17 Facts About Northern Calloway

Northern James Calloway was an American actor and singer, best known for playing David on Sesame Street from 1971 to 1989.

Northern Calloway was institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital and died less than eight months after his last appearance on the show.

Northern Calloway played the lead in the New Federal Theater production of The Louis Armstrong Story.

Northern Calloway became a Broadway stage actor in 1968 appearing in Tiger at the Gates and The Me Nobody Knows.

Northern Calloway performed in six productions on Broadway from 1968 to 1980.

Northern Calloway remained one of the few human characters in the series for eighteen years, appearing in 1,268 episodes.

Northern Calloway appeared in several made-for-television movies and specials by the Children's Television Workshop for over eleven years, including Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, A Special Sesame Street Christmas, Don't Eat the Pictures, and Put Down the Duckie.

In 1989, Northern Calloway retired from the series for medical reasons.

Northern Calloway voiced the Muppet characters: the Hipster, modeled after James Brown imagining shapes; Baby Breeze; and the Sesame Street character Same Sound Brown.

Northern Calloway had been a guest in the home of Mary Stagaman, marketing director of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, after performing there on the 13th.

Northern Calloway then fled into the suburbs of Nashville, where 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.

Northern Calloway stole a backpack from a first grader, smashed a windshield with a rock, and stole a bag of herbicide from elderly resident Douglas Wright.

Northern Calloway then jumped up and washed his hands and face in the Wrights' birdbath before fleeing the scene, where witnesses reported him wearing only a Superman T-shirt.

Davis states Northern Calloway once appeared unannounced at Alison Bartlett's high school and proposed to her, despite him being 23 years her senior.

Northern Calloway's fellow cast members observed subtle clues to his erratic behavior and increasingly kept their distance.

Shortly after his termination from Sesame Street, Northern Calloway was permanently placed into a mental institution called Stony Lodge Hospital, located in Ossining, New York.

Northern Calloway was then taken to Phelps Memorial Hospital in North Tarrytown, where he was pronounced dead at the age of 41.