 58:55
  So it's just female stereotypes. But what I love about the sketch
• 59:00
  is that all of these human actors and bigger puppets are
• 59:06
  attending seriously to the needs of this sweet, soft, vulnerable
• 59:12
  girl who's like, not apologizing for for being sad that she can't
• 59:16
  take her cat on the train. She's like, she's like, you
• 59:20
  know, present with her feelings and grown men and and older
• 59:26
  characters are like, OK, don't worry, we're going to we're
• 59:29
  going to fix this. We can help you.
• 59:31
  And they're taking her very seriously and making space for
• 59:34
  her softness and vulnerability. And I do want that in a
• 59:38
  president. Well, so so just you, you got a
• 59:43
  little ahead of yourself again in this in this clip, in this
• 59:48
  this episode, Betty Lou wants to take her cat, who we later learn
• 59:53
  is named Samantha on a train to visit her grandma.
• 59:58
  And that's. Bigger than her.
• 1:00:01
  The cat is absolutely bigger than her, which I kind of think
• 1:00:03
  is adorable. I wish my cat was bigger than
• 1:00:07
  me, I'm going to be honest. You wouldn't survive a day.
• 1:00:10
  They're they're ruthless heart. No.
• 1:00:12
  But that's listen, but that's OK.
• 1:00:15
  Yeah, yeah, she died as she lived.
• 1:00:18
  Loving cats but but, but Betty Lou wants to take Samantha on
• 1:00:23
  the train. She can't unless Samantha has a
• 1:00:26
  box. She's crying because Samantha
• 1:00:28
  doesn't have a box and so Gordon brings in a construction worker
• 1:00:33
  for a Carpenter friend of his to help her build a box.
• 1:00:38
  Now staff, I didn't send you the entire episode.
• 1:00:45
  You only saw about 1/3 of Betty Lou watching in awe as
• 1:00:51
  carpenters build a box. I thought you maybe got the
• 1:00:56
  point after the amount that I sent you.
• 1:00:59
  I did. I did.
• 1:01:01
  I I agree completely. I like, I love how you're
• 1:01:04
  describing it as such an important thing that like these
• 1:01:08
  adults are making time for her and they never say like Betty
• 1:01:13
  Lou, just don't take your cat with you to your grandma's
• 1:01:17
  house. What a weird thing to want to
• 1:01:19
  do. Like, yeah, they, they never say
• 1:01:24
  that. They never say.
• 1:01:27
  Ask your mom or something like that like they they do take time
• 1:01:31
  for her. But I feel.
• 1:01:33
  Like that says more about Sesame Street being a really special
• 1:01:39
  show that always wanted to give children, kind of like the
• 1:01:44
  benefit of the doubt that it says about Betty Lou the
• 1:01:48
  character. Yeah, that's true.
• 1:01:54
  You know, this is a good, this is a good time to I think to to
• 1:01:57
  bring up to bring up some, some, some terminology from media
• 1:02:03
  criticism. OK, so so stuff you're you get
• 1:02:06
  to be here for a media criticism terminology corner.
• 1:02:10
  I'm excited to. Learn.
• 1:02:12
  Stuff. Are you familiar with the phrase
• 1:02:16
  the Smurfette Principle? Oh, well, I, I won't pretend
• 1:02:23
  that I've heard that before, but the, the, the, the name makes me
• 1:02:27
  think of, you know, the fact that the fact that the, the
• 1:02:33
  neutral Smurf is, is a male Smurf and that, you know,
• 1:02:39
  Smurfette is, is a feminized Smurf.
• 1:02:42
  So. So is the Smurfette principle
• 1:02:44
  that the principle that that characters are male unless
• 1:02:49
  they're specifically signified to be female?
• 1:02:52
  Basically so. So this actually showed up.
• 1:02:56
  This phrase showed up first. I learned shows up first in
• 1:03:01
  1991. A good year.
• 1:03:05
  That's the year I was born, so it was a very good year, yeah.
• 1:03:07
  There you go, very good year. So this shows up in 1991 in an
• 1:03:12
  essay by Katha Pollitt in the New York Times.
• 1:03:17
  This essay, she describes the frustration that she has as a
• 1:03:23
  parent. Now she's a poet and an
• 1:03:25
  essayist, but she's talking about the frustration that she
• 1:03:27
  has as a parent with finding female characters for her
• 1:03:33
  daughter to identify with on on on TV shows for children.
• 1:03:40
  And she mentions this idea here, right?
• 1:03:44
  That contemporary she, I'm going to quote it here.
