Thursday, July 15, 1999
A Dummy's Guide to Dummies
Fort Mitchell museum gives voice to the art of ventriloquism
BY JOHN JOHNSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Cecil Wigglenose, a dummy made in the 1930s and displayed at Vent Haven, has a typewriter-like mechanism used to stick out its tongue and wiggle its nose.
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The door opens to Vent Haven Museum, and dozens of dummies turn their wooden heads, arch their eyebrows, and wisecrack: Hey, how about some privacy!
OK, so that doesn't really happen. But you almost expect it to. This is, after all, their place. Within three buildings on a residential Fort Mitchell street is the world's largest collection of ventriloquist memorabilia, including more than 500 dummies. (Or “figures,” as some ventriloquists prefer to call them.)
You'll not hear a sound from any of these retired entertainers. Their wooden, glass and Ping-Pong ball eyes stare silently, even when visitors include several hundred attendees of the International Ventriloquist ConVENTion, which starts today.
At Vent Haven, Anne Roberts does the talking. The congenial 28-year-old eighth-grade English teacher is not a ventriloquist (or “vent”). But she knows well the museum's story, having had the curator's job since her aunt, Dorothy Millure, gave it up six years ago.
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'VENT' CONVENTION
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More than 300 ventriloquists are expected at the International Ventriloquist conVENTion today through Saturday at Drawbridge Estate in Fort Mitchell.
Workshops and lectures include such topics as comedy writing, cruise ship ventriloquism, ad libbing and character voices.
A Headliner Show featuring ventriloquists Ken Groves, Lynn Trefzger, Dave Kaplan and Jeff Dunham is open to the public. It's 8 p.m. Saturday at Northern Kentucky University's Greaves Hall. Cost: $10, $7 children 12 and under; limited seating is first come, first served.
Information: (606) 341-0461.
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For this day's tour Mrs. Roberts is accompanied by Denny Baker, a 24-year-old Cincinnati firefighter. He took up ventriloquism as a hobby after visiting the museum at age 10. And Mr. Baker is accompanied by one of his 15 figures, Arnold, who is here to assist with this Dummies Guide to Vent Haven.
Arnold, you see, has been here before. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “But I don't stay here.” No. When he's not performing at schools, retirement parties or other functions, he stays in a case at Mr. Baker's Delhi Township home.
What Arnold saw on his first visit is what people still see today: a place packed with dummies. There are sailors and bellboys and clowns; likenesses of a wavy-haired Ronald Reagan and a toothy Jimmy Carter; dummies with tattered clothes that survived a shipwreck; grannies and buck-toothed men and a Santa and a saucy Panamanian woman.
The dummies span time. The museum's oldest, from the 1820s, are made of papier mache. But almost all are heavy figures with heads carved from wood.
“Could use a little Jenny Craig,” Arnold quips.
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VENT HAVEN MUSEUM
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What: Vent Haven Museum.
Where: 33 W. Maple Ave., Fort Mitchell.
Open: Open by advance appointment only, Monday through Friday, May 1 through Sept. 30; no holidays.
Cost: $2, $1 children under 12.
Information: (606) 341-0461.
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Photographs of ventriloquists with their figures cover every wall.
It's all here, Mrs. Roberts says, because of one William Shakespeare “W.S.” Berger, who was born in 1878 in Cincinnati. As a young man, he nurtured an interest in both ventriloquism and business; he rose from the mail room of Cambridge Tile Co. in Cincinnati to be its president.
An amateur vent, Mr. Berger bought his first figure, Tommy Baloney, in 1910. He had added another dozen or so by the 1930s and early '40s. But it wasn't until after his retirement in 1947 that his collection multiplied.
Some dummies he bought and traded. Others were donated. He was a prolific letter writer (his correspondence fills four filing cabinets) who kept in touch with vents throughout the world, making it known that Vent Haven would gladly accept their retired figures.
He spent the last couple of years of his life in a retirement home. At first, the trustee of his estate worried that Mr. Berger would hate it there; then a phone call came from a nurse at the home.
“It's about W.S.,” the nurse said. “He's wonderful. He's down in the day room. He's performing.”
He died in 1972 at age 94.
“He outlived his entire family, and had no one to leave his collection to,” Mrs. Roberts says. Concerned that his collection would be sold piecemeal, he had set up a trust fund to ensure it would remain intact.
And it has. The W.S. Berger Memorial Building, built after Mr. Berger's death, houses some of the more prominent figures, including Cecil Wigglenose.
Cecil was made by brothers George and Glenn McElroy of Harrison, both of whom died in this decade. Their reputation as figure makers is unparalleled, Mrs. Roberts says.
The McElroys made about 60 figures before World War II. Vent Haven has eight of them.
“The way you recognize a McElroy figure is by the painted Ping-Pong ball eyes,” Mrs. Roberts says. They're free-floating, and not only can Cecil cross them, he can wink, stick out his tongue, and wiggle his ears. Such movements are accomplished by an intricate typewriter-key mechanism attached to various wires, springs and pulleys.
Arnold watches Mrs. Roberts' demonstration, then says, “Boy, I feel cheap. Spend a buck, man,” he says to Mr. Baker.
Arnold is an example of the kind of “soft” figure that is popular among today's vents. Inspired by Jim Henson's Muppets, they're often made of lightweight materials such as carpet padding and foam and are more durable than traditional wooden dummies.
Only four soft figures are in Vent Haven's collections.
Whether using wooden or soft figures, ventriloquists strive to be adept at lip control. But the notion that they “throw their voice” is incorrect, Mrs. Roberts says.
“Our ears have a terrible sense of direction,” she says. “We can't tell where sound is coming from. We hear the dummy's voice, we see the movement (of the mouth) and just assume the sound is coming from it. It's really coming from (the vent's) throat and diaphragm.”
But people are fooled. In the 1950s, she says, Paul Winchell and his dummy, Jerry Mahoney, were on a TV set doing a sound check. The director told Mr. Winchell his voice was coming across fine, but Jerry's voice was weak. Three times the director told him, “Paul, we can't hear Jerry.”
That's when Mr. Winchell noticed that “the boom guy was swinging the microphone over to Jerry, because he really thought the dummy was talking,” Mrs. Roberts says.
Ironically, lip control was not a strong point for legendary ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. Still, he had a gift for bringing dummies such as Charlie McCarthy to life.
Vent Haven's 500 to 600 annual visitors can't admire the original Charlie McCarthy, who now resides at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. But replicas of McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, another of Edgar Bergen's dummies, are on display.
Even a dummy like Arnold might someday find a home here, though he's in no hurry.
Surveying the museum, he eyes a choice spot beside a blond female figure. A note card says her hair was sprayed by a beautician to keep it in place.
“Chicks dig me,” Arnold says, trying to attract her attention.
Alas, the blonde never bats an eye.
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