Lip Shtick

The popularity of ventriloquists never ceases to baffle me - as profound a mystery as the attraction to jugglers, sword-swallowers and fire-eaters. If I’m channel-surfing and the image of someone with a dummy on his lap pops up, my thumb hits the "skip" button faster than a turd out of a Canada goose at Silver Lake. Maybe it’s because I’ve never been a fan of vaudevillians or carnies.

As I write this, ventriloquist-comedian Jeff Dunham is enjoying mystifying success in sold-out performances and a pair of best-selling DVDs, showcasing such crowd-pleasing characters as Peanut, a purplish, obscene-looking thing called a "woozle"; Walter, an annoying grumpy old man; Jose, a talking jalapeno with a bandido mustache and sombrero; Bubba J., a cliched redneck; and Achmed the Dead Terrorist, a smart-ass skeleton with a beard and a turban whose catch-phrase is, "Silence! I kill you!" - ho-ho! The guy even has a hit CD. How exactly does one appreciate a ventriloquist’s act in a strictly audio format?

Maybe a better question would be - who’s to blame? Where did this all start? The Greeks had a word for it. They called it "gastromancy" (literally, "stomach divination"), an arcane ritual associated with necromancy used by mystics to make it seem as if spirits of the dead were passing on important messages from beyond the grave. In the Middle Ages, ventriloquism was believed to be akin to witchcraft. Around the 16th century, as Spiritualism evolved into stage magic, stripped of its mystical trappings, people accepted ventriloquism as a performance art.

Edgar Bergen, undoubtedly the most famous and beloved of ventriloquists, made a fruitful transition from vaudeville to radio, from the mid-1930s to the ‘50s. Again, a confounding success story, since the program relied on an act rooted in visual entertainment. What made it work was the wisecracking, often obnoxious personality Bergen instilled in his dummy, Charlie McCarthy. In fact, Bergen was not the most proficiently skilled ventriloquist. Even Charlie chided him for moving his lips, but Bergen’s comic timing was flawless.

Much of the radio show’s popularity stemmed from an on-air mock feud between Charlie McCarthy and W.C. Fields, who, presaging at least my attitude, variously referred to the wooden dummy as an "animated hitching post," "stunted spruce," "wormwood," and "the woodpecker’s pin-up boy." In 1939, the two adversaries faced off on the screen in "You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man."

In a questionable scene by any day’s standards, Charlie McCarthy appeared in black-face for a minstrel show bit in the aforementioned movie. More than three decades later, African-American ventriloquist Willie Tyler, along with his dummy Lester, got his first big break on "Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In." In 2006, he was the first ventriloquist to appear on "Ventriloquist’s Week" on "Late Show with Dave Letterman."

On his website, Tyler gratefully acknowledges, "Without the late ventriloquist Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney, there never would have been a Willie Tyler and Lester." Paul Winchell’s early radio career was overshadowed by Edgar Bergen’s success, although one prominent radio historian considered Winchell the superior ventriloquist. While Winchell remained extremely popular in the ‘50s and ‘60s with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff, he is probably best known as the original voice of Tigger in Disney’s "Winnie the Pooh" cartoons. (He was also one of the original inventors of an artificial heart.)

Spanish-born Wenceslao Moreno was a popular guest on "The Ed Sulllivan Show" as "Senor Wences," a ventriloquist who chatted with Johnny - his fisted hand with a face painted on it (huh?!) - and Pedro - a disembodied head in a box (creepy!), famous for the vocal exchange: "S’awright?" "S’awright!"

Shari Lewis, who became a children’s favorite in the ‘60s particularly because of her beloved characters Lamb Chop, Hush Puppy, and Charlie Horse, earned numerous awards and accolades during her career, including 12 Emmy Awards. Two years after Lewis’ death in 1998, daughter Mallory resumed her mother’s career.

The controversial ‘70s sitcom "Soap" featured comic ventriloquist Jay Johnson and his dummy as the inseparable Chuck and Bob Campbell. In 2006, "Jay Johnson: The Two and Only" opened to rave reviews on Broadway and won a Tony Award for Special Theatrical Event.

Openly gay entertainer Wayland Flowers became an audience favorite on "The Andy Williams Show," the short-lived ’77 reprise of "Laugh-In," and "The Hollywood Squares" with his dummy Madame, an "outrageous old broad" (with a resemblance to faded Hollywood icon Gloria Swanson), known for her risque repartee and double entendres. Madame even hosted her own syndicated "talk show" in 1982. Flowers died of complications from AIDS in 1988, but Madame made a "comeback" in 2006 via the talents of puppeteer Joe Kovacs, who had been deemed by Flowers’ manager worthy of continuing the performances.

Given the intriguing concept of a dummy sitting in as the ventriloquist’s alter ego, it seemed only natural that horror and fantasy genres would embrace the premise in fiction and film. The classic 1945 British anthology film of supernatural tales, "Dead of Night," was memorably capped off by Michael Redgrave’s performance as an unhinged ventriloquist who is convinced that his dummy is assuming his personality just as he is becoming manipulated by the puppet.

"Alfred Hitchcock Presents" adapted Ray Bradbury’s haunting short story "And So Died Riabouchinska" in 1956, starring Claude Rains and Charles Bronson in a murder mystery involving a talkative ventriloquist’s dummy. Rod Serling’s "The Twilight Zone" offered two unsettling depictions of ventriloquists and their unruly dummies, featuring Cliff Robertson and Jackie Cooper as the troubled performers.

"Devil Doll" (1964) was an effectively eerie British thriller about a sinister hypnotist-ventriloquist who wants to transfer the soul of a beautiful heiress into the body of his dummy.

"Magic" (1978), directed by Richard Attenborough and written by William Goldman (of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "Marathon Man" fame), based on his novel, added nothing new to the stew, despite an intriguing role for the always reliable Anthony Hopkins as a disturbed ventriloquist tormented by his homicidal dummy while he tries to rekindle a romance with high-school sweetheart Ann-Margret.

Paul Winchell, who passed away in 2005, once lamented that "computers can make everything talk, so there’s no need for the art of ventriloquism anymore. I don’t think kids today would even understand it." Well, some people are still getting it. I suspect the redneck demographic. Jeff Dunham has won "Funniest Male Stand-Up Comic" twice at the American Comedy Awards, an honor shared by Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams. . .and Jeff Foxworthy.

OK, I confess there was a ventriloquism routine I found hilarious. One of comedian-actor-filmmaker Albert Brooks’ first television appearances was as an utterly (and intentionally) inept ventriloquist in an act called "Danny and Dave." His lips moved more than the dummy’s, and at one point, he gave the dummy a glass of water while he sang. He would repeat the routine on a number of TV programs and reprised it in his 2005 film "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World."

Aside from that, I would prefer to keep ventriloquists, along with jugglers, pie plate-spinners and other assorted street performers, where they belong - at Renaissance fairs, in city parks, on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, or in musty archival footage from "The Ed Sullivan Show."