Personal Issues
Calloway was arrested on the morning of September 19, 1980 in Nashville, Tennessee. He beat marketing director of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center Mary Stagaman with an iron rod, giving her serious head and rib injuries. He then fled into the suburbs of Nashville. Along the way, he smashed a plate-glass window and storm door at one house and did extensive damage to the interior of another, destroying the family's collection of fine crystal, smashing a television set and breaking light bulbs with his bare hands. He also stole a backpack from a first grader and smashed a windshield with a rock before fleeing the scene where witnesses reported him wearing only a Superman T-shirt. He was arrested after hiding out in a couple's garage, screaming, "Help! I'm David from Sesame Street and they're trying to kill me!"
Despite this incident, Calloway continued to work on Sesame Street, with Calloway promising to continue taking his prescribed lithium.
In his authorized history Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street, author Michael Davis alleges Calloway's final years on the show were marked by periods of declining health and ability punctuated by episodes of erratic behavior; during these years, Davis claims that Calloway reportedly bit music coordinator Danny Epstein during an on-set fight, and the book also claims Calloway once appeared unannounced at Alison Bartlett's high school and proposed to her. By 1987, with executive producer Dulcy Singer becoming increasingly doubtful about Calloway's future with the show, the writers gradually and quietly ended the relationship that the character of David had with Maria Figueroa (Sonia Manzano), which had been in the storyline for several years (Maria soon began a whirlwind romance with Luis Rodriguez (Emilio Delgado), which resulted in their 1988 marriage). Finally, in the spring of 1989, not long after his incidents with Epstein and Bartlett, Calloway was fired from Sesame Street by Singer.
Davis' book also alleges that Calloway had been a patient at the Stony Lodge psychiatric facility in Ossining, New York at the end of his life.
Read more about this topic: Northern Calloway
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