The Electric Company

The Electric Company was a live-action series produced by the Children's Television Workshop following the success of Sesame Street. Developed by Sesame alumni, including executive producer Dave Connell, the program ran on PBS from 1971 to 1977, and the last two seasons remained in reruns until 1985. A total of 780 episodes were produced—130 a season.

While Sesame Street was targeted primarily at preschool children and covered a broad curricular base from letter and number recognition to shapes, relational concepts, and abstract ideas, The Electric Company was aimed at elementary school kids aged 6–9 and intended to teach and supplement reading skill instruction, with emphasis on phonics, rhymes, punctuation, and basics of sentence structure. Although the series used a variety of short segments and animated commercials much like Sesame Street, there was no one central set equivalent to Sesame Street as the primary starting point. Its slogan was "for the graduates of Sesame Street."

The show also utilized a repertory cast portraying a variety of recurring and one-shot characters in contrast to the central human figures on Sesame, who generally had fixed names and identities. The company included such name players as Rita Moreno and, during seasons one and two, Bill Cosby, as well as a then-unknown Morgan Freeman (as Easy Reader, Dracula, and others) and a motley group of stage veterans and improvisational comedians including Skip Hinnant, Jim Boyd, Luis Avalos, Hattie Winston, Judy Graubart, and Lee Chamberlin, among others.

Recurring characters included the surly old man J. Arthur Crank; detective Fargo North, Decoder; diner owner Vi; the bellowing Hollywood director Otto (played by Rita Moreno); and Spider-Man. Puppetry was minimal, limited to the aniform character Lorelei the Chicken and a handful of guest appearances by the Sesame Street Muppets.

In 1974, the Electric Company cast joined with the Sesame Street Muppets in the prime-time special Out to Lunch.

Miss Piggy has also appeared on the cover of The Electric Company Magazine.

Appearances

 * Episode 131, from October 23, 1972
 * Fargo North, Decoder (played by Skip Hinnant), the detective who specializes in deciphering scrambled messages, receives a visit at his office from Big Bird (played by Caroll Spinney). Big Bird repeatedly refers to Fargo as Mr. Furpo (in reference to the bird's mangling of Mr. Hooper's name). Big Bird recalls how he absentmindedly ripped up a message (and as he demonstrates, Fargo tears up a dollar bill). Fargo is eager to help, but keeps thinking he's seen the yellow fowl somewhere before. After running the words through a machine, Fargo helps Bird use capitalization and punctuation to reveal that the message was "Don't lose your way." Big Bird thanks Mr. Furpo, but having failed to read the message beforehand, he is now lost. The Muppet asks, "Could you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?" Fargo tells him to go to Vi's Diner and take the No. 4 bus (Big Bird knows the driver, who's a person in his neighborhood). Following his client's departure, Fargo finally guesses that his famous visitor was Mr. Rogers.


 * Episode 453, from January 15, 1975
 * J. Arthur Crank (Jim Boyd) shuts the door on a salesman (Luis Avalos), explaining that he has company. After the peddler asks Crank why he's so nasty anyway, Crank sings an extended musical tribute to his role model, Oscar the Grouch (Spinney again), with the ou vowel sound emphasized. The grouch himself pops up from under the table: "Crank, if you say anything nice, I'm going to get sick." He joins in for a duet, with such musical asides as "You know, you've got an aaaaawful voice." Oscar also teaches Crank the finer points of scowling.


 * Episode 491, from March 10, 1975
 * J. Arthur Crank (Jim Boyd) is trading repartee with Vi (Lee Chamberlin) at Vi's Diner, when Grover (Frank Oz) enters. The lovable furry one greets Vi with "Hello there, pretty lady" and gives Crank a hearty slap on the chest. Grover tearfully explains that he is lost and unable to remember where he lives. Vi brings out a map to help Grover, featuring such locations as Skin Street, Skit Street, and Mask Avenue.


 * 

Crank: (pointing) Listen, do you live up here?
 * 

Grover: What, on that piece of cardboard?


 * Grover becomes increasingly upset and fears he may have to live on Vi's floor. Vi asks the monster for details about his neighborhood, and he recalls his friends Ernie, Bert, and Gordon. Crank interjects, "All these friends you got, don't they got any last names?" Grover also remembers that his neighborhood has a big bird (Crank: "An eagle!") Vi puts two and two together and asks Grover if he lives on Sesame Street. Grover is ecstatic in his relief. When the "pretty and smart lady" diner owner asks if he'd "like to find out how to get to Sesame Street," Grover replies, "No. I'd like to see a menu."

