Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Childhood Dreams

I sent this to Clinton Detweiler who writes the blog "Newsy Vents". He was kind enough to post it on his blog. I thought I'd share it with you, too.

"My love of puppets and ventriloquism began when I was just 5 years old. My first puppets were marionettes. But very quickly I became fascinated with Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney. On my 6th birthday, my parents gave me a 24" Jerry Mahoney and Paul Winchell's book "Ventriloquism for Fun and Profit". Within weeks, I was performing for kids at school assemblies. Within a few years I was given a Jerry Mahoney with the ball and socket neck, and then a rare Jerry Mahoney with moving eyes. (Boy... do I wish I had that Jerry today!)

In my mid-20's, I partnered up with actor-magician Harry Anderson in a street act in San Francisco. We used ventriloquism to collect money from the crowds. After Harry performed a superb 30-minute magic show (I did the music), Harry would pretend to hypnotize me. I would pretend to fall into a deep, bug-eyed comedic trance. Then I would start to sing a childrens song without moving a muscle. Instead of the crowd moving away from us when it came time to collect our "donations", they would be compelled to move in closer. Harry would stand next to me as I sang and collect the dollars, 5's, 10's and 20's they would drop into our church plate. Without a doubt, we were the best paid street act in San Francisco in the mid-70's.
Today, I perform with Chester, a small soft dog hand puppet. And like Clinton, I build hard vent figures. In fact, I've learned a great deal about the art of ventriloquism and the construction of vent figures from reading the Newsy Vents blog.

Ventriloquism has enriched my life and to see it continue as a practiced and cherished art form in this age of technology is truly a blessing."

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