(Photo: Movieclips Trailer Vault/YouTube)īy the 18th century, ventriloquists were largely cleared of demonic dealings, and performers started drawing large European audiences. The titles in the trailer for the 1964 film Devil Doll.
An account of the possession of a boy in 1500s England declared baying hounds could be heard in his stomach. Sometimes even other animals found their way into the body. Disgruntled God-fearers believed mysterious voices emanated from any number of holes in the ventriloquists body-from the vagina to the nostrils. Barton was hanged Henry got married.Ĭhristianity took a particularly dim view of ventriloquism in the 16th century, when witch trials swept through Europe, believing it was “to be regarded a practice spawned by hell itself” according to Vox. But when she uttered a supposedly divine statement that King Henry VIII shouldn’t marry Anne Boleyn, her popularity plummeted with the audience that mattered most-the king. During the Reformation there was a nun named Elizabeth Barton in Kent whose ventriloquial prophecies were well-known. Not surprisingly, this didn’t mean great things for ventriloquists. (Thankfully, animal carcasses have been phased out of modern interpretations.)įast forward a couple centuries, and voices from nowhere became associated with another unpopular trend-possession and witchcraft, both circumstances that tended to come with a lot of vocal acrobatics. While not ventriloquism, it was an early use of a “dummy” to focus the audience’s attention on a miraculous voice. Not so captivated was the skeptical writer Lucian, who declared that the head was made from linen, mounted on a snake’s body, and made to speak through a tube operated by a concealed assistant. In 150 A.D., a man called Alexander of Abonoteichus captivated contemporaries when he discovered a talking serpent with a human head. (Photo: Library of Congress/LC-DIG-ggbain-03135) But back to the snake.Ī medium conducting a seance in 1900. Pioneering ventriloquist Valentine Vox writes in his book I Can See Your Lips Moving: The History and Art of Ventriloquism that the art’s roots lie in necromancy-the ancient art of allowing a dead person’s spirit to enter the necromancer and speak to the living.Īny way you slice it, the supernatural was involved. Engastrimyths plied their trade for entertainment (what could be more thrilling than demonic tummy talk?) and as divination. Writes Steven Connor in his book Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism, this was a mashup of “ en in, gaster the stomach, and mythos word or speech.” Basically, people believed engastrimyths had demons in their stomachs who belched words from their host’s mouths. in the Act of invoking the Spirit of a Deceased Person.” (Photo: Public Domain)īack then, ventriloquists were called “engastrimyths”. The heyday has passed, but there are still bold name acts like comedian Jeff Dunham, who tours the world and makes frequent television appearances, such as one on 30 Rock in which his character’s dummy calls Liz Lemon a “ferret-faced skank”.īut ventriloquism is not a modern art-it dates back to at least the classical Greece, when it really freaked people out.Īn engraving from 1806 showing ”Edwd Kelly, a Magician. It was a smash on the vaudeville stage and stayed popular through the 60s. Performers beguile audiences by making their voices seem like they belong to a dummy (or some other figure like Lamb Chop), chatting with their playful, inanimate partner. Ventriloquism-altering your voice to make it sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else-is familiar to most as entertainment. You might not think of Lamb Chop, the adorable hand puppet that graced the appendage of world-famous ventriloquist Shari Lewis or the impertinent wooden dummies operated by Edgar Bergan as having ancestors, but they do.
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