Ventriloquism - Not Just for Dummies
Posted: Saturday, July 28, 2007 7:00 AM by Robert Ciridon
(From Brian Balthazar, TODAY Producer)
Who hasn’t, at least once, been entertained, or traumatized, by a ventriloquist dummy? When I was a small child, I was completely intrigued by them.
I wanted one, and I wanted it badly.
Every Christmas, I paged through the JC Penney catalog, and I would circle the Ventriloquist doll. There was a “Charlie McCarthy” one, and there was a “Lester” one. (I realize that I have dated myself here in a number of ways - first that there was a JC Penney Catalog, secondly, that there was a Charlie McCarthy doll. I’m thirty-six years old. But hey, I like to think I look 29.)
I digress. In any case, holiday after holiday, I received neither.
Until one day, my mother’s best friend came to our house with toys her kids didn’t want any more. There, among the castoffs was a ventriloquist puppet. It was the Charlie McCarthy one, and it was looking ROUGH. No suit jacket, no pants, not even a top hat or monocle. Just a head, attached to a limp body that resembled a rag doll. I didn’t care. I was enchanted by that thing. For the next few hours, I was a ventriloquist.
Until I went to bed.
There, on the dresser, sat Charlie… his big eyes and sly smile dimly lit by moonlight pouring into my bedroom.
He was smiling at me.
He was staring at me.
The minute I fell asleep, he was going to kill me.
That was where my love affair with ventriloquism ended. After a brief friendship, Charlie and I had a less amicable arrangement. Like any separation, someone ends up with the advantage. I would get free run of the house, keep all my existing toys, and Charlie would live at the bottom of a heap of junk in my closet.
It was the closest thing to a restraining order a kid could get against a toy.
Flash forward to my adult years, and I have risen above how terrified I used to be. Now, the idea of a person not only seeing past that fear, and becoming a ventriloquist for a LIVING? That’s an accomplishment.
I went to the annual Vent-Haven Annual Ventriloquists Convention in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky not knowing what to expect…(WATCH VIDEO) I kind of thought that they would always be walking around with their dolls - Maybe I’d run into them at the hotel bar, each with a drink in their hand. And on a few occasions, that did happen (except for the drinking.)
But in actuality, (and not all that surprisingly) these were just ordinary people like you and me. Many of them with incredible talents. For all the work they put into their craft, in many ways they are misunderstood. Some people think they just like to play with dolls, or have poor social skills - when in fact it’s really about being funny, entertaining people, and making them smile. They have an enormous number of things to be keeping track of in their mind when they’re up on that stage… and it takes a lot of work until they’re ready to perform at all.
This convention, while having plenty of rookies, had a lot of people who have made their living as Ventriloquists (or “Vents” as they call each other.)
Many of them share the war stories of the early years, birthday parties gone awry, the challenge of speaking without moving their lips… the commonalities go on and on… Not to mention the fact that there is no other place where so many of them are together - at one time.
Just to get in on the action, I tried my hand (literally) at working a puppet.
(I have some publicity photos to prove it.) Posing for photos is one thing. Actually TALKING? It was so difficult, I couldn’t bring myself to even say anything. Beyond my bad hand gestures, my character voice was nonexistent. It dawned on me just how much confidence and skill this sort of thing requires. Being funny, being a fast thinker, being a multi-tasker… It’s pretty amazing.
And while I now enjoy a good ventriloquist performance, don’t you DARE get one of those puppets in my bedroom in the middle of the night. It’s going straight to my closet.
