by Jeff Dunham
I was happy with what I would watch on videotape. But once again, I began to realize that there was nothing outstanding or truly memorable about Ollie. He was simple in character, complicated in usage, but like Archie, he was forgettable as a real personality. Was it the dummy, or was it the jokes and material that were lacking?
By the fall of 1984, I knew I wasn’t going to graduate in four years. I didn’t take many classes the semester I was on radio, plus I’d changed my degree so I was a few credits behind on graduation requirements. Oh, and that pesky foreign freakin’ language thing… that had slowed things down a bit too. But soon an even bigger diversion came along very unexpectedly: the allure of a Broadway show. Wait… Broadway? You mean like the New York City kind of Broadway show? For who? A ventriloquist? Yeah, sure.
Bubba J.: How much older does New York have to be before it’s Used York?
Walter: Bubba J., shut up.
Bubba J.: Previously Owned York?
Walter: Holy crap.
Bubba J.: Maybe if you combine it with New Jersey it’s Double Wide York.
In the fall of 1984, some wacky, unpredicted planets had aligned and I found myself onstage at a comedy club in New York City auditioning for one of the producers of a Broadway show called Sugar Babies. From 1979 to 1982, the production had been a huge hit on Broadway. Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller were the leads, and in addition to the singing and dancing chorus line of girls, there were a few old men second bananas doing goofy burlesque sketches, plus there was a variety act. Juggler and comedian Michael Davis had been on Broadway with the show, but he had left, and now they were in the middle of the “bus and truck” version of the run, doing cities week by week, from coast to coast. They had gone through a few other variety acts after Michael, and were now looking for someone else to fill the spot. I went onstage and tried my best to fit the part of an old-time variety act, something I’d been desperately trying NOT to look like for quite a while.
I did a decent show and after a couple of introductions and hand-shakes, I was back at Baylor. I had a new girlfriend named Susan, and we were having loads of fun. Blond, blue-eyed, petite, and spunky, Susan was a sorority girl, and I couldn’t have been more anti-Greek. My cousin Randy and I joked that our fraternity was called “Looney Ate a Pie.”
Susan and I had been going out for a few weeks when I came back to my apartment to find a message on the answering machine asking me to call back about Sugar Babies. By then I had learned not get excited about any gig, so I had almost forgotten about it. I called back and sure enough, they wanted me in the show. And in three days! They only needed me for the month of December, but still…
There was no turning this gig down. How long had it been, and how long would it be again before a ventriloquist was utilized in a Broadway show? And to be on the road with Mickey Rooney!? Was I nuts?
Sugar Babies was touring to one city per week in North America, and I started with them in Toronto. The gig couldn’t have been simpler. We did seven shows a week, with two on Wednesdays and Sundays. I got paid $1,800 per week, plus a per diem for meals and hotel. That was a boatload of money for a college kid in 1984.
I had a twelve-minute spot between a sketch and a musical number where I did my regular act, but they let me customize it a bit and make jokes about whatever town we were in, plus yucks about Mickey Rooney. Mickey was really short, plus he was on his eighth marriage. So that made for some good jokes between the characters and me.
Up to this point, I had been living a fairly sheltered life in the middle of the Bible Belt, usually performing for Kiwanis Club banquets, talent shows, and Sunday school groups. The Real World of show business was about to hit me square in the face. Though a few of the cast and crew would eventually become like family to me, I hadn’t seen or been a part of a group of folks like this… ever.
Where I was from, finding an innocent girl, or at least a not overtly promiscuous one to go out with, wasn’t difficult. And homosexuality? At Baylor at that time, and in the late 70s at my high school, being gay was something that was fairly hush-hush. I was in for some eye-openers.
Most of the cast was made up of fifteen or so show girls (the Sugar Babies!), who wore skimpy outfits designed from the burlesque era, and they danced and sang and made the stage a beautiful and wonderful-smelling place.
Was I tempted to chase after these women? They were all tall and beautiful and in unbelievable shape! So?
Well, most of them scared me to death. Most of the girls were older than me, they smoked, drank, a few did drugs, and a couple of them admitted to having had hundreds of sexual partners. Conversely, here I was, twenty-two years old, a ventriloquist, I attended a big Baptist university, and I didn’t drink. I was from Texas for God’s sake, and I was in the middle of a serious relationship with a girl who was saving herself until marriage. I was the LAST guy any of them would have paid any attention to. So the answer is no, I didn’t chase any of them. Instead, I made friends.
Two of the chorus guys, Dale and Gary, were an outwardly gay couple, something I had never been around. They were the nicest guys in the world, and Dale made me LAUGH. For no reason in the dressing room, he would belt out in a beautiful tenor voice in perfect pitch and tone, the first lines of some show tune or even “The Star Spangled Banner”… but he would purposefully hit the last note just flat enough to make one of your eyes squint shut and your teeth grind together… and he would do it just as loud and as proudly as could be. I would crack up every single time.
