| Former cast member Will Lee |
From the beginning, Mr. Hooper owned and operated Hooper’s Store, the gathering place at the very heart of the Sesame Street neighborhood. Anyone could turn to this wise, grandfatherly character for advice, companionship, or a delicious birdseed milkshake.
Mr. Hooper was a good friend to everyone, but he and Big Bird were especially close. Big Bird could never get Mr. Hooper’s name right, calling him by all sorts of rhyming names. But Mr. Hooper always took it in stride, no matter what Big Bird called him, whether it was Mr. Blooper, Mr. Snooper, Mr. Scooper, or the unavoidable Mr. Pooper.
Will Lee was born in New York City in 1908. By the time he was in his 20s, he was a regular character actor in the Workers Laboratory Theater, an experimental, politically engaged group. In the 1930s, he joined the Group Theater, a collective associated with the birth of method acting.
During World War II, Lee served in Australia and the Philippines, receiving two special citations for directing and staging shows for troops overseas. He also taught acting classes during his military service.
Lee appeared in several Broadway plays, including The Shrike, Once Upon a Mattress, Carnival, Incident at Vichy, and The World of Sholom Aleichem.
He also appeared in several films, including Casbah, A Song is Born, Little Fugitive, and Saboteur. He appeared in Sidney Lumet's film Daniel (released posthumously in 1983), alongside Mandy Patinkin and Ed Asner. In 1956, he was cast as Grandpa Hughes in the soap opera As the World Turns.
Lee taught at the American Theater Wing, the New School for Social Research, Boston University, and the Uta Hagen-Herbert Berghof Studio.
Lee’s sudden death in 1982 compelled Sesame Street’s writers to approach the topic of death openly and honestly. During a special Thanksgiving episode, Big Bird was sad that Mr. Hooper was not there to receive a drawing Big Bird had done of him. He wasn’t at the store either. Bob, Susan, Maria, and the others explained to Big Bird that Mr. Hooper had died. They told him that that although death means a person is never coming back, we can remember them whenever we want.
Big Bird has had his drawing of Mr. Hooper hanging next to his nest ever since that conversation. “I’ll miss you, Mr. Hooper,” he said at the end of that special show. And millions still do.