• 1:03:47
  Contemporary shows are either essentially all male like
• 1:03:51
  Garfield, right? If you think about it.
• 1:03:53
  I mean, I guess Arlene exists, but Garfield Arlene wasn't in
• 1:03:57
  every episode. Well, and Arlene is just a
• 1:03:59
  smurfette of. Well, and we'll get to that in a
• 1:04:01
  second. Like Garfield or are organized
• 1:04:04
  on what I call the Smurfette principle, a group of male
• 1:04:09
  buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically
• 1:04:14
  defined. In the worst cartoons, the ones
• 1:04:18
  that blend seamlessly into the animated serial commercials, the
• 1:04:23
  female is usually a little sister type, a Bunny in pink
• 1:04:28
  dress and hair ribbons who tags along with the adventurous bears
• 1:04:32
  and Badgers. Yes, Oh my.
• 1:04:35
  God, then it goes on. I'm going to, I'm going to cut
• 1:04:37
  out. She gives some more examples.
• 1:04:39
  She references Muppet Babies and Baby Piggy, although she does
• 1:04:45
  seem to ignore that Skeeter existed.
• 1:04:47
  But Skeeter barely existed. But.
• 1:04:51
  Anyway, she she ends with the with the crux of this message
• 1:04:55
  here, right, which is the message is clear.
• 1:04:58
  And this is a quote again, the message is clear.
• 1:05:01
  Boys are the norm, girls the variation.
• 1:05:05
  Boys are central, girls peripheral.
• 1:05:09
  Boys are individuals, girls types.
• 1:05:14
  Boys define boys define the group, its story and its code of
• 1:05:19
  values. Girls exist only in relation to
• 1:05:23
  boys. No, we don't necessarily see
• 1:05:26
  that girls exist only in relation to boys element with
• 1:05:30
  with Betty Lou. But it is interesting that
• 1:05:33
  again, at this point, Betty Lou is basically the Smurfette,
• 1:05:40
  right? She's basically the little
• 1:05:42
  sister type, right? And especially in this episode,
• 1:05:46
  she feels like just the little sister type where it's like she
• 1:05:51
  needs to be helped by the characters who can do things.
• 1:05:56
  Yeah, And you know, I think considering her as the
• 1:06:00
  Smurfette, I think that's so interesting in relation to, you
• 1:06:05
  know, this fact you dropped earlier in our conversation
• 1:06:09
  about how over represented she was in merchandise.
• 1:06:17
  Because, you know, people of all genders are watching Sesame
• 1:06:22
  Street and and want to see themselves in it.
• 1:06:24
  So when they're buying stuff, the, you know, like, I'm sure
• 1:06:27
  that the marketing people, we're like, OK, who, who's who, who
• 1:06:32
  are we going to sell to? The girls?
• 1:06:34
  Betty Lou. Only Betty Lou.
• 1:06:35
  OK, great. So we're just going to go all in
• 1:06:37
  on Betty Lou. She technically exists.
• 1:06:40
  It's so funny because that just didn't reflect on like the
• 1:06:43
  amount of times she appeared on the show itself.
• 1:06:47
  Right. No, there's such a disparity.
• 1:06:49
  And and again, I do think it's a little, again, it's a little
• 1:06:54
  more intentional. You know, Paulette describes
• 1:06:57
  right like these, these worst cartoons, right where it again,
• 1:07:03
  where she's like it blends seamlessly into animated serial
• 1:07:06
  commercials. I don't think that's what's
• 1:07:08
  going on here. I don't think Betty Lou only
• 1:07:11
  exists in relation to the boys. Per SE, but it is this
• 1:07:16
  interesting thing where it's like.
• 1:07:18
  You have a group of male characters and then you have
• 1:07:20
  Betty Lou. And what's interesting to me,
• 1:07:25
  going back to what you were saying stuff about like how
• 1:07:27
  Betty Lou can be so many different things.
• 1:07:31
  On the one hand, that's positive.
• 1:07:33
  On the other hand, I feel like, isn't that because there's
• 1:07:36
  nobody else to be the dependable girl, the smart girl, the needy
• 1:07:43
  girl, you know, the the emotional girl, she has to be
• 1:07:47
  all of these things. You could have all of those girl
• 1:07:49
  characters and instead you just have her.
• 1:07:51
  That's so interesting. So it's this interesting
• 1:07:53
  contrast and and I love what you're saying.
• 1:07:56
  Like this wasn't like a gotcha to get you to say all of these
• 1:07:59
  positive things and then be like, but I was reading theory
• 1:08:03
  and it made me think differently.
