Count von Count, often known simply as “the Count“, is one of the Muppet characters on Sesame Street, performed by Jerry Nelson until his death in August 2012. The Count is a vampire modeled after Bela Lugosi‘s interpretation of Count Dracula.
The Count’s main purpose is educating children on simple mathematical concepts, most notably counting. The Count has a love of counting; he will count anything and everything, regardless of size, amount, weird choices he makes or how much annoyance he is causing the other Muppets or human cast. For instance, he once prevented Ernie from answering a telephone because he wanted to continue counting the number of rings. Another time, while serving as an elevator operator, he refused to let Kermit the Frog get out at his selected floor so he could count on every floor in the building.
The Count is goofy, funny and friendly but can lose his temper or show displeasure for interruptions of counting; for example he once got upset with Cookie Monster because Cookie wanted to eat the apples that the Count wanted to count. The next time he saw Cookie Monster he was forced to let Cookie eat the apples after he counted them to prevent arguments. Also in his early appearances for the first two years his skit involved him appearing spooky, easily angered, counting and chuckling manically (Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!!!) and thunder and lightning would boom more loudly until parents wrote to Sesame Street saying that their kids were afraid of the Count; thus changing his attitude to his normal skit.
A typical role of the Count is him saying to the audience “Greetings it is I the Count. They call me the Count because I love to count things.”
