Word: ventriloquist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...stories linked by an antique shop whose objects were cursed and sold to unsuspecting customers. Each week three continuing characters try to retrieve one of the objects before it wreaks its supernatural havoc. That serviceable premise provides the excuse for segments that range from old horror chestnuts (the ventriloquist controlled by his dummy) to spooky original tales (two abused children lure playmates into an evil playhouse...
What it was was the Twelfth Annual Ventriloquist Convention. They hold it in Fort Mitchell because it is the home of the Vent Haven Museum, said to house the largest collection of ventriloquist-related paraphernalia in this or any other hemisphere. The museum was founded by William Shakespeare Berger, a wealthy businessman and amateur ventriloquist who collected dummies from 1916 until his death in 1972. In one room of the museum, scores of dummies sit on folding metal chairs. The effect, on anyone who came along in the high celebrity days of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy and Paul Winchell...
...wait! Historically -- one learns just in the nick of time -- balance is what nearly every account of this yearly meeting has begged. It is not all weirdness going down. It is, in the words of Dale Brown, a ventriloquist from Waukesha, Wis., "a family affair aimed at educating young and amateur ventriloquists, promoting the art of ventriloquism, and providing a spotlight for some of the country's best-known professionals." Further, according to Brown and other organizers of the event, the vents (for that is what they call one another) are a little ticked off at being picked...
...following speaker, Bob Isaacson, talked about basic ventriloquism, going over the diaphragm and the hard palate, the teeth and the tongue. You can say the letter d without moving your lips, but you cannot say the letter b. Nearly anyone could be a ventriloquist if one's dummy talked like this: "How 'dout a dottle of deer?" Substituting a barely perceptible th sound, Isaacson said "Boston baked beans" without moving his lips, and you could have sworn you heard the b's. People scribbled...
...went. There were shows at night, and on Saturday morning there was a roast of Ronn Lucas, who works out of Las Vegas, has done the Johnny Carson show and was named Ventriloquist of the Year at the convention. Sharp one- liners fell like hatchets. Lucas at one point categorized one of his roasters as "a good example of what happens when a fetus does not get enough oxygen." All good fun, and afterward a group photograph was taken of everyone and every dummy. It made for a particularly arresting tableau...