The art of ‘throwing one’s voice’ is something most of us have seen. From Edgar Bergen to Jeff Dunham, there have been many excellent ventriloquists over the ages. Darci Lynne is one of the best. Here she is, age 12, on AGT…which she eventually dominated, winning the million dollar first prize, youngest contestant ever to do so:
When I was a young lad I read, most likely in the “Doc Savage” books, about ventriloquism. The hero could throw his voice to make it appear up on the roof, down a hallway, in the basement, or outside if the ‘thrower’ wanted to give a false impression to the persons hearing the voice. Impressible child that I was, I believed this to be possible. I might have been eight, ten, or so. So…
Got library books. Studied it. Learned how to do it. Became a ventriloquist. And, to my intense disgust, learned that the authors telling about ‘throwing the voice’ had no idea of its limitations. For example, if I am in the kitchen and you’re 20 feet away in another room, I cannot make you think my voice is on the other side of you, or outdoors, or anything like that. I have to give you MISDIRECTION that you can see. And the sound particles always come from me, not from behind you or on the roof, etc. So if you’re in the same room as me you’ll be able to tell, if you ignore the misdirection, that I’m the sole sound source. It pissed me off when I was young that I’d been fed blather from whatever author was dishing it out. One loses faith in writers that way.
A ventriloquist with a dummy moves the critter’s mouth to emulate talking, while the ventriloquist keeps his lips from moving while speaking in the dummy’s tone of voice. The moving head and mouth of the dummy is the misdirection. I recently saw Jeff Dunham with Walter on his knee give the impression of someone calling to them from another room. In this case the misdirection was Jeff and Walter looking over Jeff’s shoulder to the far distance, but the sound came from Jeff. Because it was a video there was no way to establish that the sound waves were actually coming from Jeff, but if you were in the same room you’d be able to tell.
Enter Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage, and author of most of those books. Many times this fellow has his heroes ‘throw the voice’ to save the day. Doc throws it down a mine shaft to make the bad guys guarding the entry to the mine think they got an order from someone inside the mine. Any good? NOPE!
Monk has his pig talk to the pretty girls who think the sound is coming from the pig when there’s no misdirection. Monk doesn’t have his hand inside the pig’s back for head and mouth movements. Any good? NOPE.
So this is another dunning notice against my favorite imaginative-action author. He does get the majority of his info right, and I have to wonder how he was able to research so much stuff, be it UFOs, anti-gravity, electronics, etc., in 1935.
yes i remember seeing this. she was amazing. does’nt surprise me about meta-physical forms providing limits. there are no limits! we, as humans, use technology when we could be using telepathy without the plane crashes!