• 1:08:05
  Like, no, this isn't like a gotcha, but it's just such an
• 1:08:08
  interesting place to be in right now, yeah.
• 1:08:12
  Yeah, I'm so glad to have gained this vocabulary around the
• 1:08:19
  Smurfette principle. Did you say principle?
• 1:08:24
  Because I feel like I can add this for my experience as a
• 1:08:30
  puppeteer. People always gender puppets
• 1:08:34
  male unless they have like red lips and eyelashes and purple
• 1:08:38
  eyeshadow. You are going to love stuff.
• 1:08:42
  You are going to love this podcast because believe me, we
• 1:08:45
  talked about that in the first episode.
• 1:08:48
  I asked the question, Was there ever any doubt that when Jim
• 1:08:53
  Henson drew the sketch of the character that would become
• 1:08:57
  Cookie Monster, was there ever any doubt that that character
• 1:09:01
  would be a male puppet? Right.
• 1:09:04
  Oh my gosh. That's it.
• 1:09:05
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:09:06
  Well, I mean, obviously if you need a female Cookie Monster,
• 1:09:10
  you're just going to put a wig on the puppet and.
• 1:09:12
  What did we and what did we say about the beautiful day
• 1:09:15
  Monster's wife? You were like, she looks kind of
• 1:09:18
  like Grover, except she's got a wig and eyelashes.
• 1:09:21
  Yeah. Oh my gosh, is she that first
• 1:09:24
  green Grover puppet? No, it's it's slightly
• 1:09:26
  different, but it's it's a very similar build.
• 1:09:28
  It's a very similar build for sure.
• 1:09:31
  Like you are you are right to identify.
• 1:09:33
  I mean, it's their early, their early Henson Celine builds a
• 1:09:37
  lot. There's a lot of shared
• 1:09:39
  elements. You know, when it comes down to
• 1:09:40
  it, Ernie looks like Rolf. Because again, they're all.
• 1:09:45
  Just like, wow, Ernie does look like Ralph.
• 1:09:48
  There are three genders. Burn, burn Ernie and Ralph.
• 1:09:53
  Yeah, yeah. But anyway, the the point still
• 1:09:58
  stands. It's, it's interesting to sort
• 1:10:00
  of see that at play And the, the word that we used, I got, I have
• 1:10:05
  to get my notes. I'm going to cut.
• 1:10:07
  This or maybe I won't cut this folks.
• 1:10:09
  I don't memorize everything. That's why I have a notes Notes
• 1:10:13
  app here. The the word that we used to
• 1:10:16
  describe what staff is talking about about gendering puppets is
• 1:10:20
  called androcentrism, and we talked about androcentrism on
• 1:10:27
  the first episode. It's the idea that by default a
• 1:10:31
  character is male unless you explicitly say that that
• 1:10:35
  character is. Female.
• 1:10:36
  Wow. Which is a a literal opposite of
• 1:10:41
  of like biological truth that we're all female embryos until
• 1:10:48
  some get, you know, an extra dosage of testosterone that that
• 1:10:53
  makes them develop along male lines instead.
• 1:10:58
  But it's part of this sort of, you know, a patriarchal, male
• 1:11:02
  centered society that we all live in.
• 1:11:06
  Yes, Wow. Oh my gosh.
• 1:11:11
  You're going to love my Sesame Street podcast.
• 1:11:15
  I definitely. I mean, clearly I am, yes.
• 1:11:17
  So let's let's start let's start taking taking this this Betty
• 1:11:21
  Lou story in for in for a bit of a landing because Betty Lou
• 1:11:27
  after Fran Brill temporarily stops appearing as regularly,
• 1:11:32
  Betty Lou also stops appearing as regularly occasionally shows
• 1:11:38
  up performed by Frank Oz Jerry Nelson performs her like once
• 1:11:43
  the the I sent you a sketch called I Love you where surreal
• 1:11:54
  a boy thinks Betty Lou has a crush on.
• 1:11:57
  Him. And that felt very weird to me
• 1:12:00
  because again, that definitely felt like women are here because
• 1:12:05
  we can have crushes on them. Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 1:12:11
  And obviously that is why we're here.
• 1:12:13
  But we're here for other things. Well, listen, I know that
• 1:12:18
  everybody has a crush on me. I just want them to also
• 1:12:21
  appreciate me for other reasons. Right, like your love of ice
• 1:12:25
  cream and your your dislike of people with lactose intolerance.
• 1:12:29
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but then you can also have
• 1:12:32
  a crush on me. It's fine.
• 1:12:34
  Right, right. You contain multitudes.
• 1:12:38
  But then she doesn't show up a ton.
