Influential designer had hand in 'Sesame'

After years of designing costumes for ballet and theater, Kermit Love found his way to "Sesame Street."

Working with Jim Henson, Love helped create Big Bird, Mr. Snuffle- upagus and Oscar the Grouch.

The funny-looking creatures became a magnet for preschoolers, pulling them in to watch "Sesame Street," helping them to learn.

Love, whose design work on one of the most influential television shows in history made him a partner in the early education of generations of children, died Saturday of pneumonia in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., said Arthur Novell, executive director of the Jim Henson Legacy, an organization dedicated to preserving and perpetuating Jim Henson's contributions.

He was 91.

Though most adults knew Love for designing characters, children who saw him on "Sesame Street" knew him as Willy the hot dog man.

Love also created Snuggle Bear, the pitch man for Snuggle Fabric Softener.

Long before "Sesame Street" and children's television, Love had transformed his childhood love into a successful career.

Born in Spring Lake, N.J., on Aug. 7, 1916, Love began staging puppet shows while in his teens.

Later he designed costumes for Orson Welles' Mercury Theater and made a name for himself as a marionette maker and a stage and film designer.

For decades he collaborated with some of the greatest choreographers of the 20th century: George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Robert Joffrey, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp.

His many ballet credits include the 28-foot marionette for Balanchine's "Don Quixote" in 1965 and the masks for Pulcinella in 1972.

But it was on "Sesame Street" that Love's work found its largest audience.

"Kermit was for 20 years kind of the father to Big Bird," said Caroll Spinney, the performer inside Big Bird who has played the part since the show's inception in 1969. "He was well pleased" with his creation.

The collaboration that led to the birth of America's best-known bird almost did not happen.

After he met with Henson in the late 1960s, Love thought "no two people have less in common."

But Henson, who knew of Love's successful career in theater and ballet, invited Love to join him on the nascent "Sesame Street" project.

Love often explained that he was not the namesake of Kermit the Frog, whom Henson created before the two men joined forces.

The idea for Big Bird was Henson's, but Love's expertise "made the realization of that character possible," said Rick Lyon, who once worked for the Henson Company.