Northern Calloway


Northern James Calloway was an American actor and singer, best known for playing David on Sesame Street from 1971 to 1989. He was institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital and died less than eight months after his last appearance on the show.

Career

Theatre

Calloway graduated from New York City's High School of Performing Arts and joined the Lincoln Center Repertory Company in 1966. There, he performed in A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Three Musketeers. He played the lead in the New Federal Theater production of The Louis Armstrong Story.
He became a Broadway stage actor in 1968 appearing in Tiger at the Gates and The Me Nobody Knows. He continued to act in stage productions in between filming a television series, performing in Pippin , Pippin, and Whose Life Is It Anyway?. Calloway performed in six productions on Broadway from 1968 to 1980.

Television

In 1971, he joined the cast of Sesame Street during the show's second season as the character David Robinson, boyfriend of the character Maria Rodriguez. In 1982, after the death of fellow castmate and actor Will Lee, who was widely known for his portrayal of shopkeeper Mr. Hooper, the series decided to include his death in the show and have Calloway's character David become the new owner of Mr. Hooper's Store. He remained one of the few human characters in the series for eighteen years, appearing in 1,268 episodes.
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. Calloway also voiced the Muppet characters the Hipster, modeled after James Brown; Baby Breeze; and the Sesame Street character Same Sound Brown.

Legal troubles, health problems, and final years on ''Sesame Street''

On September 19, 1980, Calloway was arrested in Nashville following a violent rampage that began at the residence of Mary Stagaman, marketing director of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. After being asked to vacate the house, Calloway attacked Stagaman with an iron, inflicting serious head and rib injuries. Fleeing into the suburbs of Nashville, Calloway inflicted property damage across multiple households and stole various items, including a backpack from a first-grader and a bag of herbicide from elderly resident Douglas Wright. Upon spilling the herbicide on himself, Calloway was confronted by Wright, who fired a warning shot from a shotgun. Calloway washed his hands and face in Wright's birdbath and continued to run. He was arrested after being found in a couple's garage, where he was shouting, "Help! I'm David from Sesame Street and they're trying to kill me!"
Calloway's final years on Sesame Street were marked by deteriorating health and episodes of erratic behavior. On one occasion, he showed up unannounced at co-star Alison Bartlett’s high school and proposed to her, despite their 23-year age difference. A criminal record also barred Calloway from entering Canada, preventing him from starring in the 1985 theatrical film Follow That Bird. By 1987, executive producer Dulcy Singer was no longer confident that Calloway could continue starring in the series, and the writing team decided to quietly phase out the romance between David and Maria.
In the spring of 1989, Calloway was fired from Sesame Street after biting music coordinator Danny Epstein during an on-set altercation. His final appearance came in the twentieth series finale, which aired on May 12, 1989. The writers addressed his absence in the next season by saying that David had moved to his grandmother’s farm in upstate New York to look after her. Ownership of Hooper's Store was passed on to the character of Mr. Handford, first played by Leonard Jackson and later by David Smyrl.

Mental health and death

Shortly after his termination from Sesame Street, Calloway was admitted to Stony Lodge Hospital in Ossining, New York, where he received treatment for bipolar disorder.
On January 9, 1990, a violent altercation between Calloway and a staff physician took place. Calloway was subsequently taken to Phelps Memorial Hospital in North Tarrytown and pronounced dead. A coroner's report listed Calloway's official cause of death as exhaustive psychosis, now more commonly called excited delirium syndrome, a controversial condition often applied posthumously to individuals who die under restraint in custody.
Prior to his death, Calloway's marriage to Terri Calloway had ended in divorce. At the time of his death, his mother, Bunnetta Calloway, his brother, Gregory Calloway, both of Manhattan, and his sister, Connie Calloway Jackson, of Baltimore, Maryland, were still alive. He was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery.

Discography

Albums

  • 1978: ''David, Daydreamin' on a Rainy Day''

    Singles

  • 1973: "Stop " b/w "Heart Of Stone"
  • 1974: "Meant to Be"
  • 1976: "My Name Is David" b/w "Subtraction Blues"
  • 1978: "More of the Same" w. Linda Gache

    Filmography

Film

Television