• 1:12:42
  And then in 1975. And I wish I knew if this was
• 1:12:46
  before or after the release of the Betty Lou Ragdoll.
• 1:12:51
  Unfortunately, I just know this was all in 1975.
• 1:12:54
  It's harder to track the exact month and day that a toy is
• 1:12:59
  released than an episode of TV. Betty Lou shows up in 3 songs in
• 1:13:06
  that season. Season 6.
• 1:13:08
  Three songs performed by Marilyn Sokol, or at least the vocals
• 1:13:12
  are performed by Marilyn Sokol. We know that Marilyn Sokol
• 1:13:18
  briefly did some puppeteering work, but she did not like it as
• 1:13:22
  much. But stuff.
• 1:13:24
  Do you know where else you probably know Marilyn Sokol from
• 1:13:28
  what other? What was her big?
• 1:13:30
  What was her big Henson role was while Frank Oz does the puppetry
• 1:13:37
  of Ma Otter in Emmett Otter's jug band Christmas, she is the
• 1:13:42
  voice of Ma Otter. She dubbed over Ma Otter.
• 1:13:46
  And. Of course, Emmett Otter's Jug
• 1:13:48
  Band Christmas is released two years after these clips.
• 1:13:54
  Oh wow, OK, so so was she doing Betty Lou's voice before she did
• 1:13:59
  Ma Otter? Yes.
• 1:14:01
  OK, OK. Wow, Wow.
• 1:14:03
  Yes, because these are these clips, these three songs we're
• 1:14:05
  going to talk about just to kind of wrap this, wrap this up, wrap
• 1:14:10
  our our our sort of early years of Betty Lou talk up.
• 1:14:14
  We're all from 1975. Emmett Otter premieres in 1977.
• 1:14:19
  Wow. So the first of the first of
• 1:14:24
  these songs, chronologically speaking, is the subway.
• 1:14:28
  It's one of my all time favorite Sesame Street songs.
• 1:14:31
  So good it slaps on the subway it.
• 1:14:38
  Will go right by your local address, swang to and pro which
• 1:14:41
  is the only way to go. On the subway, Subway and
• 1:14:49
  Marilyn Sokol has a couple versus as Betty Lou.
• 1:14:52
  I don't think there's really anything to say about Betty Lou
• 1:14:54
  in this clip. I have one thing to say.
• 1:14:57
  She has one of her lines in the song Is Your Thumb is in My Eye
• 1:15:03
  because it's a crowded subway. And you know, there's been so
• 1:15:06
  much discourse in more recent years about man spreading on
• 1:15:10
  public transportation. And we've talked about this, you
• 1:15:15
  know, through line of of Betty Lou as like amorphous slash
• 1:15:18
  universal girl character, that one of her traits is that she's
• 1:15:22
  long-suffering. And like, yeah, she's not, she's
• 1:15:26
  not mad. She's not like, what's wrong
• 1:15:28
  with you? Get your thumb out of my eyes.
• 1:15:29
  She's just like, it's relatively polite for someone who has a
• 1:15:32
  thumb in their eye. It's true, it is.
• 1:15:37
  It is. Also, it's a weird assortment of
• 1:15:39
  characters. I don't think the placement of
• 1:15:41
  Betty Lou says or means anything.
• 1:15:43
  Like Kermit and Bert are basically the only main
• 1:15:47
  characters there, right? Like.
• 1:15:50
  It's trippy, which is a weird duo, but it's a fun song.
• 1:15:55
  It's where I wanted to mention it because again, it does seem
• 1:15:58
  to be the first first time Marilyn Sokal performs the
• 1:16:01
  vocals, Sokal vocals, Sokal vocals.
• 1:16:06
  And then the second clip I included felt really important
• 1:16:10
  for us to discuss here because it's it's the song women can be.
• 1:16:17
  Look at the things that we women can do.
• 1:16:21
  We can be clowns, we can be cooks, we can be bus drivers, we
• 1:16:27
  can ride books. Just look around you.
• 1:16:30
  It's easy to see there's nothing we women can't be.
• 1:16:35
  And this is a super interesting song.
• 1:16:38
  It's a bunch of just female anything Muppet puppets,
• 1:16:42
  including Betty Lou, performed by a bunch of people, including
• 1:16:49
  Jane Henson in a rare, rare Sesame Street vocal appearance.
• 1:16:54
  A rare vocal appearance period from Jane Henson.
• 1:16:57
  She barely, she barely performed vocals on Sam and Friends.
• 1:17:01
  We do know she did occasionally, but we don't have any of those
• 1:17:04
  clips. It's it's she's doing vocals.
