If you have a lot of time on your hands and are looking to perfect a skill that has been outdated since the demise of vaudeville, then today's offering is for YOU. This blog has recently highlighted the importance of ventriloquism in everyday life, assuming your everyday life includes operating a pirate ministry or doing an off-color nightclub act.
Jimmy Nelson's "Instant Ventriloquism" is a pretty deceptive title--he actually expects you to stand in front of the mirror for hours to keep your lips from moving while replacing the "p" sound with "th". Which would explain why I can't come up with the names of more than one ventriloquist who could even remotely be considered a celebrity, Edgar Bergen, and he worked on RADIO.
And if becoming a "real" ventriloquist proves too challenging, the last part of the record and enclosed print materials allow you to simply play the record of the dialog between Farfel and Danny O'Day with gaps for responses from YOU the ersatz ventriloquist. Or better yet, toss the script and write your own responses to the dummies and create a bizarre blue comedy ventriloquist act. Do it, and I'll be there in the front row!
Jimmy Nelson's Instant Ventriloquism Juro Celebrity Records JCR 101
"Falsetto or pinched" are the two types of dummy voices you can choose between--either high pitched or whiny.
10 comments:
Ventriloquists were still pretty popular in the '60s, most notably Paul Winchell and Shari Lewis. Nowadays the craft is, as you've pointed out, mostly plied by Christian ministers. I actually own this record. I still move my lips.
I read this really fast and thought it said "The falsetto or the pinhead"!
Ah, the Proustian flood of memories! One of the happiest days of my blotched childhood came when my mother took me to Ventriloquist Kiddie Heaven: The Juro Celebrity Doll Company itself! Walls and ceilings filled with Jerry Mahoney, Knucklehead Smiff, Charlie McCarthy... And I was allowed to try them out and p9ick the one I wanted. It was time for me to move up from the small stuffed rag of a Jerry Mahoney to a larger adult one that did more than merely move its mouth up and down. One puppet even had a large microphone attached to it so you could speak into it and the voice came out its mouth. I have yet to figure out how one fooled people while holding what looked like the later CB mics up to one's mouth. or how one operated the dummy whilst doing so. I selected a large Jerry with moveable eyes, mouth and a head on a stick that could be moved all around and up and down. That was over 45 years ago that I got that dummy and you now what? To this very day I have no damn idea what happened to it. Or my copy of Ventriloquism For Fun And Profit... But what a store.
I have this LP and can only imagine what the set-up gags are since I never fund the accompanying booklet... Thanks for the memory...
Another Ventriloquism-nostalgic comment:
Recently I've seen "The dummy", with Adrien Brody & Milla Jovovich; a film that I fancy much (maybe because I was myself once a kind of "ventriloquist"). This film makes a reference to 1939 film "You Can't Cheat An Honest Man", in which is starring the renowned ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. As I youtubed to find more scenes of this old film, I discovered, amongst others, the amazing Señor Wences and a contemporary ventriloquist (who I wouldn't characterise him as Christian-maniac): Jeff Dunham. Well, I wouldn't say that I was fascinated by his kind of humor, his puppets, however, are definitely adorable!!!
A couple of weeks later, I discovered to one of the record-stores I frequent, an LP with ventriloqism-lessons by Edgar Bergen!
Why am I not surprised that nerdy misfit kids (into such loserly activities as ventriloquism) seem to congregate here?
Well, is this a weirdoland or not???...
And aren't nerdy misfit kids amongst the most respectable residents of it, or not???...
I ADORE ventriloquism, Your Honour! Inspite the fact of knowing that fire is expecting me, like Jean d'Arc (another role of Mila Jovovich)...
Or, is there a special treatment for nerdy misfit kids?
Then go here: http://www.philxmilstein.com/probe/index.htm for a ventriloquist blues song! it's amazing!
I got this this album and a dummy for Christmas when i was a kid in the 70s.
Why am I not surprised that nerdy misfit kids (into such loserly activities as ventriloquism) seem to congregate here?I never thought of my life like that... um, thanks.
So that's where Art Phag got their album name from. They even used the same title font.
http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=1499749
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