Who's The Dummy?

60 Minutes II and actress Candice Bergen, daughter of the legendary ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, recently attended the 29th Annual Vent Haven ConVENTion – "vent" being short for "ventriloquist."

Each year, almost 500 ventriloquists around the world travel to Fort Mitchell, Ky., to celebrate their art and share the tricks of their trade.

What are some of the common misconceptions about ventriloquists?

"Well, we have a lot of people that, you know, we had those shows, those Twilight Zone episode shows," says Mark Wade, a full-time ventriloquist and executive director of the convention. "I love 'The Twilight Zone,' but it always pictures the ventriloquist as somebody not quite based in reality."

One ventriloquist, Jeff Dunham, is just flat-out funny, whether it's with characters like "Peanuts" or "Jose the Jalapeno," or the crusty old "Walter."

Why doesn't he just do standup comedy?

"I happen to be a standup comedian who uses ventriloquism as the vehicle for comedy," says Dunham to Bergen, whose father, Edgar Bergen, and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy, made comedy on the radio.

"I think your father did that. He was such a brilliant writer. And the ventriloquism is very much secondary to the humor, to the jokes, to the characters."

The convention features seminars on "How to pronounce difficult letters without moving your lips," and hosts so-called "Open Mike" performances.

The focal point is the so-called dealer's rooms where every manner of ventriloquist material is sold: books, posters, how-to videos, signed photos, and especially new and very old dummies.

Tom Ladshaw has a premier collection, especially of Charlie McCarthy items. "I have a Charlie charm bracelet that has eight little tiny Charlie heads on it," he says. "And all of them, the mouths move. And that's the only one I've ever seen."

Bergen asked Ladshaw how much the bracelet was now worth.

"Why," asks Ladshaw. "Is it yours?"

"No, it wasn't," says Bergen. "I never saw it."

Ladshaw then asked Bergen if she had a Mortimer: "Those are very hard to find. The talking Mortimer?"

"I don't," says Bergen. "...Maybe we should talk later. … I've got some things at home." Among the highlights of this visit was a trip to the Vent Haven Museum several miles from the convention site, for a tour with curator Lisa Sweasy. This place is to ventriloquists what Cooperstown is to baseball fans. It was like home sweet home.

Here, silence isn't just golden; it's eternal. These figures will never perform again, by decree of the museum's founder, William Shakespeare Berger, a Cincinnati businessman. He loved the craft so much that he turned his house and adjoining cottages into a kind of permanent nursing home for figures abandoned by their owners through death or retirement.

"It's a little creepy," Bergen tells Sweasy. "I mean, I know you love it here, but even for me, like this guy…and that guy with the top hat is…the stare… It's, I guess, it's the corpse-like quality before they're being manipulated by the ventriloquist."

"They are inanimate objects, but at some point, you get suckered into believing they're alive," says Sweasy. "And so now, it's still the idea of, is it staring at me? Is it looking at me when you know it's not. But it's a wonderful compliment actually to talented ventriloquists that you bought in. So it's a good thing."

"OK, all right," says Bergen. "I feel better now."

Sweasy then takes Bergen on a tour of the Bergen memorabilia.

"Now, the story goes, of course, that it was Walt Disney who told Edgar Bergen that the money wasn't in the performances, the money was in the merchandise," says Sweasy. "And that Charlie McCarthy was only the second character in American history that was copyrighted, that Mickey Mouse was first and then Charlie McCarthy."

"I have the salt and pepper shakers," says Bergen.

"Do you have the Charlie McCarthy with the arrow?" asks Sweasy.

"Yes, I do," says Bergen.

"We don't have that," says Sweasy. "We just have Mortimer with the apple."

"Yes, I have Charlie McCarthy with the apple somewhere, they were lamps," says Bergen. "We had them made into lamps. I also have a lot of spoons."

Next, Bergen notices the museum has Farful, who along with his creator, Jimmy Nelson, are legends in the vent world. That stuffed dog sold a lot of Nestle chocolate decades ago, when many people believed ventriloquism was dead.

But Nelson says he doesn't think vents will be out of business any time soon: "I think the fact that everybody loves to believe. Everybody's a believer. We love puppets. We love ventriloquist figures because we know they're not real."

"But we like to believe we are," says Farful.

"That's right," says Nelson. "That's true. It's a little kid in all of us."