In Kentucky: 600 Unmoved Lips

By Gregory Jaynes

Out in the middle of America one summer weekend (to be precise, at a motel at the intersection of Interstate 75 and Buttermilk Pike, in Fort Mitchell, Ky., just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati), there was a gathering of about 300 people who can talk without moving their lips (reading, that is another matter). Ventriloquists all, they brought their dummies. There were people everywhere not so much talking to other people as talking through their dummies to other people's dummies (just leave it alone, folks, and lower that eyebrow).

What it was was the Twelfth Annual Ventriloquist Convention. They hold it in Fort Mitchell because it is the home of the Vent Haven Museum, said to house the largest collection of ventriloquist-related paraphernalia in this or any other hemisphere. The museum was founded by William Shakespeare Berger, a wealthy businessman and amateur ventriloquist who collected dummies from 1916 until his death in 1972. In one room of the museum, scores of dummies sit on folding metal chairs. The effect, on anyone who came along in the high celebrity days of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy and Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney and Senor Wences too, is bizarre. Lacking animation, still, with their eyes wide as silver dollars and their goofy grins, they lend the room an air of the grotesque.

Speaking of which, there were people at the convention who thought their puppets were alive, truly. Jeff Dunham, a rising star from Dallas who was in the touring company of the Broadway hit Sugar Babies, explained this frame of mind: "If you convince yourself that the dummy is really alive, that he is a separate entity, it works much better onstage. It is much more convincing to the audience. Even Bergen, who was far from crazy, talked about Charlie as if he were alive. However, it does get a little spooky sometimes if you let yourself get carried away with it."

"Hi," one dummy in the motel corridor said to another. "I'm Oscar from Cape Cod. Where are you from?"

"Dearborn, Michigan."

The people on whose arms these characters rode exchanged not a word.

But wait! Historically -- one learns just in the nick of time -- balance is what nearly every account of this yearly meeting has begged. It is not all weirdness going down. It is, in the words of Dale Brown, a ventriloquist from Waukesha, Wis., "a family affair aimed at educating young and amateur ventriloquists, promoting the art of ventriloquism, and providing a spotlight for some of the country's best-known professionals." Further, according to Brown and other organizers of the event, the vents (for that is what they call one another) are a little ticked off at being picked on by the press as odd, for theirs is no more odd than a gathering of philatelists. They desire a sober and evenhanded report for once, and so, as far as this department is concerned, they shall have it. The dearth of seriousness in the lines that preceded these is regretfully noted, and the clerk is instructed to strike them from the record.

One full day was given over to workshops, serious affairs that dissected humor, a daunting job since humor tends to get stubborn in the face of pathology. Mark Wade, for example, who lectured on comedy writing for kid shows, gave his listeners the ABCs of a joke. "With C you pull the rug out from under them," he explained. He brought out a monkey dummy, who said, "My sister picks on me." That was the A of it.

"Is she spoiled?" Mark asked. That was B.

"No," the monkey said. "She always smells that way." C.

The "almost naughty syndrome," Mark advised, is another way of getting kids to laugh. "Certain key words sound naughty to kids. Underwear. Kids think it is really funny. Or the puppet could say, 'Kissywooooooooo.' Anything with kiss in it. They're starting to think about boy-girl things." Mark went on to talk about mapping and diagramming jokes and planning ad libs until it was time for Jeff Dunham to speak. Jeff talked about comedy writing, and he said $ soundly that if you could create a joke a day pretty soon you would have a routine, much as it is said that if you could write a page a day every year you would have a novel. The audience took notes.

A question from the floor: "Do you have a technique for remembering the sequence of jokes?"

Jeff: Yeah. I write them on a three-by-five card and tape them to the back of the puppet.

Q. Any ideas for an effective close?

A. If you're no good, just walk off.

Next up, Bill Boley spoke on general comedy writing. He recommended a thesaurus, insult books, comic strips as helpers, then put a forefinger to his temple and said, "You're going to need a little bit up here." He recommended writing the punch line first and then fitting a story around it. If he is not getting laughs, he has his dummy say, "Hey, don't complain to me. You're doing all the talking." Moreover, "that line has got me out of a corner many times." Directly, Bill Boley demonstrated what he could do with his voice. He did dog sniffs, dog barks, dog pants, peacock calls, door slams ("The shut is a gun sound. I let it go through the nose a little bit") and window blinds being raised and lowered. He did everything but

a cat choking on a hair ball, and then David Ginn came out to speak on using props in your act.

Ginn was selling props -- magic wands that turn into rubber snakes, and whatnot -- and he punctuated his pitch Henny Youngman-style: "Talk about a cheap gag. This'll make you gag, Charlie." Then Bill Anderson came out to talk about using ventriloquism in church work. He had written a pamphlet of 111 different ways to use it, one paragraph devoted to each method, and he mentioned all 111. A sample: "Use your dummy for free advertising. Take your dummy to a clothing store to get a new suit, or a barber shop to get his hair cut, and call the newspaper and they'll send a photographer out."

The following speaker, Bob Isaacson, talked about basic ventriloquism, going over the diaphragm and the hard palate, the teeth and the tongue. You can say the letter d without moving your lips, but you cannot say the letter b. Nearly anyone could be a ventriloquist if one's dummy talked like this: "How 'dout a dottle of deer?" Substituting a barely perceptible th sound, Isaacson said "Boston baked beans" without moving his lips, and you could have sworn you heard the b's. People scribbled.

So it went. There were shows at night, and on Saturday morning there was a roast of Ronn Lucas, who works out of Las Vegas, has done the Johnny Carson show and was named Ventriloquist of the Year at the convention. Sharp one- liners fell like hatchets. Lucas at one point categorized one of his roasters as "a good example of what happens when a fetus does not get enough oxygen." All good fun, and afterward a group photograph was taken of everyone and every dummy. It made for a particularly arresting tableau.

Then all the dummies went back into suitcases. Off to one corner, David Hansen, a hairpiece designer from Chicago, was packing up Eric, who looked just like David Hansen -- same hair, same beard, same face, same clothes. "I drive around a lot with him, and we play with people on the street," David said. "Driving around is my hobby anyway, so I needed somebody along. I have a custom Corvette, and I take off the top and turn up the radio, and he keeps time with the music."

No odder than a gathering of stamp collectors. No sir.