By Kalhan Rosenblatt -
NBC News
An episode of the
Sesame Street
show that was allegedly pulled from TV screens for being too scary for kids has been posted on social media sites like YouTube and Reddit.
The chapter, recorded almost 50 years ago, stars Margaret Hamilton, who returned to the role of the Wicked Witch of the West from
The Wizard of Oz
.
The plot is inspired by that movie, but instead of trying to recover a couple of ruby shoes, as in the original story, Hamilton searches this time a "stolen broomstick."
To do this, the actress terrorizes David, played by Northern Calloway, throughout the episode.
In the end, and after posing as an old woman, the witch retrieves her broom and flies away.
"This is glorious!" He proclaims, "Look! Without hands!"
This lost
episode
aired on February 10, 1976, during the seventh season of
Sesame Street
, according to the Muppet fan archive, Muppet Wiki.
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The plot wanted to teach children to overcome their fears, and "the value of planning through the creation and application of methods to recover the broom," according to Muppet Wiki.
But the producer, Sesame Workshop, received an avalanche of complaints from parents, and the episode did not broadcast on television, according to the website specialized in entertainment The AV Club.
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Sesame Workshop did not respond to questions from NBC News about the episode being leaked on social media.
The AV Club reported that bootleg versions of this episode are posted on social media from time to time, but are either removed or of very poor quality.
Although it was never aired on television again, the episode is preserved in the Library of Congress, according to The AV Club.
User Mike Minnick posted the most recent episode on YouTube on Saturday.
Minnick could not be reached by NBC News for questions.
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In her post, Minnick claims the episode never made it to television, a claim The AV Club disputes, claiming it was shown to test audiences in the 1970s and ended up being declared too scary.
According to Minnick, Muppets creator Jim Henson found the episode "too scary" and never allowed it to air.
The Muppet Wiki states that what really happened with the episode falls somewhere between the two stories.
Following the episode's airing, the show received "an unusually large number of parent emails, almost all of them negative, in a short period of time."
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That prompted further testing in March 1976, a month after the episode aired, according to the Muppet Wiki.
Although children were attentive to the parts of the show in which Hamilton appeared, judging their fear watching the episode was difficult, the Muppet Wiki concludes.
It was later advised not to be repeated, according to the same source.
In a 1976 handwritten letter to
Sesame Street
archived on the Muppet Wiki, a viewer named Rebecca said she had been dreaming about the green-faced witch.
"I wish they wouldn't put that witch on
Sesame Street
anymore because [...] I've been dreaming [of] that witch over and over and over again," she wrote.
The episode first resurfaced on the Internet in 2019, according to Muppet Wiki.
In the latest YouTube post, many say removing the episode was embarrassing and others say they were thrilled.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the lost media community, this right here is a huge win for all of us!" one person said.
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Many said they didn't find the episode all that scary, but one user recalled that young children in the 1970s had more limited media exposure than young people today.
"People forget the kind of exposure those kids had to scary things back then, compared to now. She was a real-life villain, and [in] one of the only kid-friendly movies they could see," he wrote, "I agree that it has been a great loss that he has been gone for so long, especially for Margaret Hamilton, a legend."
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Hamilton, who died in May 1985, also reprized her role as a witch on such television shows as
Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood
.
In it she played herself and told how she was to play the witch.
"When I got the chance to do it, I was very, very happy about it," Hamilton said, "sometimes kids think she's a really bad witch, and I guess she looks like that. She's also what we call frustrated. She's very unhappy." because he doesn't get what he wants.
Before becoming an actress, Hamilton was a kindergarten teacher.
According to The AV Club, this part of her life was one of the reasons she wanted to teach children to overcome her fears through the
Sesame Street
episode .
