A Museum In Kentucky Founded By William Shakespeare Berger Which Is Home To Over 875 Ventriloquist Dummies
There's a building in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky with over 875 ventriloquist dummies. More than 1,750 eyes…watching…following. This is the visage that awaits visitors to the Vent Haven Museum.
“What does it take to perceive that something is alive?” asks curator Lisa Sweasy. “The whole point of ventriloquism is for the audience to perceive the dummy as alive. The more [an item] resembles an actual human within a 3D space, the more likely you are to believe you are being looked at. People can be really put off by that. But it's actually a compliment to the figure maker that you think this inanimate object is alive.”
This illusion of life is often called “the valley of the uncanny”.
Sweasy has been with the Vent Haven Museum for over 17 years. The ventriloquist dummies don't scare her. She knows that the portrayal of similar dummies in horror movies and scary television shows are not a true reflection on the art form of ventriloquism. In fact, she even finds some of the dummies cute.
Over the years Sweasy has learned almost everything there is to know about the life of William Shakespeare Berger – who passed in 1972 at 94 years old. He was the founder of this collection. She's written a biography about Berger's life and read thousands of letters written by the man himself, to family, friends, business partners and famous ventriloquists around the world.
“He was just a remarkable human being,” she said. “I'm kind of a fan of his. A lot of people don't know what was going on behind the scenes of this collection.”
Sweasy notes the time period that Berger lived in included the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War... He started in the mail room of the Cambridge Tile Manufacturing company in Cincinnati, sweeping the floors. He rose up to become the president of the company, “working like a dog.” He wrote and received over 300 letters a week, writing to thousands of people.
He married twice. The first time he was around 19 years old and the couple had two children. The second son died of meningitus at one year old. A year later his wife died of tuburculosis in 1904. He was married for 62 years to his second wife. She passed away of old age before him.
He had 18 inches of his large intestine removed and two surgeries for cancerous growths in 1947, when he was 69. It nearly killed him. He had serious vision problems, neurological issues. At the time of his death, at 94, his cancer had returned and there was nothing anybody could do. As Sweasy put it: “He was put through the ringer.”
He was a visionary, according to Sweasy. All the while he was assembling this massive collection. And when he died, he left over 500 ventriloquist dummies in his name having already established the Vent Haven Museum in the late 1940s.
It was actually his career with the Cambridge Tile Manufacturing company that started his obsessive dummy collecting. While traveling to New York, Berger saw a dummy in a shop and purchased it in 1910. He brought it to his wife who thought nothing special of it. After that, he put the dummy away for 15 years, not having any time at that point is his life to pursue any hobbies.
In 1931, Berger started buying more dummies, as well as performing ventriloquism locally at churches and Mason functions. He wasn't a professional. In fact, Sweasy said, he wasn't very good…at all. But in the 1930s, ventriloquism was like pop music. It was a very prevalent art form.
“He was a collector at heart,” said Sweasy. “After the first five dummies it spiraled. His original plan was to give everything to his grandson, but he died in 1950 at the age of 24 of a brain aneurysm while attending college. For ten years, [Berger] had no plan. He just kept collecting.”
His psychological tendencies were apparent from childhood, Berger’s father was a German Shakespearean actor [as evidenced in the naming of his son] and William loved the circus as a child. Sweasy relates an unconfirmed legend that Berger met The Great Lester, a famous ventriloquist during that time period, a noted teacher of the art of ventriloquism. But after reading thousands of pieces of correspondence between Berger and various other people, Sweasy came to the conclusion that Berger was just a born collector. If it wasn't dummies, it would have been something else.
In the early 1960s, Berger's attorney suggested that he turn his collection into a type of foundation…a nonprofit to protect his legacy. Berger ended up serving as the president of the Vent Haven Museum for nine years, before passing away in 1972.
The Vent Haven Museum is located where Berger's house once was. The dummies are not behind glass cases. They're all out in the open air inside the structure. Visitors can get right up close and look at the dummies on display, something that vividly stands out about the museum.
“The dummies [protected] here represent the careers of 100s of people,” explains Sweasy. “We've got dummies that date to the 1880s. [But] we also have a very large exhibit on Jeff Dunham, featuring retired dummies from his tours. There is no gap in the history of ventriloquism. It's all here. It's an amazing collection. We have 873 dummies now. And we still get 5-10 [new arrivals] every year.”
Ventriloquism has been around for hundreds of years but is commonly credited to Fred Russel (1862-1957), “as far as a guy with a dummy on his knee.”
The examination of ventriloquism displayed at the museum is also interesting from an educational and psychological point of view. “If you think about the development of children, children [engage] at some point in puppeteering. They watch The Muppets. They have socks on their hands. [But] for some people, it stays with them [and becomes part of their lives]. For a long period of time there were no ventriloquists on television, especially when sitcoms took over. America's Got Talent brought it back. A ventriloquist [Paul Zerdin] won [just] this past year. Sometimes people appreciate that there's no technology involved. A person has to [actively] practice these skills…lip control..great material…great figure manipulation. They have to be funny [with] a great stage presence. There's a lot going on.”
Seasy's favorite dummy in the collection is known as Stoney Broke. He's not popular, she says, and he has no historical significance. But she finds him to be very cute, “with the sweetest face in the whole collection.”
Some other popular puppets in the collection include ones from Terry Fator, a ventriloquist who won America's Got Talent in 2007. Jeff Dunham also physically visits the Vent Haven Museum each year and even makes repairs on some of the dummies there. Sweasy credits Dunham with making ventriloquism popular among young people, who may not otherwise visit the museum. The collection also includes the original Frank Bryon Jr. [the Great Lester's dummy].
“I knew nothing [about this sector] when I started,” admits Sweasy. “It's [all] been a learning experience for me. I'm not a ventriloquist. Berger didn't want a ventriloquist working here. He promised people that the dummies wouldn't be used. I [simply] clean them [and] I can mechanically move some of them. But he doesn't want people to pick them up and give them a new voice or character.” That beauty is lost in the corridors of history but visitors can see the reflection of these dummies’ past lives.
Olivia Richman
A graduate of East Connecticut State University in Journalism, Olivia has written for Stonebridge Press & Antiques Marketplace among others. She enjoys writing, running and video games.
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