• 1:17:08
  And also, bizarrely enough, EGOT winner Rita Moreno is one of the
• 1:17:15
  anything Muppets. It's actually two of the
• 1:17:17
  anything Muppets, I believe. And it's just a bunch of female
• 1:17:22
  Muppets talking about all the different things women can be.
• 1:17:27
  Yeah. And, and yeah, it's exhaustive.
• 1:17:30
  You know, they're covering every career path.
• 1:17:32
  It's it's, it's really like just a song about like, you know,
• 1:17:37
  yeah. That it's, it's got a very clear
• 1:17:40
  central message of, of women can do any job that you can think
• 1:17:44
  of. I I, I felt like this was like
• 1:17:48
  proto glop glorious ladies of puppetry.
• 1:17:51
  Yes. I was like, oh, this is like the
• 1:17:53
  spiritual ancestor of glorious ladies of puppetry.
• 1:17:56
  Y'all, y'all and glop should perform should perform this.
• 1:18:00
  Oh my gosh, yes. I I need to send this clip to,
• 1:18:06
  to Donna and Colleen and Alice. Make sure they're aware of it.
• 1:18:10
  I'm sure they are. Probably, but who knows, just in
• 1:18:13
  case they aren't. But it's great.
• 1:18:15
  And you know, it's, it's so funny because you know, for all
• 1:18:18
  of this that we're talking about like sometimes maybe not having
• 1:18:23
  the best messages for, for, for, for women with some of the stuff
• 1:18:28
  we were talking about with Smurfette, but sometimes.
• 1:18:31
  Having great messages for for women.
• 1:18:34
  This is just such a positive thing.
• 1:18:36
  Pretty, pretty early in, in, in this wave of, of feminism.
• 1:18:42
  You know, again, obviously, what would this be in the 70s, like
• 1:18:46
  the second wave of feminism, right?
• 1:18:50
  Who can keep track of the waves of feminism?
• 1:18:52
  This was like the beginning of a, of a sort of new women's
• 1:18:56
  movement. And I really like that this is
• 1:18:59
  out there. I mean, again, like we're we're
• 1:19:01
  talking, you know, so much of the dialogue today has been
• 1:19:05
  like, is Sesame Street gone woke?
• 1:19:07
  And it's like, no, this was here.
• 1:19:10
  This was here in Season 6. And like, you just weren't
• 1:19:14
  paying attention. Not you stuff.
• 1:19:16
  You you were paying attention. Well, I'm not sure I was paying
• 1:19:19
  attention in 1976. Okay, you're not.
• 1:19:23
  You're not an ageless being. I kind of always assumed you
• 1:19:26
  were. I, you know, the if I, if I have
• 1:19:31
  memories from past lives, they're primarily repressed.
• 1:19:35
  Oh, well, I just wanted to say the, the line that resonated
• 1:19:39
  with me the most in women can be, which I think is repeated
• 1:19:42
  twice and maybe is sang by Betty Lou, is women can be clowns.
• 1:19:49
  And you know, with women can be leaders.
• 1:19:53
  Women can be lion tamers, You know, all of these fierce or, or
• 1:20:00
  like, I don't know, male dominated fields, but comedy is
• 1:20:03
  also male dominated. And, you know, like, and I, I
• 1:20:08
  think when women are excluded from, from comedic spaces, it's,
• 1:20:14
  you know, for, for similar reasons to why they're excluded
• 1:20:18
  from these other male dominated fields, which is that, you know,
• 1:20:22
  to be funny, you have to have permission to take up space.
• 1:20:28
  And so, yeah, that just as a female clown that that I was
• 1:20:33
  like, yes. Yes, I was about to say you have
• 1:20:35
  clown training. I don't know if the if the the
• 1:20:37
  audience knows that. I mean, I know that because
• 1:20:40
  we're friends, but. Yeah, now, now they now they
• 1:20:44
  know that, yes. So I can confirm that women can
• 1:20:47
  be clowns. But again, you are absolutely
• 1:20:50
  right. And that is something we've been
• 1:20:51
  talking about, like, do women have the permission to be funny?
• 1:20:55
  Does Betty Lou have the permission to be funny?
• 1:20:57
  And the answer is sometimes, sometimes.
• 1:21:01
  And the last song I want to talk about, because it is possibly, I
• 1:21:06
  would say a top 10 Sesame Street song for me is I Want a Monster
• 1:21:12
  to Be My Friend, a classic Sesame Street song just simply
• 1:21:17
  credited to little girl. But it is definitely Betty Lou.
