Guy Smiley

Guy Smiley is a fictional character on Sesame Street who was dubbed "America's favorite game show host". His skits are among those on the show that parody commercial media. Smiley has also hosted This Is Your Lunch and Here Is Your Life, a parody of This Is Your Life. Guests who were profiled included a loaf of bread, a tooth and a tree (all aimed at teaching children how things are made). He has also hosted pageants for numbers and letters.
Joan Ganz Cooney cited the role as one of her favorite roles from his original performer Jim Henson, although it was his least favorite to perform, as the character had a boisterous voice which proved too hard on his throat. Due to this, the character's dialogue was usually pre-recorded so that Henson could do multiple takes without straining his throat.
The character was mostly discontinued upon Henson's death in 1990.
Smiley has hosted many game show skits, such as:
In Sesame Street's premiere season (1969–70), Smiley sang Allie Wrubel and Herb Magidson's 1937 song "Gone with the Wind" while a strong wind was blowing away a tree, a house, a woman, and ultimately his clothes. This segment was also dubbed in Spanish for international broadcasts.
Also that season, Smiley hosted the first segment of "The Answer Lady", featuring an elderly woman named Granny Fanny Nesselrode who claimed she had the answer to everything but never gave the best answer to any question sent in by a viewer. Smiley was later replaced by a regionally accented Muppet host who bore some resemblance to him.
Smiley did make some appearances that didn't have anything notable to do with his hosting career. When Cookie Monster was in a bakery chewing up items that rhymed with the word "buy", Smiley came in announcing he was "Guy Smiley, star of daytime television". At this point, Cookie couldn't remember that it was a pie he was after, and the repeated use of words that did rhyme with "pie" did nothing to jog his memory. The scene ended with him wrongly realizing that the rhyming item was "GUY!", and chasing Smiley around the bakery, trying to eat his hand off.
He also appeared in a sketch featuring Grover as an Elevator Operator. It was to teach kids to face the front of an elevator. In this sketch, "Mr. Smiley" (as Grover calls him) is also voiced by Jim Henson, but with a different voice than that of his game show personality.
In one movie theatre skit with Bert and Ernie, using Smiley as a one-line extra, the character is puppeted by Richard Hunt.
In a counting skit, Guy Smiley also took his entire studio audience to lunch, hoping there would be a big enough table. While there was a table for the 39 members of the audience, there was no available table for 40, forcing Smiley to sit outside and be sent the bill later.
Guy Smiley also appeared in Alphabet Chat doing a commercial for Bow Wow Chow while Mr. Chatterly was trying to do a lecture about the letter R.
He also appeared in On Vacation With Guy Smiley, in which he tried to photograph various animals in the jungle, but his loud voice kept scaring them off. At least until a tiger (Martin P. Robinson) came along, roaring and scaring away Guy's guide (Richard Hunt), but the tiger took the camera and took Guy's picture with the other animals. His pith helmet was provided by Zimbabwe After Six.
Smiley shows up as a non-speaking background extra (wearing an odd, unusually stern expression) along with many other Muppets in the musical skit "Some/None".
Guy Smiley also hosted the banquet meeting of things that begin with SH sound. Including a shirt, a shovel, a shrimp, a sheep with a shepherd, and even a short sized king.
Sesame Street is localized for international markets, where Smiley is often renamed. In Portugal, for example, he's "Carlos Luz", a play on words with the name of television presenter Carlos Cruz. In the Netherlands, he is called "Henk Glimlach", "glimlach" meaning "smile". In Germany, he appears simply as "Robert", possibly after Robert Lembke, a game show host.