I’m imagining a routine in which the dummy is gigantic, and the ventriloquist sits on its lap. Sort of role reversal. It sounds kind of obvious, but I’ve never seen it.
I kind of think it was done, but the dummy was just a large person. Maybe just a comedy act with no real ventriloquizing.
Several ventriloquists use a remote control mask worn by a volunteer from the audience to turn them into a ‘dummy’ for their act. So a smaller ventriloquist could easily sit on the lap of an actual person or large dummy and operate it that way. The point here, at least I think you mean it is the point, is the dummy would be performing the ventriloquist’s role. Hard to believe it’s never been done one way or another.
Like in this Mad Magazine comic?
There’s a Twilight Zonee episode that kind of fits; the ventriloquist and doll trade places.
I am guessing that the reason you have never seen it is, it would be very difficult for the ventriloquist to make such a large dummy’s mouth move while making it talk at the same time.
Packing up a dummy into a special suitcase isn’t much of a chore, nor is taking it to a gig.
Imaging a dummy so large that an adult human being could sit on its lap, and yet also stiff and stable enough that an adult human being could sit on its lap. Imagine the machinery that would have to be in it and the amount of set-up it would take.
It could work as a one-time joke, maybe on a tv show with a very large budget, but who would want to travel with that act?
It might have to be inflatable. I don’t know how you’d get its mouth to move.
The size is hardly insurmountable when you consider Galligher had (iirc) a chair shaped trampoline and a pedal airship. Making the mouth and eyes move would be trivial.
The idea of the nominal full-sized “ventriloquist” actually being the dummy and the nominal dummy actually being a shjort person who is the ventriloquist has been done at least three times on 1950s -1960s television. The best of these was arguably on Alfred Hitchcock presents, in which Billy Barty played the actual ventriloquist (who masqueraded as the dummy). The episode has a very young William Shatner in it. The episode was called “The Glass Eye”, and it aired on October 6, 1957. It has another twist in it besides the ventriloquist/dummy switcheroo, which is why it gets my vote
as I said, there are at least two more examples.
That said, I don’t know of a case where the dummy is gigantic and the ventriloquist is normal-sized.
I saw Raymond Burr being the ventriloquist (who at the end of the sketch was actually the dummy) on some variety show (possibly Flip or Sonny & Cher). I don’t recall who played the “fake” dummy.
Charles and Buddy did a similar routine on an episode of Charles in Charge. (At one point, Charles as the ventriloquist started drinking a glass of water, and Buddy as the dummy opened his mouth to sing….only for water to pour out of Buddy’s mouth.)
Remote control ventriloquist mask. See here.
Sounds like Supermarionation. Or SUPERmarioNATION
The prelude to SuperMarioGalaxy.
An episode of the 2000s Batman cartoon had the Ventriloquist and Scarface, with Scarface building a giant robot version of himself (see pic here). There’s also a Morecambe & Wise bit along these lines, which you can see on the Youtube.
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