Madge Sinclair holds the rare distinction of having played one of the few adults to interact with Mr. Snuffleupagus in the days when the adults thought of him as Big Bird’s imaginary friend. Fifty-one years ago this month, on episode 343, she played Dr. Marzullo, who worked with Susan at a pop-up vaccination clinic at Hooper’s Store. They were vaccinating the local kids—and Big Bird—for measles. Apparently, Snuffy had already gotten vaccinated, but they were giving out balloons if you got a shot and he wanted one, so he and Big Bird went to get him a balloon. She found the whole experience so weird she couldn’t tell the other adults about it, leaving Big Bird once more unbelieved.
Now, she did a lot more than that, of course. IMDb lists her debut as playing Tituba, the enslaved accused witch, in a short called “The Witches of Salem: The Horror and the Hope,” but it also shows her as having been on a show called Madigan before that, so whatever. What’s more, those were both 1972 as well, and her Sesame Street appearance is missing from both IMDb and Wikipedia. So it’s possible she did start her career by seeing Mr. Snuffleupagus. However, from there, she did literally dozens of other things, ending her film career as playing Simba’s mother Sarabi.
She played LeVar Burton’s mother four times, three of them quite early in his career. The fourth time, she joined the ranks of people who had appeared both on original Star Trek—she’s in Star Trek IV—and Next Generation. She, who had been the wife of “Toby” in Roots, when he was played by John Amos, was on Next Generation married to Ben Vereen, who played Bell and Toby’s grandson “Chicken George.” It does seem slightly beyond the realm of coincidence, but you couldn’t prove by me that it isn’t—and I’d suspect that Next Generation casting would be definitely based on the other three if nothing else.
Her career was at a time when there were an awful lot of Prestige Films About Black People. Roots, of course. However, she was also in the biopic Leadbelly. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Almo’ a Man, one of the times she was LeVar Burton’s mother. Cornbread, Earl, and Me. Probably her best roles came from that era. The ‘70s are not my favourite era of film, goodness knows, but there were a lot of roles then that aren’t available anymore.
From there, she would go on to the Standard TV Career, including 129 episodes of Trapper John, M.D. She was cast in the show around the same time as she was diagnosed with cancer. That she survived long enough to do her work on Star Trek, and appear in Coming to America, and all sorts of other things, is fortunate. They didn’t recast Sarabi in the direct-to-video Lion King II because they thought it was disrespectful to her. That Disney has moved away from that decency is simply depressing.
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