- Northern Calloway
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David, portrayed by Northern Calloway.
Northern James Calloway (January 22, 1948 – January 9, 1990) was an American actor who played David on Sesame Street from 1971 through 1989, and also voiced Muppet characters including Same Sound Brown.
On Sesame Street, his character David was studying to be a lawyer, but when Mr. Hooper died, David took over Hooper's Store. He was a favorite among the many viewers of Sesame Street during his time on the show, but his later career was increasingly hampered by a serious decline in his mental health until he had to be dismissed from the show and later institutionalized.
Contents
Career
Calloway graduated from New York City's High School of Performing Arts in 1966, and joined the Lincoln Center Repertory Company the same year. Stage roles he performed include:[1][2]
- A Midsummer Night's Dream (Stratford Festival, 1968)
- The Three Musketeers (Stratford Festival, 1968)
- Tiger at the Gates (Broadway, 1968)
- The Me Nobody Knows (Broadway, 1970)
- Pippin (Leading Player, Her Majesty's Theatre, London, 1973)
- Pippin (Leading Player, Broadway, 1976)
- Whose Life Is It Anyway? (Broadway, 1980)
Calloway performed in six productions on Broadway from 1968 to 1980.
In 1972 he joined the cast of Sesame Street as David, a role he would hold for 17 years. [1]
Personal issues
In his early thirties, Calloway slowly began to exhibit signs of bipolar disorder which led to a nervous breakdown on the morning of September 19, 1980 in Nashville, TN. He beat marketing director of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center Mary Stagaman with an iron rod, giving her serious head and rib injuries. He then fled into the suburbs of Nashville. Along the way, he smashed a plate-glass window and storm door at one house and did extensive damage to the interior of another, destroying the family's collection of fine crystal, smashing a television set and breaking light bulbs with his bare hands. He also stole a backpack from a first grader and smashed a windshield with a rock before fleeing the scene where witnesses reported him wearing only a Superman T-shirt. He was arrested after hiding out in a couple's garage, screaming "Help! I'm David from Sesame Street and they're trying to kill me!"[3][4]
Despite this incident, Calloway continued to work on Sesame Street, with Calloway promising to continue taking his prescribed lithium. Calloway's final years on the show were marked by periods of declining health and ability punctuated by episodes of erratic behavior; during these years, Calloway reportedly bit music coordinator Danny Epstein during an on-set fight, and he once appeared unannounced at actress Alison Bartlett's high school and proposed to her. Calloway was subsequently fired from the show by Dulcy Singer for these two incidents.[4]
In his authorized history Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street, author Michael Davis reveals that Calloway had been a patient at the Stony Lodge psychiatric facility in Ossining, NY at the end of his life. On January 9, 1990 Calloway died after going into cardiac arrest during a violent altercation with a staff physician. He was then taken to Phelps Memorial Hospital in North Tarrytown, where he was pronounced dead at the age of 41. A coroner's report listed Calloway's official cause of death as exhaustive psychosis, now more commonly referred to as excited delirium syndrome (EDS).[5] He was survived by his mother, a brother, and a sister.[2] Unlike Will Lee, who had played Mr. Hooper, no mention of his death was made on Sesame Street as at the time of the character's leaving, Calloway was still alive. He was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery.
References
- ^ http://www.ibdb.com/person.php?id=77889
- ^ a b "Northern Calloway, Actor, 41, on Stage And 'Sesame Street'", The New York Times, January 13, 1990, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/13/obituaries/northern-calloway-actor-41-on-stage-and-sesame-street.html
- ^ http://groups.google.com/group/alt.tv.sesame-street/msg/003c56407537ac8b
- ^ a b Davis, Michael (2008). Street gang: the complete history of Sesame Street. United States: Viking Press. pp. 277–279. ISBN 978-0670019960. http://books.google.com/books?id=6gAwejVhA3MC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- ^ Davis, Michael (2008). Street gang: the complete history of Sesame Street. United States: Viking Press. pp. 295–296. ISBN 978-0670019960. http://books.google.com/books?id=6gAwejVhA3MC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.
External links
Categories:- 1948 births
- 1990 deaths
- African American actors
- American voice actors
- Burials at Ferncliff Cemetery
- People from New York City
- People with bipolar disorder
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