From left, Lars Lundquist (a figure of Edgar Bergen's), Carrot Top (on Lars' lap) and
Dopey were created in the 1940s.
Then I spot Elvira Nosegay sitting on a sofa, an older woman, heavily rouged, with a moronic smirk on her face as though a wicked thought had flashed through her wooden head after she had swilled too much bubbly. I sit down next to her. "That Nacho's quite a kidder," yucks Elvira with a slightly nasal voice. I feel silly talking to a piece of grandly painted fiberglass, but I nod in assent. More chuckles from the vents in the room. I've just had my second lesson-the "near voice."
I jump when the ventriloquist, Bob Ladd of Virginia, says, "Feel like a dummy, huh?" Most vents, Ladd included, will correct you if you use the term "dummy" to describe their "figures." Still, they're apt to slip up every now and then. Press them too hard on this topic, and a vent's figure is likely to spout back some comment such as "You're the dummy, not me" or "Oh, I get it, so you're politically correct. Then, just call me vocally impaired." Without hesitation, Ladd then disengages Elvira's head from her body and hands me the oversize head attached to a long, sweat-stained plastic shaft. I grip the rounded shaft and pull one of the levers located on it: Elvira "winks lasciviously at no one in general," as Ladd puts it. Unwittingly, a high-pitched voice escapes my lips, a woman's voice that startles even me. For a moment I'm I I again, sitting patiently in front of the mirror in my bedroom, trying desperately not to move my lips and to talk in funny voices at the same time.
I can still remember the small advertisement appearing in the back of a well-thumbed comic book, a simple line drawing featuring a young boy who confounds a man with a trunk on his back by making a voice seem to come from within it. Eagerly I stalk the mailbox, awaiting the arrival of my ventriloquist's aid, which turns out to be a bent piece of metal that I'm instructed to place on the roof of my mouth. The best I can manage out of several hours of practice and staring into the mirror is a buzzing noise and sore lips. To me, ventriloquism stands for those preadolescent yearnings, a mix of frustration and untold promise, mystery and excitement, all amid a hazy memory of the early days of black-and-white television and the Ed Sullivan Show.