Northern Calloway facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Northern Calloway
Calloway as David on Sesame Street
Born	Northern James Calloway (1948-09-10)September 10, 1948 New York City, U.S.
Died	January 9, 1990(1990-01-09) (aged 41) Ossining, New York, U.S.
Resting place	Ferncliff Cemetery
Occupation	Actor, singer
Years active	1966–1990

Northern James Calloway (September 10, 1948 – January 9, 1990) 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 (Stratford Festival, 1968) and The Three Musketeers (Stratford Festival, 1968). 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 (Broadway, 1968) and The Me Nobody Knows (Broadway, 1970). He continued to act in stage productions in between filming a television series, performing in Pippin (Leading Player, Her Majesty's Theatre, London, 1973), Pippin (Leading Player, Broadway, 1976), and Whose Life Is It Anyway? (Broadway, 1980). 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 (portrayed by Sonia Manzano). 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 (1978), A Special Sesame Street Christmas (1978), Don't Eat the Pictures (1983), and Put Down the Duckie (1988). In 1989, Calloway retired from the series for medical reasons. Viewers were told that his character had moved to Florida and thus would no longer appear on Sesame Street. Calloway also voiced the Muppet characters: the Hipster, modeled after James Brown imagining shapes; Baby Breeze; and the Sesame Street character Same Sound Brown.

Mental health and death

Shortly after his termination from Sesame Street, Calloway was permanently placed into a mental institution called Stony Lodge Hospital, located in Ossining, New York. There, he received treatment for bipolar disorder.

On the afternoon of January 9, 1990, there was a violent altercation between Calloway and 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 called excited delirium syndrome (EDS), a "controversial condition" often retrospectively assigned to those who die under restraint in custody.

A prior marriage to Terri Calloway ended in divorce. At the time of his death, his mother Bunnetta Calloway and his brother Gregory Calloway, both of Manhattan, New York, 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 (Sesame Street #CTW 25518)

Singles

• 1973: "Stop (If I'm Gonna Save Any Part Of My Love For You)" b/w "Heart Of Stone" (United Artists #UA-XW311-W)
• 1974: "Meant to Be" (United Artists #UA-XW401)
• 1976: "My Name Is David" b/w "Subtraction Blues" (Sesame Street #CTW 99019)
• 1978: "More of the Same" w. Linda Gache (Statler #S9000)

Filmography

Film

Television