• 1:21:21
  Oh yeah. About Betty Lou singing about
• 1:21:23
  how much she wants to befriend a monster no matter what and it's
• 1:21:29
  this amazing like, burlesque number.
• 1:21:32
  Yeah, I want a monster to be mad.
• 1:21:40
  I want a monster to be my friend.
• 1:21:44
  I want to get for my own pit a real life monster with every
• 1:21:52
  tender. I'd love to.
• 1:21:57
  I'd love to perform this as a burlesque number.
• 1:21:59
  Can I just? Can I just say that?
• 1:22:01
  Can can I just somehow commit you to that?
• 1:22:03
  Can I just paint you to a corner where you have to do that?
• 1:22:07
  Stuff. Do you know any?
• 1:22:07
  Do you know any burlesque? Burlesque shows looking looking
• 1:22:10
  for performers. You know, I haven't really
• 1:22:13
  stayed up to date with that scene.
• 1:22:15
  I used to be moving in in the, you know, Venn diagram between
• 1:22:21
  underground clown and burlesque in Brooklyn.
• 1:22:25
  But I could, I could poke some of those contacts and I could
• 1:22:28
  hook you up. I mean, I think the world needs
• 1:22:31
  this, this performance of yours, of this as a burlesque number.
• 1:22:35
  But it's it's, it's fun and it takes us all the way back to, I
• 1:22:42
  mean, technically all the way back to Insipidia if we're
• 1:22:44
  counting her. But if we're not, it takes us
• 1:22:46
  all the way back to pick your pet right where it's like Betty
• 1:22:51
  Lou's thing is that she likes monsters.
• 1:22:55
  But, you know, and this, this is, you know, as with all the
• 1:22:59
  best comedy, there's, there's truth here, this love of
• 1:23:03
  monsters. You know, like growing up, I
• 1:23:08
  understood my own transness as a monstrous trait.
• 1:23:12
  You know, it was explained to me that that trans women were
• 1:23:17
  monsters. And so I was like, oh, I'm, I'm
• 1:23:21
  a monster. I need to keep this part of
• 1:23:24
  myself secret. So yeah, this little girl being
• 1:23:29
  like, I love monsters. I don't know, you know, going
• 1:23:33
  back to the drag lens, like seeing this through the lens of
• 1:23:36
  drag, having this, you know, kind of universal stand in for
• 1:23:44
  any girl, this, this, this representative of femininity
• 1:23:49
  saying I love monsters. I'm like, oh, good, I'm, you
• 1:23:52
  know, I'm a monster. I I belong here too.
• 1:23:56
  It's an interesting, it's an interesting, an interesting end.
• 1:23:59
  And pretty much from then until the 90s, we will not really see
• 1:24:05
  Betty Lou on the TV show Sesame Street.
• 1:24:11
  Wow, bring her back, bring her back.
• 1:24:14
  Well, we'll talk about what she was doing in the 90s when we
• 1:24:18
  when we get there. But I'll, I'll, I'll wait until
• 1:24:20
  we get there. You know, I feel like we kind of
• 1:24:23
  addressed a lot of the other questions I was, I was going to
• 1:24:26
  ask because we said so much here, right?
• 1:24:29
  But what do you think? What do you think works about
• 1:24:32
  Betty Lou and what I guess we already talked about what you
• 1:24:35
  think works. That universality is really her,
• 1:24:38
  her greatest strength and her greatest weakness in a lot of
• 1:24:42
  ways, you know. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:45
  You know, and there's some, you know, if you take a character
• 1:24:50
  like Bert, for instance, he's always the straight man, just
• 1:24:54
  the way there's always, always a little child.
• 1:24:57
  And that's that's a strong thing about their characters.
• 1:25:01
  But yeah, like, you know, that this amorphousness, this ability
• 1:25:04
  to be the straight man or the loose cannon and to be
• 1:25:09
  specifically a child or to just be a broader, like this is
• 1:25:13
  what's required for this scene. And I'm bringing this female
• 1:25:16
  presence here that's similar to Kermit.
• 1:25:18
  You know who who can can be the red nosed clown or the straight
• 1:25:23
  man and can put on a wig and be Kermina or can be Kermit.
• 1:25:28
  So there's there's, you know, is she?
• 1:25:30
  Yeah. She's tapping into that early
• 1:25:33
  abstract Salmon Friends quality where, you know, like that level
• 1:25:38
  of abstraction and universality in the Salmon Friends era that
• 1:25:43
  was a core part of the Muppet aesthetic was that none of them
• 1:25:47
  was, none of them were allowed to be recognizable as human or
• 1:25:53
  animal or as a specific species. They they all had to be
• 1:25:56
  abstracts. And like, she's definitely like
• 1:25:59
  coming directly out of that lineage.
