Ventriloquists good - non-ventriloquists evil

Dear reader,

granted, there are some strange ventriloquists out there. Edgar Bergen for example in his later years gave Charlie McCarthy his own room. Candice Bergen, the daughter of Edgar Bergen, was certainly frustrated when she was younger and Charlie McCarthy was called to be her big brother. Al Steven writes in his book „Ventriloquism: Art, Craft, Profession“, that Paul Winchell had massive problems with his mother. That went so far that he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital at one point. He ran away from there one night to go to the graveyard to hallucinate both his figures Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff at his mother's grave. (Stevens takes that from Paul Winchell's autobiography „Winch“, which I haven't read though. So all I can do is repeat what Stevens wrote.)

Al Stevens also writes, rightly so, I think, that there is surely a certain percentage more or less crazy vents out there. But this percentage of crazy also exists in other professions. The thought that vents are crazy therefore is not more often or less than with other people. The media, especially films, however like to spread the image of this crazy vent or the murderous vent figure. It's similar to that image of hypnotists. Many people fear hypnotists, though for other reasons. The thing with hypnotists though is that people believe the hypnotists totally take away their own free will.

More common than the truly crazy vent you find them in films. Be it portrayed by Jay Johnson as “Chuck Campbell” in “Soap”, for whom Bob is as real as a real human. “Soap” isn't quite normal anyway. The series is about two sisters, Mary Campbell and Jessica Tate and their families. Both families are not normal. A vent truly seeing his figure as just that would not have fit in there. Billy Chrystal for example played another brother of the family and was gay. Today this is hardly a drama at all, but around 1980, when the series was shot, it was quite a big thing. One of my favourite scenes is the one with Chuck, Bob and the fridge.

Chuck and Bob's first meeting with both families is also something worth watching for sure. And the scene with Bob as mindreader shows in a very beautiful way that Chuck is not alone in accepting Bob as an independent person. I just love the look Mary gives her husband Burt.


There's no video of it online, but in “Night Court, the episode “The Next Voice You Hear” (season 4, episode 1) Ronn Lucas plays a vent, who talks all right, but without moving his lips and without a figure. He refuses to talk in his normal voice. A successful act, he says, depends on the personality of the figure and the rapport between he and the ventriloquist. He has honed his skills, but he hasn't yet found the perfect other character. Until he does, he refuses to speak as himself.

He's also in the „L.A. Law“ episode „Dummy Dearest“ (season 3, episode 6). As Kenny Petersen, who was kept in a trunk of a car for a couple of days when he was 3 years old, he doesn't speak himself. But he does have a figure, who speaks for him instead. It's not more patient with him than the rest of the people around Kenny, who think him crazy for walking around with a puppet all the time. Again there are no scenes of that episode on the internet to show you here.

I only mention this film here now, because even with the clichee of the crazy ventriloquist, I still think they're quite witty and not the typical “murderous insane”, like many others.

As a vent you're more than just an actor. You're audience, when the figure is active, and yet at the same time you're actor, because you're playing the figure. That's something other actors don't get to do. Either they're in the role or not. Only vents can be actor and audience at the same time.

I'm very fascinated with Ronn Lucas' role in „L.A. Law“ because of that. It goes a bit further than the „usual“ 2 roles of a vent, because on one hand (no pun intended) he has to play a depressed, intimidated vent and at the same time his figure is totally raging against almost everybody he comes across... including Kenny Petersen himself. One especially touching scene is at the end of that episode as Kenny is crouched with his figure in the corner of a room full of records and the figure is totally hitting on him how it makes no sense anymore to speak for him and that he's a lost case. The scene is even more beautiful (as much as such a scene can be beautiful that is) to watch, if you keep in mind that Ronn Lucas doesn't just have no text, but the very angry figure is speaking and that's without twitching lips on Lucas' part or otherwise showing that he's at the same time speaking for a very emotional figure. Scenes like that seem simple. Someone talks and someone else does not. In fact however they're much more complicated as they seem, similar to a magic trick. The art of ventriloquism is that the text of the figure are there right away. It's not something that's added later on by someone speaking the lines. That's the true art. I miss good ventriloquists. The films today are all animated and the actors just speak the lines. Or you help yourself with letting the actor speak the lines “off camera”, invisible for the camera.

As a ventriloquist you can be creative and you have a unbelievably complex task in being two persons at the same time. Also it gives the ventriloquist the possibility to say things which are impossible to say otherwise (because society doesn't like them) or things you don't dare saying (because you're shy). The figures give you the freedom to come out, really say anything and still be shy and withdrawn themselves. Ventriloquism is the safest way to let oneself go and “let out some steam”. Ventriloquists aren't crazy or evil. Crazy are only the people, who just take it all in all the time and don't let it out. Something like that makes people ill and crazy in the long run, I think.

Until next blog,

sarah