Caroly Wilcox

Caroly Wilcox (born Carolyn Wilcox, May 16, 1931 – January 9, 2021) was an American theatre professional whose career spanned Broadway performance, puppetry, and television production. She is best known for her decades of work with the Muppets across multiple television series and films.

Wilcox was born the younger daughter of Clair Wilcox and Florence Ruth Chapman Wilcox. Her father was an economics professor at Swarthmore College, and her mother, an art teacher and clubwoman, died in 1954. Wilcox was a birthright Quaker, registered with the Swarthmore Monthly Meeting. During her time at Swarthmore, she chaired the Swarthmore Folk Festival in 1949, which featured John Jacob Niles and Woody Guthrie as performers, and designed the set for a theatrical production in 1951. She graduated from Swarthmore in 1952.

As a young woman, Wilcox performed as a folk singer and was a member of a vocal trio called The Samplers, who recorded The Samplers In Person in 1961. Her Broadway credit came in 1958, when she appeared in The Next President. She also danced in a Brooklyn lecture-demonstration in 1963 and contributed to a Pickwick Puppet Theater production in Boston in 1970.

Wilcox began her association with the Muppets in 1969 and went on to serve as director of the New York Muppet workshop. She designed, built, and performed characters for Sesame Street from its launch in 1969 until her retirement in 2012, with her creations including the Yip-Yips and an early version of Elmo. Beyond Sesame Street, she worked on The Muppet Show from 1976 to 1981, Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas in 1977, Fraggle Rock from 1983 to 1987, and Put Down the Duckie in 1988. Her film credits included The Muppet Movie (1979), The Great Muppet Caper (1981), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), and Follow That Bird (1985).

Wilcox was part of creative teams nominated for Emmy Awards in 1976 and 1980, and she was a member of the Sesame Street team that won a Daytime Emmy for costume design in 1990. She also served on the board of directors of the Jim Henson Foundation and taught puppetry workshops at New York University and other schools. In 2020, she appeared alongside fellow Jim Henson colleagues Bonnie Erickson and Rollie Krewson in an online interview hosted by the Museum of the Moving Image. Wilcox died on January 9, 2021, at the age of 89.