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I am pretty sure that the reason Bruno was usually silent was because Caroll Spinney had his hands full operating Oscar, though Bruno did talk at the end of Follow That Bird, while Oscar was being operated. I don't know where the other end of the wire attached to Bruno's mouth was operated from, but does anybody know if there was any on-screen explanations for why Bruno didn't talk much? There was an unnofficial Caroll Spinney page which mentioned that Bruno think's it's best not to talk back to a grouch, but the webmaster didn't cite any sources for this fact.
Oddly enough, Caroll Spinney's autobiography mentions Bruno talking as if it were a regular thing. It doens't say that he rarely spoke. I guess it's possible that Bruno talked a lot while making live appearances, but not as much in on-screen appearances. Maybe the talking effect was better on a live stage, where people were farther away from Bruno, than on-screen, where bad mouth movement would be more noticable.
After all, most of bruno's speaking appearances I know of had him saying things with small amounts of syllibals. At the end of Follow That Bird he says "Sure boss", which is two words and two syllables. However Caroll moved the wire to move his mouth, hecould have just tugged two tiems to make the mouth move. It's been a long time since I've seen the song Put it in the Trash Can, but I've read here that his lines were basically just "Trash can" and "Doo doo doo doo". Trash Can is also two syllibals, and the "Doo doo doo doo" part could have easily been done by puling the wire, no proper lip synch required. And since Oscar wasn't in that scene, I wonder if Caroll Spinn ey could have put his hand inside Bruno's mouth to move it.
Oddly enough, Caroll Spinney's autobiography mentions Bruno talking as if it were a regular thing. It doens't say that he rarely spoke. I guess it's possible that Bruno talked a lot while making live appearances, but not as much in on-screen appearances. Maybe the talking effect was better on a live stage, where people were farther away from Bruno, than on-screen, where bad mouth movement would be more noticable.
After all, most of bruno's speaking appearances I know of had him saying things with small amounts of syllibals. At the end of Follow That Bird he says "Sure boss", which is two words and two syllables. However Caroll moved the wire to move his mouth, hecould have just tugged two tiems to make the mouth move. It's been a long time since I've seen the song Put it in the Trash Can, but I've read here that his lines were basically just "Trash can" and "Doo doo doo doo". Trash Can is also two syllibals, and the "Doo doo doo doo" part could have easily been done by puling the wire, no proper lip synch required. And since Oscar wasn't in that scene, I wonder if Caroll Spinn ey could have put his hand inside Bruno's mouth to move it.