Why I’m obsessed with ventriloquism, and think you should be too
Michael Taube
I still remember the first time I ever saw a ventriloquist in action. The legendary Edgar Bergen and his dummy sidekicks, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, appeared on an episode of The Muppet Show in October 1977. While the 7-year-old me didn’t know who he was then, I was immediately transfixed. McCarthy and Snerd, like Jim Henson’s Muppets, obviously weren’t real but seemed almost alive on the screen. How was Bergen doing this? How was he able to make them talk without moving his lips?
As I later came to find out, Bergen moved his lips far more than most ventriloquists (and often joked about it in his act). What he had mastered was an impeccable sense of comedic timing. The interplay between Bergen and McCarthy, Snerd, Effie Klinker, and several other of his dummies was lively, humorous, and mesmerizing. He made it feel like he was having a real conversation with these “woodenheads.” They, in turn, had unique personality traits that seemed as real as their flesh-and-blood counterparts.
THE O.C. PREMIERED 20 YEARS AGO. WAS IT THE BEGINNING OF AN ERA OF TV OR THE END OF ONE?
This started my obsession with all things ventriloquism.
The public’s interest in ventriloquism has piqued in recent years due to, of all things, America’s Got Talent. Terry Fator’s stunning win on the NBC show’s second season in 2007 kicked things off. It led to the once-struggling performer receiving a five-year, $100 million contract at the Mirage in Las Vegas. Two equally talented ventriloquists have followed in Fator’s footsteps as AGT winners, Britain’s Paul Zerdin and 12-year-old Darci Lynne Farmer.
There have been other memorable ventriloquists on the AGT franchise. Kevin Johnson, who was on AGT’s first season, parlayed his signature “Godzilla Theater” skit into an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman. Spain’s Celia Munoz, a trained opera singer who took up ventriloquism less than five years ago, got to the finals of AGT’s Season 17 without puppets and by throwing her voice. Munoz performed with her two inspirations, Fator and Farmer, in the season finale. Jamie Leahey, the 13-year-old who finished second on Season 15 of Britain’s Got Talent with his dummy, a wisecracking chicken named Chuck, is a natural entertainer and throwback to the song-and-dance routines of vaudeville.
These are exciting developments. Yet there’s so much more to the history and art form of ventriloquism that needs to be remembered — or it will soon be forgotten.
Ventriloquism’s origins date back to ancient Greece. There were belly speakers (or belly prophets) who would “counterfeit spirit possession by talking in a diffused voice while engaging in a certain amount of lip control,” according to ventriloquist/historian Valentine Vox’s 1981 I Can See Your Lips Moving: The History and Art of Ventriloquism. This mode of divination was known as gastromancy. One of its most well-known purveyors was the Athenian priest Eurycles, who Plato called “wonderful.” He had an Egyptian counterpart, Sacchura, often described as the “wizard of the dead.”
There’s also the unusual example of Elizabeth Barton, the “Holy Maid of Kent.” She was a “ventriloqua,” with a voice disseminating from her belly like the ancient Greeks. Alas, Barton’s place in history was her failed attempt to use ventriloquism to oppose the marriage of King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn. She was found guilty of high treason and hanged on April 20, 1534. During her confession, “she admitted that her prophetic utterances had all been fraudulent, contrived by men of learning for their own gain.” The fairer sex could evidently take advantage of a gullible public, too!
Ventriloquism has been mostly associated with humor, witty banter, and entertainment over the past few centuries. The art form gradually shifted from speaking from the belly to throwing (or venting) one’s voice through dolls, makeshift hand puppets, or just about anything the performers could think of. It brought a unique dimension that traditional Punch and Judy performances and early puppeteers, as great as both were, simply couldn’t replicate.
Early ventriloquists were viewed as magical and supernatural, with an uncanny ability to develop an atmosphere that both suspended belief and created disbelief from many in the audience. They played a memorable role in society, too.
William Hogarth’s “An Election Entertainment,” one of four paintings in his Humours of an Election series (1754-55), depicted Irish politician Sir John Parnell using his hand and napkin as a talking puppet to amuse other guests (with little apparent success). Austrian nobleman Baron de Mengen surprised onlookers in 1757 by throwing his voice into a little puppet or doll with a lower jaw that moved like a nutcracker. The Baron was “credited with introducing this marriage between puppetry and ventriloquism which did not become vogue until many years later.” Britain’s James Bick was a ventriloquist “who could imitate various instruments with amazing clarity” to amazed audiences in the 1720s and 1730s, most notably a trumpet. There’s also a French grocer, Monsieur St. Gille, whose “astonishing talent” and ability to remain “absolutely mute” impressed mathematician Abbe Jean-Baptiste de la Chapelle during a private performance. So much so that Chapelle made St. Gille the main focus of his 1772 study, Le Ventriloque, ou l’Engastrimythe.
By the 19th century, ventriloquism shifted from carnivals and traveling funfairs to the proper stage. But it was vaudeville where modern ventriloquism we would recognize takes its shape, often with the dummy as the jokester and the ventriloquist as “straight man.” There’s a straight line from this era to our own: “The Great” Harry Lester and his popular sidekick Frank Byron Jr., for instance. He served as a mentor to Bergen’s memorable interplay with Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd — who, in turn, inspired Paul Winchell and his popular dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. There was Senor Wences, a throwback to Parnell, with his hand puppet Johnny, Cecilia Chicken, and Pedro, a head in a box who answered questions with a familiar “s’awright.” And we can’t forget Shari Lewis (Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse), Keith Harris (Orville the Duck), Arthur Worsley (Charlie Brown), Willie Tyler (Lester), and Jeff Dunham (Peanut, Walter).
Bergen, Winchell, Lester, Tyler, Lewis, and the rest spent years honing their craft and ability to entertain an audience from start to finish. Their puppets and dummies developed their own personalities, and many in the audience would look forward to the witty banter in their respective acts. In a few cases, they even helped inspire some well-known entertainers to start out as ventriloquists. This includes Don Knotts, Ted Knight, and Johnny Carson. Imagine if these gentlemen had continued on their original paths — and how different their careers might have been!
Today, for those of us weirdos nursing an obsession with the history and craft of ventriloquism, there’s even a museum dedicated to it, the Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, founded by businessman and amateur ventriloquist William Shakespeare Berger. He was friends with Lester, and some visitors included Bergen, Winchell, and Jimmy Nelson. Berger collected more than 500 dummies in his lifetime. It’s grown to over 1,000, along with posters, photographs, and other paraphernalia. “No other person has been such a friend to ventriloquism” and “given more of his lifetime to preserving the rich heritage of this ancient art form,” curator Lisa M. Sweasy wrote about Berger in Vent Haven Museum: Its Past, Present, and Future. It was a childhood obsession that turned into a lifelong passion.
Sounds like the perfect place to visit, if you, too, think this art form is something worth laughing and obsessing over.
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Michael Taube, a columnist for four publications (Troy Media, Loonie Politics, National Post, and Epoch Times), was a speechwriter for former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.