Listen up ILOSM family: If you’re ready to shake up your’s or your children’s throwback TV memories, then get a load of what a former “Sesame Street” writer has just revealed. For decades, characters, “Bert and Ernie,” were assumed to just be homeboys, who lived together and sometimes clashed over “Ernie’s” comical personality. Welp, we were all wrong, because according to the man who wrote for the characters, “Ernie and Bert” were a gay couple. But wait, there’s more…
Writer Explains Why He Made “Ernie & Bert” Gay
In a new interview with Queerty, ex-Sesame Street writer, Mark Saltzman, confirmed for the first time ever, that “Ernie & Bert” were patterned after his real life relationship with his now deceased longtime love of 20 years, Arnold Glassman – who was also a film director. According to Mark, his and Arnold’s (he refers to him as Arnie) opposite personalities were very prevalent in “Ernie & Bert”…
Mark Saltzman: “I remember one time that a column from The San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked ‘are Bert & Ernie lovers?’ And that, coming from a preschooler was fun. And that got passed around, and everyone had their chuckle and went back to it. And I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were. I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them. The other thing was, more than one person referred to Arnie & I as ‘Bert & Ernie.'”
He continued…
MS: “Yeah, I was Ernie. I look more Bert-ish. And Arnie as a film editor—if you thought of Bert with a job in the world, wouldn’t that be perfect? Bert with his paper clips and organization? And I was the jokester. So it was the Bert & Ernie relationship, and I was already with Arnie when I came to ‘Sesame Street.’ So I don’t think I’d know how else to write them, but as a loving couple. I wrote sketches… Arnie’s OCD would create friction with how chaotic I was. And that’s the Bert & Ernie dynamic. …
That’s what I had in my life, a Bert & Ernie relationship. How could it not permeate? The things that would tick off Arnie would be the things that would tick off Bert.”
Even though Mark says he wrote the characters in a reflection of his relationship, he never outright confirmed that to the “Sesame Street” staff at that time:
“I will say that I would never have said to the head writer, ‘Oh, I’m writing this, this is my partner and me.’ But those two, Snuffalupagus, because he’s the sort of clinically depressed Muppet…you had characters that appealed to a gay audience. And Snuffy, this depressed person nobody can see, that’s sort of Kafka! It’s sort of gay closeted too.”
Well I’ll be… all these years, we’ve been thinking that “Bert & Ernie” were more like “Felix” and “Oscar” from “The Odd Couple” sitcom. But turns out, they were just a loving gay couple out here living their best lives, like Lil’ Duval, on “Sesame Street.”
ILOSM fam,’ like we always say, we learn something new ’round these parts everyday, I tell ya.
