Sunday May 11, 2008 at 1:55
“I’m David of Sesame Street and they’re trying to kill me…” ~ Actor Northern J. Calloway, Nashville, TN, Sept., 1980.
I was 13 when David from Sesame Street went berserk in my hometown.
Northern J. Calloway was 32, and a star of Childrens’ Television. He was in Nashville to perform in a stage production about his character David, a cool college student who helped the avuncular Mr. Hooper run a little shop on Sesame Street. Calloway was a guest at the home of Mary Stagaman, age 27. Ms. Stagaman was the marketing director for the Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC).
On the morning of September 20, Calloway assaulted Mary Stagaman with a metal rod. He beat her about the head and chest, breaking ribs in the process.
Then Northern Calloway, nude from the waist down, went on a rampage.
He smashed a window at 2000 Graybar, cutting himself on the glass. Trailing blood, Calloway ran to 1932 Graybar Lane and managed to force his way into the empty residence there. He wrecked the place.
Some kids were waiting for their schoolbus nearby. Imagine what it was like for them as one of the main players from a show they’d been watching since birth ran towards them, half-nude, wild-eyed and dripping sweat. Calloway took a bookbag from one kid and continued on.
Next, the actor found a rock and he used it to bash in the windshield of a nearby VW.
Police finally tackled the sweaty, bloody, half-naked star PBS star at the intersection of Graybar and Benham, seen above. That was when Calloway shouted the words in bold at the top of this post. He reportedly said other strange things and according to one cop interviewed by the local newspaper, Calloway was “trying to eat the grass.”
Mary Stagaman ended up in intensive care; Calloway in the Middle Tennessee Mental Health Institute. After he was taken to the hospital, the performer seemed to recover his wits. He was quoted by the AP: “It will be a sad, sad thing for the children to hear about this.”
Calloway also said something that was perhaps rather telling: “I can’t remember a thing. I’ve never had a spell like this before.”
Northern Calloway was charged with aggravated assault for the attack on Mary Stagaman.
I could find no record of what happened with the actual charges, but in June, 1982 Mary Stagaman settled a $750,000 lawsuit she’d filed against Calloway out of court.
It may have been no coincidence that Calloway filed a $25,000,000 lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment Group and some business partners later that year. He claimed copyright infringement in relation to a film project, a family-friendly sci-fi flick titled The Skyrider. The suit was declared frivolous. A judge even fined Calloway’s lawyers $100,000 because he said there was “no factual basis” for the claim.
Northern Calloway died in January, 1990. He was only 41 years old.
The strangest thing about the entire episode was probably this — Calloway’s career on Sesame Street continued without a hitch after the incident in Nashville. He left the show shortly before his death, citing health problems.
For me, watching Sesame Street was never the same. That wouldn’t mean much, but I ended up working for Nashville’s PBS affiliate for more than 3 years in the late 1990s. Every time I saw David — and working in a PBS affiliate master control, I ended up seeing a lot of Sesame Street — I remembered the bizarre day we all heard through the little kid grapevine that David from Sesame Street had lost his damn mind and gone crazy, right there in our own little city.
Sources: The AP, The Tennessean.
