Forums: Index > Article Content > Belafonte press for Season 1 guest - earlier than 1970
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As it turns out, press releases including Harry Belafonte in their list of celebrity appearances for Season 1 of Sesame Street go farther back than the January 1970 issue of Jack and Jill. I saw him listed in a deep dive report of Cecil Coffrin's skywriting for June of 1969 (more on that in due time), but a cursory Newspapers.com search of both subjects along with year goes back to May 7, 1969. It wouldn't surprise me if there are sources from even earlier, it's worth keeping an eye out for. --Splurge (talk) 21:50, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
- Looks like many newspapers wrote about the same overall theme that day, each in their own ways. Here's an example I'm partial to.
- The Tacoma News Tribune "Children Intrigued by Training via TV", p. A-6, May 7, 1969 --Splurge (talk) 22:09, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
- Good to have another source for that. He must have been listed in CTW's press materials if it was being so widely reported. Which leads me to lean on the side of the fact that they already got him rather than announced him as a hopeful. Meaning there's a possibility that he's in one of the Sesame Street Pilot Episodes we haven't seen. —Scott
(talk) 11:29, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
- Good to have another source for that. He must have been listed in CTW's press materials if it was being so widely reported. Which leads me to lean on the side of the fact that they already got him rather than announced him as a hopeful. Meaning there's a possibility that he's in one of the Sesame Street Pilot Episodes we haven't seen. —Scott
- I was leaning that way too, but then David added that the same sources listed Dick Van Dyke. So it's sounding closer to the season 2 guest stars who were announced but never did anything. In the case of Lucille Ball, they'd even written scripts, so its possible they were more than hopefuls but scheduling conflicts arose or whatever. By now it's pretty clear from all our evidence and the surfaced episodes that the Lucy stuff was never actually filmed, but they had a taping date and a studio listed and crossed out, so this could have been similar. At least part of the issue re Lucy and The Smothers Brothers (also crossed out) was that they were LA celebrities being taped at the studios of their then-current shows or other facilities rather than visiting the street, so different coordination was required and more people/entities involved. Obviously that was less of an issue later on, but this was still the early stages. -- Andrew
21:00, 29 April 2023 (UTC)
- I was leaning that way too, but then David added that the same sources listed Dick Van Dyke. So it's sounding closer to the season 2 guest stars who were announced but never did anything. In the case of Lucille Ball, they'd even written scripts, so its possible they were more than hopefuls but scheduling conflicts arose or whatever. By now it's pretty clear from all our evidence and the surfaced episodes that the Lucy stuff was never actually filmed, but they had a taping date and a studio listed and crossed out, so this could have been similar. At least part of the issue re Lucy and The Smothers Brothers (also crossed out) was that they were LA celebrities being taped at the studios of their then-current shows or other facilities rather than visiting the street, so different coordination was required and more people/entities involved. Obviously that was less of an issue later on, but this was still the early stages. -- Andrew