Deena and Pearl

[LabyrinthFan]

Deena & Pearl were a sort of female monster counterpart to Bert & Ernie in the early 80's. They were voiced by Karen Prell and Brian Muehl, and lasted only one season. I have a but a vague remembrance of them, so any pics or sketch details would be great!

 

[Whatever]

I thought Karen Prell said she didn't work on Sesame Street.

 

[Ryan]

I thought Karen Prell said she didn't work on Sesame Street.

No, she did, a lot in the late 70's early 80's. She usually performed AM females, but she also peformed a flower, Deena and other backround Muppets.

 

[Don_Music_2004]

It upsets me these two were never on Noggin.

 

[Pino]

http://home.earthlink.net/~karenprell/id1.html
Check this out!

 

[minor muppetz]

I know, this is an old thread that hasn't been active in ten years, but I thought I'd point out that this Muppet Mindset article reveals what happened to them (or at least Deena): http://muppetmindset.wordpress.com/2014/12/15/12507/

So Deena was dropped because she was too annoying. Norman Stiles said that he thinks they only did one or two sketches with her, but obviously he's misremembering (or they did a lot more that he simply didn't work on). Muppet Wiki lists four sketches, and the 40th anniversary book has an image of Deena in the Fix-It Shop, which clearly isn't any of those segments. I won't count background appearances (like in the "Big Hello" song). And maybe he was just referring to sketches and not street scenes/stories involving her. But I would like to think that, despite the fact that English-language segments with them haven't surfaced in years, that they were more major. I saw an interview with Karen Prell a long time ago where she said that Deena was a main character and she was the first performer to get a main character right away (of course Caroll Spinney beat her to that honor). I've seen a few season 12 group photos that include her, including a group photo of characters introduced that season, with a press release talking about them. Then again, maybe that press release was just talking about the new characters and not exactly saying that all those characters would be used a lot (after all, a couple were performed by Kevin Clash, who wasn't officially part of the show at the time).

But if the character was simply too annoying, then I guess it's no wonder they haven't aired much (if at all) after the twelfth season. When Michael Earl was interviewed by Tough Pigs he mentioned that he learned Karen Prell was let go before he was, and with budget problems being one of the factors in letting Michael Earl go, I guess it was convinient that they had a performer whose only recurring character had been dropped, making it less characters to recast.

 

[Drtooth]

While by no means do I like the thought of dredging up an 11 year old thread, Oscarfan posted one of their rare skits on YT.

And...eh...I kinda get why they're rare now.

It feels kinda out of place for Sesame Street (not quite as much as Monster Clubhouse, though), and more like some sort of preschool based Muppet project unrelated. Somehow, I get the feeling whoever wrote this came from the experience of having a fussy toddler that wouldn't sleep at night.

 

[minor muppetz]

I saw this clip posted in another thread and knew it was an English-language clip, but upon watching it, at first I started to doubt it was in English. Pearl made a few vocal noises that sort of sounded, to me, like the voices I tend to hear when watching foreign dubs (by the third noise it sounded like a Brian Meehl voice though).

It's great to finally hear what voice Brian Meehl used for Pearl, since he hadn't done many voices. I expected it to sound a bit "monstery". It's not too feminine. Similar to Rusty from the Camp Echo Rock episodes, only less New York accent and slightly feminine.

This was the first time I've noticed that Pearl wears pearls. They can barely be seen in any of the photos I've seen. Of course images of the character are hard to come by, but they hardly even show up in the still images that Muppet Wiki had.

I don't think it's too bad or too great. I felt a bit of excitement over seeing this, in a "I'm finally seeing a sketch with these rare characters, finally hearing their voices" way. I'm trying to determine how I'd feel if I saw this sketch if it was their only appearance (probably wouldn't care too much), or if I saw it before I knew they were regular characters.

 

[mr3urious]

Deena and Pearl, at least from this segment, are a pretty meh pair of characters. But I'll have to see how the other segs are to judge them as a whole.

And the voice Karen Prell uses for Deena would be very similar to what she would use for Red Fraggle.

 

[minor muppetz]

I wonder how well the duo would have interacted with other major characters. One YouTube comment came from somebody who remembers first seeing Deena in a scene with Telly (which may or may not have been her first major scene). Muppet Wiki has a still of a scene with Deena and Olivia (the episode does not yet have a page, but I think it will soon), and the 40th anniversary book has a behind-the-scenes photo of her with Luis. I wonder how this duo would have interacted with Big Bird, Oscar, Ernie and Bert, Cookie Monster, Grover, and Herry. I wonder what an interaction between them and Leslie Mostly would be like (since they are all rare characters not seen in English for many years who have recently been seen again, and a number of fans feeling they were dull).