Jeffrey A. Moss, a writer and composer whose accomplishments included dreaming up the ''Sesame Street'' characters Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch, died on Thursday at his home in Manhattan. He was 56.
The cause was colon cancer, said his wife, Anne Boylan.
Mr. Moss was perhaps best known for the many songs he created for the Muppets, including ''Rubber Duckie,'' ''I Love Trash'' and ''Captain Vegetable.'' These whimsical ditties became the musical bounce for an educational children's show seen by more than 120 million children in 130 countries.
''His wonderful lyrics and music reflected the mood and the style of the show -- fun, energetic, sometimes sentimental and always entertaining,'' said Joan Ganz Cooney, chairwoman of the executive committee and co-founder of Children's Television Workshop, the producer of ''Sesame Street.''
As head writer and composer-lyricist for the show, he won 14 Emmys and wrote songs for four Grammy-winning recordings. His music and lyrics for ''The Muppets Take Manhattan'' earned him an Academy Award nomination. He was also the author of more than a dozen best-selling books under the ''Sesame Street'' name, including ''The Sesame Street Book of Poetry.''
He also wrote three popular children's poetry collections, including ''The Butterfly Jar,'' ''The Other Side of the Door'' and ''Bone Poems.'' In addition, he wrote ''Bob and Jack: A Boy and His Yak'' and ''Hieronymus White,'' stories in verse.
When Mr. Moss helped start ''Sesame Street'' in 1969 with Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, and the musical director, Joe Raposo, among others, the intention was to appeal to both adults and children. Preschool children could delightedly imbibe the beginnings of reading and arithmetic while adults laughed at the skits and jokes, often performed by famous entertainers.
''He could mix the silly and the profound -- not just for children but for adults as well,'' said Deborah Futter, who edited several of his books for Bantam. ''You laughed and you cried, it hit you on so many levels.''
In an interview in The New York Times five years ago, Mr. Moss explained his approach. ''I look at kids as being us, but younger,'' he said. ''What makes kids laugh is the same as what makes us laugh. And losing something or someone dear to you is also universal. The key is to keep the vocabulary so children can understand it. That way you keep the kids watching and smiling, and it's something you watch yourself.''
In several more recent interviews, Mr. Moss has said his perspective on his own work broadened in recent years as he watched his son Alexander, now 7, enjoy ''Sesame Street.'' He is also survived by his wife and a stepson, Jonathan Smith.
Mr. Moss, born in 1942, grew up in Manhattan. He began writing poetry and music at an early age. His father was an actor and his mother a writer, and they filled their home with classical music and Broadway show tunes. He graduated from Princeton University and was offered two jobs by the Columbia Broadcasting System. One was as a news writer, the other as a production assistant for ''Captain Kangaroo.'' He chose the latter. After six months in the Army, he returned to the show as a writer.
He was recruited as a writer for ''Sesame Street,'' a new show intended to enrich the imaginations and intellect of children not able to attend preschool. He came up with ideas for characters in the manner of a fiction writer. In the case of Cookie Monster, he studied one of Mr. Henson's Muppets, then known only as Boggle Eyes. He began to see the character as humorous, with a childlike obsession.
At Cookie Monster's debut rehearsal, the Muppet, played by the puppeteer Frank Oz, said just two words: ''Milk'' and ''COOOOOOOOOKIIIIEEEEEE!'' Colleagues recall falling off their chairs in laughter.
He also put songs in the mouths of Muppets. ''I Love Trash,'' for instance, became the theme song of Oscar the Grouch, who lives in a garbage can and loathes sunshine. It goes: ''I hate ice cream, I hate smiles. I love trash in great big piles.''
Another ''Sesame Street'' writer, Christopher Cerf, said Mr. Moss brought integrity even to his silliest writing. ''I go for the silly joke every time,'' Mr. Cerf said.
Mr. Moss began to write children's poetry when the actress Marlo Thomas asked him to write a piece for a book she was sponsoring, ''Free to Be a Family.'' He wrote a poem called ''The Entertainer'' about a girl who feels put upon because her parents often ask her to perform at parties. Other poems then flowed, and before long he had 90. They became ''The Butterfly Jar.''
One poem in the collection is called ''Meeting Strangers.'' It is narrated by a shy monster character who epitomizes the fear of not being liked by others. ''They act like a monster when I'm the one who's new,'' he moans.
It was this ability to strike resonant chords that those who knew Mr. Moss mentioned yesterday. His literary agent, Esther Newberg, remembered the awe with which children at the American Museum of Natural History regarded him when he read from his book about dinosaurs. A friend mentioned how today's Princeton students, all weaned on ''Sesame Street,'' would crowd around a piano and join him in belting out ''Rubber Duckie.''
Mr. Cerf said that the day he died Mr. Moss, who had hidden his cancer for years, was writing a new song for ''Sesame Street.'' The title was ''You and You and Me.'' It describes Elmo, Ernie, and Telly trying to figure out who should go through a door first. ''Jeff wrote from the heart and still was funny,'' Mr. Cerf said.
An obituary on Saturday about Jeffrey A. Moss, a writer, and composer who contributed characters and songs to ''Sesame Street,'' omitted two survivors. They are his mother, Stella Moss of Manhattan, and a sister, Andrea Moss End of Westchester County.
