The original Sesame Street cast was small: four people – Bob, Susan and Gordon, and Mr. Hooper – plus “real” elementary-school kids, usually from disadvantaged New York neighborhoods, that came on occasionally. The target audience loved the characters because they weren’t chosen by casting agents, but by kids themselves. The screen tests of the large group of potential cast members were shown to actual kids, who then selected the actors they liked best. Loretta Long, who played Susan, didn’t expect to sing at her audition – but when she was asked to, she obliged with a clap-along rendition of “I’m a Little Teapot.”
It wasn’t long before more actors were added to the multicultural cast. Some of the better-known, longest running cast members include:
Bob – played by Bob McGrath. On the show, Bob is a private music teacher and regular guy. So regular, in fact, that when he asked the director who his character should act like, he was told to act like himself – and that’s exactly what he did. In the early 1960s, before Sesame Street, Bob was a pop-music icon in Japan. Really!
Gordon – first played by Matt Robinson (from 1969 to 1971), then by Hal Miller (1971-73), and finally by Roscoe Orman, the most recognizable Gordon, who joined the cast in 1973 and has been there ever since. When Orman auditioned for the part, he was up against actor Robert Guillaume, who played Benson DuBois on the TV show Benson.
Susan – played by Loretta Long. The motherly figure of the show, Susan was initially cast to be a homemaker and traditional wife. But the show was monitored by the National Organization for Women (NOW), who approached Sesame Street’sdirectors, producers, and writers with some concerns – they felt that Susan’s character was stereotyping women. So director Jon Stone suggested giving Susan a career, and she became a public health nurse. In real life, Long spent the first season of Sesame Street substitute-teaching as a second job. In 1973, four years after the show began, she received her Ph.D. in Urban Education from the University of Massachusetts.