Wednesday, April 30, 2003 | 8:29 a.m.
Earl is a well-dressed, flirtatious old man with a penchant for gourmet food, ogling young women and playing bingo.
Bushy eyebrows, liver spots and baldness aside, his charm exceeds his curmudgeonly ways.
Daphne DuMmay is a chesty blonde. She's sassy. She's young. She's cheeky. The aspiring actress/model/singer knows how to flirt and appreciates any glance she can get even from Earl.
"I always say, 'If you got it, flaunt it,'" DuMmay says in an overconfident, high-pitched voice.
But Earl and Daphne would never be. DuMmay had nothing for him, other than a glance at her goods and a smile he'd never forget.
They were two ships passing in the night, a moment eclipsed by the chatter around them: dummies cruising dummies; wooden strangers conversing with wooden strangers while their cohorts talked shop.
At this mixer, everyone had a story. Everyone had a beginning. Their presence alone proved the art of ventriloquism wouldn't have an ending.
"It's certainly not an endangered species as everyone thinks it is," said Valentine Vox, director of Vegas Ventriloquist Festival 2003, held over the weekend at Imperial Palace.
"It's very healthy. It's just that we don't have Ed Sullivan anymore."
In fact, Valentine said, "It's better than it's ever been, for a simple reason: There are more places to do ventriloquism ... Before, you had vaudeville, and that's all you had."
The ancient art, mastered by Edgar Bergen and his little friends, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, has indeed survived and evolved though the elegance has somewhat vanished.
Cruise lines and corporate events are said to be a lucrative market for ventriloquists. Classrooms and birthday parties keep others employed. Comedy clubs and Las Vegas shows draw "vents" and their "mannequin Americans."
"You do a cruise line, you're going to get $1,000 a week," said Kimberly Yeager, an Ohio ventriloquist with Creative Safety Products, a company that uses ventriloquism in safety and anti-drug programs at elementary schools. "Or you could get up to $500 working a corporate event."
Yeager was among the more than 200 ventriloquists who attended the festival, which honored Bergen, who would have been 100 this year.
Participants traveled from as far as Switzerland, England and Israel.
They convened to share trade secrets, buy memorabilia and learn new techniques. There were workshops, dealer shows and open-mike performances.
But the icing on the three-tiered cake was a Sunday-morning wedding between longtime professional ventriloquist Vox and fellow ventriloquist Eyvonne Dee Carter.
"I've never been in a wedding that's had a dragon, a lamb, two dogs and a baby," pastor Sheila Loosley said before the procession began. Her puppet dog, Digger, at her side was to accompany the ceremony.
It was a first for many, even those chuckling in the crowd with formally attired dummies sitting on their laps.
Among the wedding party were Jeorge, Vox's dummy of 30 years, Twyla, Carter's baby dummy, Scorch, a green dragon in a tux who belonged to best man Ronn Lucas, and Lamb Chop, who belonged to maid of honor Mallory Lewis -- daughter of late puppeteer Shari Lewis.
Daphne DuMmay and her ventriloquist owner, 17-year-old Jessica Phillips (aka Miss Ventura County 2003), were bridesmaids. Buddy Big Mountain and Windel served as head ushers.
"I am an ultimate showman," the dapper Vox said two days before the ceremony. "I thought, 'If we're going to do this, we're going to do this right. It's quite an opportunity.' "
In the true spirit of ventriloquism, when the pastor asked if anyone objected to the matrimony, the room was rattled by jeers from the mouthy figures.
That was to be expected. The benefit of ventriloquism is that the dummy can say what he or she wants.
"It's very important for the ventriloquist and the dummy to have a strong point of view," Tom Padavano, a comedy writer, told a crowd of ventriloquists during a morning workshop.
"The more you know about your event figure, the more material you can come up with. When you relate to your event figure, you want conflict ... They have to have a passion about them."
DuMmay's passion? Her beauty, of course.
"Hey, you know what I say, 'If you got it, flaunt it,' " she repeats among crowds. "They can't hate me because I'm beautiful."
Earl, who belongs to 57-year-old Terry Robinson of Sacramento, Calif., spews age-related jokes and scoffs at how his wife keeps him on a short leash.
As Vox explains, "The figure gets away with saying things. He can be your sword as well as your bane."
Teaching act
But for some of the tight- lipped performers, ventriloquism is more than just laughs. It's a way to mediate, tell stories and educate.
"The feeling that laughter could aid in healing is what motivated me at the beginning of my practice," says Daniala Hadasy, who uses her trilingual (English, Hebrew, French) alien puppet, Gigi, and French dancer puppet, Shully, in her homeland of Israel to work as mediators with children and severely injured soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces.
"Israel is a country with a history of much suffering. It is a well-known fact that in the last few years we've had a great number of wounded and invalids ... Even those patients who hardly ever spoke communicated with him through hand gestures."
But, Hadasy said, ventriloquism isn't exactly flourishing in Israel. She claims there are only two ventriloquists working in all of Israel, and has to explain ventriloquism history dating back to Biblical times before each presentation.
"They like it very much," she said. "They know nothing about it. Even the older people, they don't know."
Nobody was in the dark at the festival. Bergen, Paul Winchell and Shari Lewis were common talk among the professional and amateur ventriloquists who said as young children they were inspired by the masters.
Many couldn't get in line fast enough to have their photo taken with Lewis, an Emmy-award-winning writer and producer who began performing with Lamb Chop after her mother died.
"It's an honor," Lewis said, referring to carrying the Lamb Chop torch her mother created. "I got to really understand what a wonderful person she was. She felt a great responsibility to always behave in such a fashion to be an educator and an inspiration."
Those who began their careers with puppets, such as Yeager, who works as a ventriloquist despite having a master's degree in marriage and family therapy, said Lewis was the teacher they never met.
"She was never just one of the guys," Yeager said, referring to the early male-dominated industry.
As a professional ventriloquist, however, Yeager has to be one of the guys. Especially when slipping on a character named Uncle Vinnie.
"As soon as you put the character in your hand, it's like another personality comes out," Yeager said. "It's amazing you never knew you had it in you."
In fact, she added, "I can never find a voice until I have a dummy in my hand."
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