Note: This skit originally aired during the 1972-1973 (second) season because Lee Chamberlin had left the series by the time this skit re-aired on this episode, and Jim Boyd was an off-screen voice and puppeteer during the first season.

The Electric Company on DVD
In February 2006, The Best of The Electric Company was released on DVD as a 4-disc boxed set. The visits from Big Bird, Oscar, and Grover were all included—Big Bird on Disc 2, Oscar on Disc 3, and Grover on Disc 4.

In November 2006, a second 4-disc volume, The Best of The Electric Company Vol. 2, was released, but unlike the previous volume, several episodes were altered from the original versions because of rights issues.

In March 2007, a retrospective of the series, The Electric Company's Greatest Hits & Bits, was released. A clip from Grover's appearance was included. Additional episodes have since been made available for purchase on iTunes.

Connections
Several cast and crew members also worked on Sesame Street or appeared in Muppet/Henson productions.
 * Victor Borge appeared in a filmed segment, performing his famous Phonetic Punctuation routine.
 * Mel Brooks played the voice of a recurring blond-haired cartoon man
 * Bill Cosby played the ice cream man, the milkman, and others
 * Paul Dooley served as head writer for the first season and did many voice-overs during the show’s run
 * Danny Epstein was the music coordinator and the drummer in the house band
 * Judy Graubart played Jennifer of the Jungle, Julia Grownup, and others
 * Gerald S. Lesser was Chairman of the Board of Advisors
 * Nat Mongioi was the show's set decorator
 * Rita Moreno as Otto the director, Millie the Helper, and others
 * Zero Mostel provided the voice of Spell Binder in the Letterman sketches
 * Thad Mumford wrote for the series
 * Joe Namath appeared in a brief segment, shot on the Sesame Street set, demonstrating the word "pass"
 * Joan Rivers played the Letterman narrator
 * Joe Raposo composed music for the series and was its music director for the first three seasons
 * Danny Seagren played Spider-Man
 * Jim Thurman wrote and provided cartoon voices
 * Hugh Webster appeared as a vaudevillian in an insert
 * Tom Whedon was head writer from the second season onward
 * Gene Wilder was the voice of Letterman most of the time
 * Hattie Winston played Valerie the librarian and others

Trivia

 * Prior to The Electric Company, Skip Hinnant had originated the role of Schroeder in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and provided the voice of Fritz the Cat in the first X-rated animated feature between seasons one and two.


 * Jim Boyd, in addition to appearing as Crank and others, also provided the puppetry and voice for Lorelei the Chicken. Boyd headed the talent staff of Aniforms, and the puppet, whose full name was Lorelei J. Loverly, was a carryover from a local WPIX-TV program, The Surprise Show. Boyd also performed another puppet named Maurice, a savage guard plant, appearing in The Best of The Electric Company Vol. 2.


 * Paul the Gorilla (Jim Boyd) was named after Paul Dooley, head writer for the show's first season.


 * Clark Gesner, author of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, wrote "The Sign Song" and several others for The Electric Company. Sung over film footage of New York City street signs, the popular lyrics of one of the songs ended with "Home Sweet Home." In 1977, the song appeared with slightly altered lyrics on the Sesame Street LP Signs!


 * The recurring Monolith cartoons were among the most popular routines of the show. To the music of Thus Spake Zarathrustra by Johann Strauss (the theme for 2001: A Space Odyssey), a giant marble slate would shake, crumble and form a letter combination (ex: "oo," "ea," "alk"), read aloud by a powerful, ominous voice.


 * In 1972, Warner Bros. Records, which had just released The Official Sesame Street 2 Book-and-Record Album, released a similar album of Electric Company skits and songs with the catalog number BS 2636. It also won a Grammy award for Best Album for Children. This album has become a highly prized collectible because its later reissue on Sesame Street/CRA Records CTW 22052 was missing some tracks from the original. Warner Bros. Records also released a single of the Electric Company theme song backed with "Sing."


 * In a sketch appearing in the final aired episode, The Mad Scientist (Morgan Freeman) calls his assistant Igor (Luis Avalos) a "misshapen little Muppet."