• 1:26:02
  Absolutely. And again, that's why I felt
• 1:26:04
  like it was important to start with the the insipidia clip.
• 1:26:08
  Yeah. You know, I, I keep saying that
• 1:26:10
  Betty Lou is going to come back in the 90s and we'll get to,
• 1:26:14
  we'll get to that later on this podcast, not this episode.
• 1:26:18
  We're going to we're going to start wrapping up.
• 1:26:20
  I've kept stuff long enough, but But here's what's really
• 1:26:25
  interesting. Remember I mentioned the article
• 1:26:30
  about the Smurfette principle from 1991 and we talked about
• 1:26:37
  some of the shows that they referenced, like Garfield.
• 1:26:42
  Here's how the article ends. Or I guess the middle of the
• 1:26:47
  article. Then the end.
• 1:26:48
  Pollock goes on to try the same test on public television and
• 1:26:54
  talks about how Sesame Street she says it's amazing how well
• 1:27:00
  they divide the humans based on race and gender.
• 1:27:05
  But she said The Muppets are absolutely the stars and quote
• 1:27:10
  the important ones. The ones with real personalities
• 1:27:15
  who sing on the music videos, whom kids identify with and
• 1:27:19
  cherish in dozens of licensed products, are all male.
• 1:27:25
  I know one little girl who was so outraged and heartbroken when
• 1:27:29
  she realized that even Big Bird, her last hope, was a boy that
• 1:27:35
  she hasn't watched the show since.
• 1:27:39
  And then she goes on. She goes on.
• 1:27:42
  She talks about some other stuff.
• 1:27:44
  And then Pilot talks to Dulce Singer, the executive producer
• 1:27:50
  of Sesame Street at the time, who says when asked about the
• 1:27:56
  all male Muppets, says we're working on it.
• 1:28:02
  And of course, Paulette, who's kind of got a sarcastic, cynical
• 1:28:07
  bent, goes. After all, the show has only
• 1:28:10
  been on the air for 1/4 of a century.
• 1:28:12
  These things take time. The trouble is, our preschoolers
• 1:28:18
  don't have time. My funny, clever, bold,
• 1:28:22
  adventurous daughter is forming her gender ideas right now.
• 1:28:26
  In the year 1991, Rosita will be added to Sesame Street.
• 1:28:31
  Rosita by the early 90s, Zoe will be added and Betty Lou will
• 1:28:38
  return. And it's hard not to feel like
• 1:28:42
  it's partly in response to this New York Times article.
• 1:28:46
  Yeah. Wow, I mean, that's what an
• 1:28:49
  important dialogue that there's. Gosh, you know, I'm so glad you
• 1:28:55
  like shared that text from the article.
• 1:28:57
  So much of it speaks for itself. So I just want to add that I I
• 1:29:03
  love that Big Bird is androgynous enough that a little
• 1:29:07
  that the the the straw that broke the camel's back for this
• 1:29:10
  one little girl was realizing that Big Bird was a dude.
• 1:29:14
  I Yeah. Do you know how many people?
• 1:29:16
  Do you know how many people I know casual Muppet fans who
• 1:29:19
  think Big Bird is a girl. I could probably do a whole
• 1:29:23
  episode on Big Bird. Trans Big Bird have me on as a
• 1:29:27
  guest. This great stuff.
• 1:29:31
  I'd say you have to become a Co host but I know you don't have
• 1:29:33
  the time. I'll make the time.
• 1:29:36
  Stuff I will definitely be having you back because it's
• 1:29:39
  always such a delight. Where?
• 1:29:42
  Where can people find your work on the Internet?
• 1:29:45
  Oh well, my first plug is always going to be the creatures of
• 1:29:49
  Yes. On YouTube you can simply search
• 1:29:52
  creatures of Yes and find our channel.
• 1:29:56
  There's so much to watch on there already and more exciting
• 1:30:01
  material being released in the future.
• 1:30:04
  I think the movie The movie should be out online by this
• 1:30:08
  point, by the time this drops. Hopefully.
• 1:30:11
  This will probably be the fall. Yeah, I imagine the movie will
• 1:30:16
  be out. Yes, our first feature length
• 1:30:18
  movie. We're recording this well in
• 1:30:20
  advance, but excellent. Yes, yeah, and the movie is
• 1:30:23
  wonderful. I can't recommend the creatures
• 1:30:26
  of Yes stuff enough. Mary Mary Broom Fellow is one of
• 1:30:30
  my one of my favorite characters in in modern media.
