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An early Guy Smiley reporting on the weather, from "The Weather Show" sketch.
Guy on safari.
Jim Henson with Guy during the taping of "Beat The Time."
Guy Smiley is, by his own account, America's Favorite Game Show Host. He has hosted such Sesame Street game shows as "Beat The Time", "Here is Your Life", "What's My Part?", and others. He approaches every hosting gig with a near-frantic level of excitement and enthusiasm.
Guy Smiley has occasionally demonstrated his musical talent on Sesame Street. His song performances include "Air" and "They Can't Take That Away From Me" (with Cookie Monster). His singing voice at times can go very low, very similar to Link Hogthrob's, as in "I'll Love You in Springtime" and his tribute to the winner in "The Letter of the Day Pageant." He also sang "Gone with the Wind" in the first season.
Most of Guy Smiley's appearances in sketches have been as the host of game shows. Many of the sketches where he doesn't host game shows still involve him being the host of a show, including "The Weather Show", "The Letter of the Day Pageant", and "On Vacation with Guy Smiley". One of the few sketches he starred in where he didn't host a show or sing was a sketch where he took his entire studio audience out for lunch.
Although Joan Ganz Cooney once described Guy Smiley as one of Jim Henson's funniest characters,[1] he was Henson’s least favorite to perform; as the character’s boisterous voice was too rough on his throat.[2] Because of this, the dialogue for Guy's sketches was commonly prerecorded, so multiple takes could be filmed without straining Henson's throat.
A walk-around version of Guy Smiley appeared in a number of Sesame Street Live shows. In Big Bird Goes Hollywood, he assisted Big Bird in directing a movie. Guy Smiley also appeared in Big Bird's Sesame Street Story and Big Bird & the ABC's.
In his earliest appearances, he had a visible tongue, a feature that was later seen in 2006, when he hosted a PBS commercial/game show spoof for the Ready To Learn Service.
He was also seen in a 1999 episode as one of Maria's customers, and in a 2006 episode as one of the spectators in the Number of the Day segment where The Count was playing golf. He also appeared in the main Street story in a 2008 episode, his first major speaking role on the show since Henson's death.
Guy Smiley's name
In one of his first appearances as a game show host ("Pick Your Pet"), he was named Sonny Friendly (which would later become the name of another Sesame Street game show host). He would be named Guy Smiley in another first season game show, The Mr. and Mrs. Game.
When Count von Count introduced himself in a Beat the Time sketch, he did so in his traditional way, "They call me the Count because I love to count things." Guy responded with, "Well, I'm Guy Smiley. They call me Guy Smiley because I changed my name from Bernie Liederkrantz."
Casting history
Main Performers:
- Jim Henson - from Sesame Street Season 1 (1969) - Season 21 (1990)
- Eric Jacobson - Sesame Street Presents: The Body (2005), Ready To Learn (2006), Episode 4182 (2008), Brush Those Teeth (2012), Kinect Sesame Street TV (2012)
Alternate Performers:
- Don Reardon - Let's Make a Word CD-ROM game (voice only)
Filmography
- Sesame Street
- Out to Lunch
- The Muppet Movie (The Rainbow Connection Finale)
- The Muppets Take Manhattan (Wedding Finale)
- The Muppets: A Celebration of 30 Years
- A Muppet Family Christmas
Book appearances
- The Sesame Street 1, 2, 3 Storybook (1973)
- Grover and the Everything in the Whole Wide World Museum (1974)
- The Sesame Street ABC Storybook (1974)
- Big Bird's Busy Book (1975)
- Bert's Big Band Paint-with-Water Book (1976)
- The Monsters' Alphabet (1977)
- The Sesame Street Mystery Coloring Book (1977)
- The Sesame Street Bedtime Storybook (1978)
- The Sesame Street Cookbook (1978)
- The Sesame Street Dictionary (1980)
- The Sesame Street Circus of Opposites (1981)
- What Do You Do? (1981)
- Which One Doesn't Belong? (1981)
- Big Bird's Book About the Earth and Sky (1985)
- Going Places (1988)
- Brought to You by the Letter B (2000)
- Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood? (2009)
Cookie Monster also disguised himself as Guy Smiley in the book No Cookies 'Til Dinner.