{alltv} Tony Geiss, 86, Writer for 'Sesame Street,' Dies

Tony Geiss, who entertained generations of children by putting words in the mouths of Big Bird, Kermit the Frog, Elmo and other characters on "Sesame Street," helping the show win 22 daytime Emmys for scriptwriting and songwriting, died on Jan. 21 in Valhalla, N.Y. He was 86 and lived in Manhattan.

He had been hospitalized at Westchester Medical Center for a neck injury, Laird Townsend, his cousin, said in confirming the death.

Mr. Geiss, a well-read man who never lost a child's playfulness, wrote for "Sesame Street" for three decades and went on to write popular animated films for young audiences.

He invented several Muppet characters: the Honkers, fuzzy puppets with bulbous noses whose origins lay in Mr. Geiss's childhood trick of honking his nose, and Abby Cadabby, a 3-year-old fairy who made her debut on Sesame Street's 37th season with a broken wand that Big Bird advised she repair at the show's Fix-It Shop.

Mr. Geiss would repeatedly discover ways of amusing children while giving a wink to parents who were watching with them. He once wrote a sketch called "Omelet: Prince of Dinner" about a man who couldn't make up his mind whether to have peas or broccoli for dinner.

"The peas or not the peas — that is the question," the prince says.

Mr. Geiss helped create the "Sesame Street" segment "Elmo's World," aimed at toddlers, about Elmo, a furry monster with an orange nose whose companions are Dorothy, a goldfish and the Noodle family. He also composed that segment's theme song. He wrote the television productions "Cinderelmo" and "Don't Eat the Pictures: Sesame Street at the Metropolitan Museum of Art," then, with Judy Freudberg, wrote the film "Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird." The Emmys he helped garner were among scores won by the show since its inception in 1969.

Branching out from "Sesame Street," he and Ms. Freudberg wrote the stories or screenplays for two films directed by the great Disney animator Don Bluth and produced by Steven Spielberg, "The Land Before Time" and "An American Tail." "The Land Before Time," about orphaned dinosaurs and their battle for survival, went on to have a separate life in numerous videos and in a TV series, which Mr. Geiss also helped write.

Mr. Geiss was born in Manhattan on Nov. 16, 1924, the son of Alexander Geiss, a painter and animator, and Marjorie Thirer, a press agent who had a love of singing. Mr. Geiss, a graduate of Walden High School in Manhattan, spent two years as a radar technician in the Navy before enrolling at Cornell University, where he met his wife, the former Phyllis Eisen, to whom he was married for more than 60 years. She died a year ago. There are no immediate survivors.

Growing up in Greenwich Village in a world where he often met entertainers, Mr. Geiss later worked as a press agent and a comedy writer.

He wrote for "Sesame Street," produced by the Children's Television Workshop, now called Sesame Workshop, from 1973 until 2009.