The goofy look of ventriloquist dummies

Hey, Matt: If anybody can answer this one, it's you. Why do all ventriloquists’ dummies look alike? And why do they all look so goofy? — No Dummy, North Park

Thanks, pal. I’m not sure whether it’s the dummies or the goofs that made you think of me; either way. I’m certainly thrilled. My public image aside, I have to agree that most ventriloquists’ dummies do look a lot like Alfred E. Newman on day three of an amphetamine run. Definitely crazed and dorky. Enormous, square wooden heads; big, dazed-looking pop eyes; upper lips like the front end of a Volkswagen; bad hair, wide mouths, skinny red lips, weak chins, pneumatic cheekbones, pencil necks, eyebrows like flippers on a pinball machine, and fat Chiclet teeth (if they had any teeth at all).

This “traditional” figure (as vents call their dummies) was derived from the figures used on the vaudeville stage, where ventriloquism first captured the American entertainment imagination. Hardly anything was more of a laff riot around the turn of the century than a guy who could talk without moving his lips while flapping the chin of his dumb wooden doll. Features on the dummies were exaggerated to play to the back of the hall and also to draw attention away from the ventriloquist himself. But in the late 1930s, Edgar Bergen’s knee-sitter Charlie McCarthy solidified the traditional dummy look. The Mack brothers, Charles and Theodore, designed McCarthy, who was just a variation on the popular vaudeville figures designed decades earlier by another pair of brothers, the McElroys. Edgar (My Daughter Is Candice) Bergen actually made his name as a ventriloquist by appearing on radio variety shows. Not exactly a high-risk professional move. The fatuous ’50s saw another resurgence of ventrilomania, what with all the TV variety shows, basically, electronic vaudeville. Thirty years ago, rebel vent Shari Lewis was the breakthrough practitioner of her time, introducing the nontraditional soft figure, Lamb Chop. And today, ventriloquists’ dummies are more likely to look like escapees from Sesame Street than like Charlie McCarthy.