This was the middle 80s, when AIDS was scaring the hell out of everyone. My poor mother would send me article after article clipped from newspaper and magazines warning of the dangers of AIDS, convinced I was going to catch it from a toilet seat or simply by sitting too close to homosexuals. It was maddening, but sweet in a motherly way.
I made two really good friends in the show, Barry Woodruff and Susie Nelson. Later, Millene Michel would join us and we would be a great foursome touring the country and laughing our asses off for many months.
Walter: I don’t know if going from talking about AIDS to being “a great foursome” was the best way to word the last few sentences.
Jeff: Not that kind of foursome.
Walter: Then just say “the four of us.”
The most sobering moment of the run came, however, about four or five nights into my first week when Mickey summoned me into his dressing room. By then I had tweaked a few jokes and bits here and there to appeal to our older audience, so I was getting pretty good applause. I walked into Mickey’s dressing room and he turned to look at me squarely, never losing eye contact. He was very short, so he had to look up at me, but he was not a small presence. He was truly a genius on the verge of insanity, and his energy and intensity were unmatched by any person I’d ever met before then or since. He pointed his finger at me and said, “You’re getting some good laughs out there, but remember one thing.”
“Yes, sir?” I said.
Mickey Rooney replied, “The only reason you’re here is so I can change clothes. Don’t forget that.”
“Yes, sir,” twenty-two-year-old me said. As I walked out of his room, it took a minute or so to register exactly what the little legend had just growled to me. He had done his best to put me in my place. There was a fine line between sucking up to Mickey and simply playing ball with him, but I figured one dressing-down by the incredibly talented, legendary genius nutball was almost an honor.
As for the rest of the time, I quickly learned that Mickey had an opinion about everything. To carry on a “conversation” was to pretty much nod your head and agree with him because he never shut off. Was there wisdom in what he said? Maybe there were a few good tips here and there, but I really don’t know, because everything came out so fast, I couldn’t keep up.
I did my three weeks with the show and did pretty well. I went back to Baylor after Christmas break and started an entirely new set of classes. But I missed Sugar Babies.
One evening in the first days of
January I tracked down Barry. He was at the hotel where the cast was housed for that week, and we talked about nothing for a bit, then I asked him who had taken my place. He told me no one had and that I was missed.
“Missed?” I said, “Well then why don’t they put me back in?”
“From what I’ve heard, they thought you wanted stay at school,” Barry replied.
“What?” I exclaimed, “I can do that any time! I’d much rather be in the show and come back to college when the run is over!”
“Really?” he asked. “Then I’ll tell them!”
And it was as simple as that. A quick conversation between friends, and I was back in the show. A week later I started one of the best years of my life. We traveled for twelve months, with very little time off, working a different town every week. It was work, work, work, and it was a blast. Barry and I became best friends and he helped me with my act immensely. He would give his opinion of what did or didn’t work, and we would discuss pacing and timing and if I should blame the audience or myself for the success or a flop.
That year was also the year when I became more acquainted with Verna Finly, the woman who would eventually build Peanut. I had purchased a goofy monkey puppet from Verna at the convention a year earlier. Verna used soft materials such as cloth and foam, applying construction techniques similar to the Muppets. As Verna would explain to me many years later, it’s difficult to find a puppet that both is constructed well from a practical standpoint, but also looks great. Verna could do both beautifully.
I will never forget picking up that monkey in the dealers room at the convention and it coming to life in my hands. The beauty of her work, plus whatever “thing” it was inside me that made a connection with that particular figure made some sort of magic happen. As wacky as it sounds, that’s how it works: In the same way a guitarist has a feeling or “relationship” with his instrument, or a racecar driver feels his machine, that’s the same kind of relationship a good ventriloquist has with the dummy. The only difference is, the dummy talks back, and then it starts to get creepy.
Peanut: No, I think this whole thing started getting creepy on page 2.
I know the dummies aren’t alive, but they certainly live in my consciousness. And that’s why I say, sometimes when I pick up a character, it speaks and lives more easily than others. I will walk around at the convention and experiment with dummies in the room. Some “speak to me,” others do not. There’s a weird synergy there, but ask a rock and roll guy about his bass or his guitar.… You’ll get a similar answer.
The monkey became part of the act in Sugar Babies. Throughout the year, I was given freedom to experiment. Barry and I would talk about ideas, and then I would call Verna and have her create whatever harebrained puppet I had thought up. Some were good, others horrible. I was simply trying to take the act to the next level, and I was still searching for that defining, perfect main sidekick. I wanted to get giant laughs, big applause, and the best reviews of anything or anyone else in the show. I wanted to compete with a circus-act-death-defying juggler, and with Mickey Rooney.
Did I succeed? Of course not. I got good reviews in some cities, and average ones in others. But the audiences were older, and Mickey was their guy. With a jalapeño on a stick, in Tucson, AZ, I killed. In Westbury, NY, I died all seven shows. In New York, the audiences were older and Jewish, and I was young and pure goyim. Every night in New York when the curtain went down, I wondered if I would be on a plane the next day, heading back to Texas.
What was the problem? This was true show business. The audience had paid good money to see a great show. I was still learning my own style of comedy and how to write for myself, and I had not yet garnered my own audience, nor did I have the main character that would define my act and remain memorable.