JeffMoss
Jeff Moss (June 19, 1942 - September 24, 1998) was a writer, composer, and lyricist for Sesame Street. His most notable songs include "The People in Your Neighborhood", "I Love Trash", and "Rubber Duckie", the latter of which achieved widespread fame when it was released as a single reaching number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1970. Moss also served as head writer for a few seasons during the early 1970s. Moss is credited for helping establish the characters Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch.
Moss' work for Henson and the Muppets outside of Sesame Street include composing songs and score for The Muppets Take Manhattan and writing music and lyrics for the television special The Christmas Toy.
Jeffrey Arnold Moss was born in New York City. His father, Arnold Moss, was a Shakespearen actor, college drama teacher, and creator of crossword puzzles for the New York Times, and his mother, Stella Reynolds, had given up acting to become a soap opera writer. Moss displayed an appreciation for music and literacy at a young age. His parents kept recordings of classical music and Broadway show tunes around their house. He loved reading, and remembered discovering crossword puzzles for the first time while on a road trip. On his love for words: "I have always loved them and I still love them. When I'm sitting around, I play with them in my head, the way other people think about - I don't know - cars. I think a certain amount of that is just born into you. I think I would love words no matter what I did for a living - if I were a factory worker, or a doctor, or whatever."
In 1969, Moss joined the writing staff of Sesame Street, where he reunited with several Captain Kangaroo alumni, including executive producer David Connell, producer Sam Gibbon, and producer/head writer Jon Stone. Moss' notable contribution came in writing songs, often collaborating with music director Joe Raposo. The first song Moss composed for Sesame Street, written to fulfill a script assignment to teach the number 5, was "Five People in My Family," performed by the Anything Muppets.[2] Other songs Moss wrote for the show like "The People in Your Neighborhood" and "I Love Trash" became long-standing classics, but it was "Rubber Duckie", Ernie's ode to his favorite bath time toy, that received mainstream pop status. Moss also played a key role in the development of two major Muppet characters: he helped establish the psychological conundrum of Oscar the Grouch and gave a previously unnamed voracious blue monster an obsession for cookies.
Moss became head writer of Sesame Street for the next few seasons, succeeding Jon Stone. Moss explains his approach to writing for children: "I don't look at writing for children as that different than writing for anybody else. The emotions that you write about are for the most part the same as you would write about for anybody. You just do it with a vocabulary of experience that children will understand."[1] Moss was originally going to resign as head writer after season 3, using the extra time to work on his own theatrical projects.[3] Ultimately, none of his plans got past development stage. In the next two seasons of Sesame Street (both of which would also be his final), Moss slowly shifted away from supervising the writing staff, focusing more on writing individual pieces; the role of head writer was eventually turned over to Stone once again.
Later years
Composer. Jeff Moss
Over the years since his departure from and return to Sesame Street, Moss kept himself busy with numerous side projects, branching out into areas beyond television. He wrote the musical Double Feature with Mike Nichols and Tommy Tune.
For Henson and the Muppets, Moss composed songs and score for The Muppets Take Manhattan, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Music, Original Song Score; he lost the award to Prince for Purple Rain. He wrote music and lyrics for the television special The Christmas Toy. Moss also wrote the songs "One Little Star" and "Upside Down World" for the first Sesame Street feature film Follow that Bird.
Moss collaborated with composer Stanley Silverman on a one-act musical theater piece based on Igor Stravinsky's "A Soldier's Tale" for the Kennedy Center's "Imagination Celebration" children's arts festival in 1986. His television credits include the song "My Star" for the 1985 telefilm Ewoks: The Battle for Endor and songs for the stop-motion animated series Bump in the Night.
Moss wrote several children's books with illustrator Chris Demarest. The Butterfly Jar, a collection of poems, includes three of Moss' Sesame Street songs: "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon", "Lonesome Joan", and "Nasty Dan". The poem "Not the Best Feeling" is a reworked version of "Mad". His other book of poems, Bone Poems, inspired by dinosaurs and early mammals on display at the American Museum of Natural History, includes illustrations by Sesame illustrator Tom Leigh.
At one point, Moss had been working on a screenplay for an unproduced children's film entitled Zoo Fantasy[5]with Francis Ford Coppola's production company American Zoetrope.
In 1991, Moss married Annie Boylan, sister of Sesame Street writer Molly Boylan. Later that year, they gave birth to son Alex. Moss was previously married to actress Marian Hailey (1973-85).
Moss died on September 24, 1998 at the age of 56 following complications from colon cancer. On the same day of his death, he had been working on the song "You and You and Me", making it the last song he ever wrote.
Legacy
In 2007, Princeton University ranked Moss as one of its 25 most influential alumni, citing the effect of his songs and characters on the Sesame Street audience.
A chair at New York City's Hayden Planetarium is dedicated to Moss, immortalized with his name, dates of birth and death and the caption "Beloved Star".
Recollections
According to Michael Davis, author of the book Street Gang: “In his prime, Moss was a force of nature, a wiry, strong, wild-haired, sometimes combustible, not always loveable, but dependably brilliant television writer, playwright, poet, composer, and onetime actor.”
Joan Ganz Cooney describes Moss as "a sort of child himself, and I don’t mean he had a way with children. I mean he, himself, was a kind of a child. He could be very difficult, very prickly. He could write anything, he could imagine anything. He himself was a very sober guy, not funny at all ... I loved him.”
Esther Newberg, Moss' friend and literary agent, remembers Moss as "a world-class perfectionist ... never compromising his sense of the way a character should act or feel or talk just for the sake of a convenient rhyme. And right to the end, he always found time to share his insights and his flawless editor's touch with his colleagues."
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