• 1:30:35
  She is an icon, yes. So yeah, you, you can see my
• 1:30:42
  heart and soul there on that Channel with my dear friend
• 1:30:45
  Jacob Graham. And I'm also on Instagram as
• 1:30:48
  Stoffsheer. One word under score.
• 1:30:51
  Trans puppeteer. Stoffsheer Trans Puppeteer.
• 1:30:55
  And let me be clear, Stoff is spelled STOPH and Scheer is
• 1:31:00
  spelled SCHEER. We'll have links in the show
• 1:31:05
  notes, obviously, but you know. Stroffscher means fabric
• 1:31:10
  scissors in German, which I did not know when I chose this name.
• 1:31:14
  No kidding. Yeah.
• 1:31:16
  But thank you so much for being here.
• 1:31:18
  It's truly always a pleasure. It really is.
• 1:31:21
  And like I said, I couldn't have asked for anyone better to talk
• 1:31:25
  about the 60s and early 70s and abstract puppets and all of that
• 1:31:31
  with. Oh my gosh, this.
• 1:31:33
  Yeah, this was lovely. Becca, thank you so much.
• 1:31:36
  Thank you. This is exciting.
• 1:31:38
  I I can't wait to go back and listen to your first episode and
• 1:31:42
  listen to everything that follows this.
• 1:31:44
  I'm. You've really turned me on to
• 1:31:46
  some exciting stuff here. Yeah, and and ultimately stuff.
• 1:31:50
  I hope you find a monster to be your friend.
• 1:31:53
  Oh, I, I have, I have some monsters who are my friends.
• 1:31:58
  Thank you stuff. Thank you, Becca.
• 1:32:09
  So that's Betty Lou in the 1960s and 1970s.
• 1:32:13
  As I said in the episode, Betty Lou did appear more often than
• 1:32:17
  this, but not much. And after 1975, when she had
• 1:32:22
  been cemented in ragdoll form and had begun appearing in
• 1:32:26
  books, she basically vanished from the show proper, consigned
• 1:32:30
  to transmedia. There are a few future Betty Lou
• 1:32:34
  clips and a lot of book appearances that we'll discuss
• 1:32:38
  later. Or maybe we won't.
• 1:32:41
  There's not much else to say besides what has already been
• 1:32:44
  said. Betty Lou remains A cipher until
• 1:32:48
  1993, when she returns to the show, 2 years after Dulce,
• 1:32:53
  Singer said. We're working on it, but for
• 1:32:57
  now, it's good that we have our first major recurring female
• 1:33:01
  character. That's a step.
• 1:33:04
  And as mentioned, in 1970, Jim Henson hired a female puppeteer
• 1:33:10
  named Fran Brill who would not only play Betty Lou in some of
• 1:33:14
  those sketches we discussed, but also bring to life new
• 1:33:17
  characters like Prairie Dawn and one day, one of the most
• 1:33:21
  important female Muppets, Elmo's best friend, Zoe.
• 1:33:26
  Next week, folks, get this. Next week, I sit down with Fran
• 1:33:32
  Brill to talk about the early days of her career and what she
• 1:33:36
  thinks of Sesame's work representing girls on screen.
• 1:33:40
  Fran Brill, you guys. Fran Brill.
• 1:33:43
  It, it's happening. Oh, I oh, my God.
• 1:33:45
  I can't wait. I'll.
• 1:33:46
  I'll see you then. I really.
• 1:33:48
  AM. Quite a Prairie Dawn Companion
• 1:33:54
  is a production of toughpigs.com.
• 1:33:57
  It is written, produced, edited and hosted by Becca Petunia, an
• 1:34:02
  executive produced by the Tough Pigs Muppet Fan podcast
• 1:34:05
  executive producer Johannes. Thanks to Scott Hanson, Shane
• 1:34:10
  Keating, Tony Whitaker and the Whole Muppet Wiki team for
• 1:34:14
  helping me with research. The book St.
• 1:34:17
  Gang by Michael Davis was also indispensable.
• 1:34:21
  Thanks to Katie Lynn Miller, Michael Richardson, and Eli Lee
• 1:34:25
  for help with script revisions. Follow Tough Pigs on social
• 1:34:29
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• 1:34:32
  by buying a T-shirt on our tea public.
• 1:34:35
  Join the conversation on the Tough Pigs discord.
• 1:34:39
  You can support a Prairie Dawn companion and lots of other
• 1:34:42
  podcasts too by giving Muppet fan podcasts with toughpigs.com
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• 1:35:04
  Oh, you're beautiful, yo.