Antiques: Not all dummies are human

These days there are a lot of dummies out there. Sad to say, too many of them are human.

However, there was a time when the most popular dummies were made out of wood. Those were ventriloquist dummies, half as tall as their human handlers and a critical element to some of the funniest slapstick acts of the last century.

As an antique gallery, we love oddities and items that will bring back warm memories, and we rarely see professional quality entertainment dummies like the ones we have right now. Read on for their stories and come in and take a look. They'll put a smile on your face even without saying a single word.

Ventriloquism itself is the art of adjusting or "throwing" one's voice such that it appears to be coming from somewhere else. The effect is caused by combining a higher than normal pitch with a slower than normal escape of breath. To complete the illusion, the lips and mouth move as little as possible. Much practice is required to do this convincingly, but there have been numerous performers over the years that have built entire acts on this rather strange expertise. When combined with a goofy looking dummy that delivers the punch lines to a funny routine, the results can be hysterical.

While modern ventriloquist acts are laced with humor, the origins of the practice are somewhat more sinister. During the Middle Ages, ventriloquism was a dark art, thought to be a means by which the living could communicate with the dead. This view faded over time, and by the 19th century ventriloquist stage acts were often paired with magicians and became increasingly popular. Some ventriloquists even utilized entire families of dummies with different voices and accents for each.

Perhaps the best known of all such acts was Edgar Bergen and his sidekick Charlie McCarthy. The two were inseparable as they traveled the world and developed an international following. Charlie was well made from wood and plastic with human hair, glass eyes, leather shoes and a trademark monocle.

In addition to their personal appearances, Bergen and McCarthy had a highly successful radio show from 1937-1956, a rather odd medium given the visual nature of their act. Charlie's shtick was rife with zingers, often so barbed or suggestive that the standards of the day would have prevented a human from uttering the same lines. Nonetheless, it seems a dummy could get away with saying almost anything.

And so it is today that several of these period dummies have wound up here in Palm Springs. We don't have Charlie but ours are equal in function and quality. The eyes and jaws move through a series of small levers in back, and the heads swivel from side to side to create a somewhat creepy human-like effect. Each comes with an assortment of clothing and accessories, and it must have been quite a sight to watch the performer frantically changing the clothes of his dummy between sets.

There are still a few practitioners of ventriloquy out there, and you can be one too. All you need is a little buddy made of wood.

Mike Rivkin and his wife, Linda, are longtime residents of Rancho Mirage. For many years, he was an award-winning catalogue publisher and has authored seven books, along with countless articles. Now, he's the owner of Antique Galleries of Palm Springs. His antiques column appears Sundays in The Desert Sun. Want to send Mike a question about antiques? Drop him a line at info@silverfishpress.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Antiques: Not all dummies are human