Northern J. Calloway

Northern James Calloway (September 10, 1948 – January 9, 1990) was an American actor and singer born in New York, New York. He is best known for his eighteen-year tenure as the character David Robinson on the children's television series Sesame Street, though he also maintained an active stage career spanning more than a decade on Broadway and in other theatrical venues.

Calloway trained at New York City's High School of Performing Arts before joining the Lincoln Center Repertory Company in 1966. His early stage work included productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Three Musketeers, both presented at the Stratford Festival in 1968. He also took the lead role in the New Federal Theater's production of The Louis Armstrong Story. His Broadway career began that same year with Tiger at the Gates, and he went on to appear in six Broadway productions between 1968 and 1980. Among his credits were The Me Nobody Knows, Pippin, The Poison Tree, Saint Joan, and Whose Life Is It Anyway?. He played the Leading Player in Pippin, a role he performed both at Her Majesty's Theatre in London in 1973 and on Broadway in 1976.

In 1971, Calloway joined the cast of Sesame Street during the show's second season, portraying David Robinson, the boyfriend of the character Maria Rodriguez, played by Sonia Manzano. Following the 1982 death of cast member Will Lee, who had portrayed shopkeeper Mr. Hooper, the series incorporated the death into its storyline and had Calloway's character David take over ownership of Mr. Hooper's Store. Calloway ultimately appeared in 1,268 episodes of the series. In addition to his regular role, he voiced several Muppet and Sesame Street characters, including the Hipster, modeled after James Brown; Baby Breeze; and Same Sound Brown. He also appeared in multiple Children's Television Workshop television specials over more than eleven years, including Christmas Eve on Sesame Street and A Special Sesame Street Christmas, both in 1978, Don't Eat the Pictures in 1983, and Put Down the Duckie in 1988. On the recording side, he released the album David, Daydreamin' on a Rainy Day in 1978 and issued several singles between 1973 and 1978 on labels including United Artists and Statler.

On September 19, 1980, Calloway was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee, following a violent and erratic episode that began at the home of Mary Stagaman, marketing director of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, where he had been a guest after performing there six days earlier. After refusing to leave the premises, he attacked Stagaman with an iron, causing serious head and rib injuries. He then fled into the surrounding suburbs, where he damaged multiple properties, stole a backpack from a first grader, smashed a windshield with a rock, and took a bag of herbicide from an elderly resident named Douglas Wright, subsequently spilling it on himself. Wright fired a warning shot at Calloway, who dove to the ground before fleeing the scene. He was eventually found hiding in a couple's garage and taken into custody. His criminal record resulting from this incident barred him from Canada, which meant he did not appear in the 1985 film Follow That Bird, filmed there.

According to author Michael Davis in Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street, Calloway's later years on the series were characterized by deteriorating health and episodes of erratic behavior. Davis recounts that Calloway reportedly bit music coordinator Danny Epstein during an on-set altercation and on one occasion appeared unannounced at the high school of cast member Alison Bartlett to propose to her, despite being twenty-three years her senior. By 1987, executive producer Dulcy Singer had grown uncertain about Calloway's continued role on the show. The writers gradually wound down the romantic storyline between David and Maria, and Maria's character subsequently entered a relationship with Luis Rodriguez, portrayed by Emilio Delgado, culminating in their on-screen marriage in May 1988. In the spring of 1989, Singer dismissed Calloway from the series following the incident involving Epstein. His final appearance aired on May 12, 1989, in the twentieth-season finale. The following season, the show explained that David had relocated to a rural part of New York to care for his grandmother, and ownership of Hooper's Store passed to the character Mr. Handford, played first by Leonard Jackson and later by David Smyrl.

Shortly after his dismissal, Calloway was admitted to Stony Lodge Hospital in Ossining, New York, where he was treated for bipolar disorder. On January 9, 1990, a violent altercation with a staff physician occurred at the facility. Calloway was transferred to Phelps Memorial Hospital in North Tarrytown, where he was pronounced dead. A coroner's report listed his cause of death as exhaustive psychosis, a condition now more commonly referred to as excited delirium syndrome. He was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery. At the time of his death, Calloway's marriage to Terri Calloway had ended in divorce. He was survived by his mother, Bunnetta Calloway, his brother, Gregory Calloway, both of Manhattan, and his sister, Connie Calloway Jackson, of Baltimore, Maryland.