POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

Notes

This ventriloquist dummy head was a gift of the National Trust of Australia, NSW, in 1999. Two lauded ventriloquists from the nineteenth century include the French performer Alexandre Vattemare, who performed across Europe in the 1820s, and the English performer William Edward Love, who performed from the 1830s to the 1850s (1). Neither performer seemed to use dummies, however, instead 'throwing' their voice to different areas of the stage to sound as if coming from a chimney, a cellar under the floor, or from within a box or suitcase. The English ventriloquist, Charles Mathews, used a dummy in his performance 'At Home' in 1818. In the scene 'Lecture on Ventriloquy', the dummy was a child, seated on the ventriloquist's lap in conversation with a French valet named Labbre (the ventriloquist) (1). The motif of the child, or voice, from inside a box is also often used in ventriloquism, and is iconic when we see the ventriloquist dummy being taken from, or returned to, a box or suitcase, and even heard speaking from within (1). This ventriloquist dummy is similar in design to a ventriloquist dummy known as Charlie MacCarthy. Edgar Bergen, an American ventriloquist, performed with Charlie MacCarthy from the 1930s to the 1950s. It is perhaps surprising that Edgar Bergen was a radio ventriloquist, although the dummy, Charlie MacCarthy, was featured in newspapers, comics and magazines, and Edgar Bergen also appeared with the dummy in a number of films, so that the dummy was well-known to audiences (1). A common theme of ventriloquist acts with dummies is violence for comedy purposes, often because the dummy is envisioned as a disobedient or cheeky boy. There is also a recurrent theme of performing surgery, including dental surgery, in ventriloquist acts. In the film 'Charlie MacCarthy, Detective' (1939), Edgar Bergen has a surgical operation performed on Charlie MacCarthy to remove a bullet from his stomach (1).