I realized not long after the run that though I dropped out of college for an entire year, 1985 on the road with Sugar Babies was the best education, but for most of that year I wasn’t truly happy with my act. I knew it could be better and I knew the laughs could be bigger. Struggle and the failures were my teachers. They made me want to be my best, and I wasn’t there yet.
CHAPTER FOUR
Birth of an Old Fart
At the end of 1985, Sugar Babies went dark for the holidays and I headed back to college to finish my degree. My goal was to graduate at the end of 1986 and it almost didn’t happen. By the middle of the fall semester, I wasn’t passing a single subject. I broke up with my girlfriend Susan, lost touch with many friends, and I’d lost a lot of weight. My parents had no idea what was going on. Was I doing too many shows? Was it depression? Women? Was I sick? On drugs? Addicted to porn?
None of the above. It was all about helicopters.
It had started six years before, in the summer of 1980, when I spotted a radio controlled helicopter. In those days, radio controlled airplanes were plentiful, and really serious hobbyists spent hundreds of hours and sometimes thousands of dollars building their little crafts. However, technology was just emerging for model rotorcraft. I’d never seen one before, and as the four-foot-long machine lifted off the parking lot and settled into a five-foot perfect hover, I was mesmerized. After watching it fly for a few minutes, I marched straight into the hobby store and spent about $1,000 on a kit, engine, radio, and everything else I needed to get started. Two weeks later, I’d built the thing and gone through multiple sets of blades and parts just trying to learn to hover. A few months later, and I could hover the $2,000 machine upside down, an inch off the pavement. Flash forward six years. In the spring of 1986, I was out in an open field not far from the Baylor campus, flying one of my model helicopters. A guy who was obviously not a Baylor student and who looked to be about my age stopped to watch the aerobatics. He was wearing a baseball cap that looked like it had been used to clean the counter at a Dairy Queen. His T-shirt and jeans were smeared with God knows what; and he drove an old blue Datsun pickup that was about as clean as his hat. He stood at a respectable distance until I landed and then walked over for a chat. People were always stopping to watch the flying and ask questions, so I tried to be as polite as possible but to also give off the air of not wanting to be bothered. The guy’s name was Keith Jones. Turned out he’d been flying for a few months too. We chatted a little, and soon traded phone numbers and met a couple of times to fly together. Keith was a plumber and the son of a plumber. His parents were divorced and he lived on a couple of acres of land in a small farmhouse with his mom, sister, and sometimes girlfriend. We couldn’t have been from more different backgrounds, but we soon became flying buddies and best friends.
One day when riding with him in the Datsun down a two-lane highway to lunch, some guy started tailgating Keith a little too aggressively. It went on that way for a mile or so, and Keith got a little miffed. I’d always wondered why he had a big foam cup filled with BBs on the floorboard, but I’d never asked what they were for. I was about to find out.
“That guy’s an asshole,” Keith said.
“Yep,” I replied.
“Get the BBs,” he said.
“For what?”
“See down there?” he pointed.
The rubber boot around the gearshift of the Datsun was gone, and you could see straight down through the floorboard to the pavement rushing past.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Pour that cup of BBs down the hole, slow at first, and then faster and faster in and we’ll see how long it takes the turd to back off.”
This was the funniest thing I’d heard in a LONG time. Keith continued driving and I started pouring the steel shot down the hole. Those balls of metal hit the highway at 70 miles per hour in a constant stream and in no time were peppering the other guy’s truck. He must have had NO idea what was hitting his car or his windshield. The guy started to weave, then slow down, then swerve, then finally veered off into the ditch while we sped away, almost killing ourselves, we were laughing so hard.
Achmed: I love the BB story. Next time, try biological wea
pons, they work even better.
Jeff: Achmed!
Achmed: Just my two cents.
One day, Keith came to my apartment and told me that he’d found something really cool during a visit to the junkyard the day before. He told me there was an old but real, full-sized, two-seat helicopter that had been made from a kit, and it was sitting on a trailer. “A kit?” I asked. “For a real helicopter? One you can sit in? Let’s GO!”
That was the first time I saw a very early version of a RotorWay helicopter. Keith recognized it first from their ads in Popular Mechanics . Sure enough, we bought a copy and there was a tiny little ad in the back: “PSSSST! FLY YOUR OWN HOMEBUILT HELICOPTER!” This couldn’t have been any cooler.
Walter: Actually it could have been cooler.
Jeff: How?
Walter: It could have said, “Fly a Helicopter Built by a Professional Helicopter Builder and Not You.” You’re a complete idiot.
That afternoon I ordered an information packet. A week later, and I found myself on a Southwest Airlines flight heading from Austin to Phoenix for a factory tour and demo ride. Two weeks after that, I got up the nerve to wire most of the money I’d saved from Sugar Babies to RotorWay. One of my goals had always been to own and fly a real helicopter, and now here I was taking the plunge. Sure I had to build the helicopter first, but their builder support and in-house flight training school were unparalleled.