by Jeff Dunham
“What in the world would you do with that?”
“You can’t do comedy with it.”
“He’ll never sell.”
I took those comments as a challenge, wondering what I could do with him. During conventions, dealers had the opportunity to get in front of the crowd and show or demonstrate their wares. Bill never wanted to perform. I thought to myself, “If I’m actually any good at this, I should be able to make that frowning Mr. Horowitz work.”
“Could I demonstrate this one for you?” I asked Bill.
“Sure,” he said. “I’m not going up there.”
Within ten seconds of taking the dummy onstage, I realized I could easily connect with this type of character. I started to ad-lib.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked Mr. Horowitz.
“I’m an inventor.”
“What have you invented?”
“You know how when you go in the kitchen and you close one cabinet and the other opens up?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I did that.”
After a few more jokes and some big laughs, I walked offstage wondering if that had been a fluke. My friend Dale Brown told me I should buy the little guy, and Bill quoted me a price that was above anything I could spend at the time. Remember, I had spent most of my money on the helicopter, crashed it, and then spent almost half of that amount again rebuilding the thing. I barely had enough in savings to get back and forth to the convention that year.
“Bill, I really don’t have that kind of money right now,” I said. “Could you sell it for a little less? I’ll make really good use of him.”
He wouldn’t bargain. I’ve since heard many versions of what happened that day. Some say Bill offered to sell the rights to the character to me and that I refused, but none of that is true. Back then, I wouldn’t have even known what “selling the rights” meant.
I returned to Waco empty-handed, but I didn’t forget about the laughs I got that day with the frowning dummy. After pondering for a while, I decided I could create my own version for about $50 in materials. I liked what Bill and Chuck had done, but I preferred Bergen’s version, which had more of a pout to the lips and a more forced-looking frown. I was also thinking that an old man would be more interesting.
I took part of my inspiration for the character from Keith Jones’s father, whose name was Walter, and who happened to be a cantankerous old fart. He wasn’t a jerk, but more of a curmudgeon. You could tell that beneath that crusty surface was a guy with a sense of humor. He would grumble a lot but every so often you’d also catch a gleam in his eye after he’d said something that was ornery.
As I was contemplating basing my new character on Walter Jones, I then saw Bette Davis on Carson. This was a woman who had been everywhere and done everything. Carson asked her questions and she just spouted off her opinions on whatever she wanted to talk about. She didn’t care if what she said was politically incorrect or offensive or outlandish. She didn’t care what anybody thought and it was refreshing as hell. Carson laughed and spun around in his chair. Cool.
Walter Jones. Bette Davis. A frowning old-man dummy. I knew I was sitting on something that could be pretty funny but I didn’t think an audience would like the negativity for more than five minutes. Boy, was I wrong.
Walter: Boy, were you wrong.
Jeff: I know.
Walter: Turns out they couldn’t take you for more than five minutes.
Jeff: That’s not true.
Walter: Hey, shit happens.
I sat down at my workbench in my apartment late one night. Fueled by Dr Pepper, the same stuff that kept me going when building my helicopter, and with the television broadcasting Carson and then Letterman, I used a dinner knife and went to work on a big mound of plasticine clay that I’d purchased at an art store that day. The only other tool I used was a small broken mirror that I’d picked up next to the apartment complex Dumpster. After making the basic shape of the head, I then looked in the mirror with a frowning scowl and copied the lines of my face into the clay.
About four hours later, “The Star-Spangled Banner” came on TV, the station went off the air, and snow filled the screen. I looked at the clay. I’d never taken a sculpting class in my life nor had I read any books on the subject. But what I saw staring back at me was a face that made me laugh. If I made that scowl, it was me… just a few decades older and with a lot less hair.
Little did I know what that face was about to do for my career, and how many people he would make laugh throughout the next few decades.
The next day I made a two-piece plaster-of-Paris mold. I cast the head in Plastic Wood dough, making front and back head-shell pieces. I let the head harden for a couple of days and then installed a moving mouth and raising eyebrows. A “head stick” and controls were next. For the eyes, I found a local taxidermist and picked out some blue glass spheres and glued them inside the head, just barely visible through his squinted expression. I painted him a healthy flesh color, made a body with scrap plywood and pine, shaped the chest with bailing wire, and quickly molded and cast Plastic Wood hands as well. Arms and legs were stuffed athletic knee socks, and the feet were plywood. I went to Kmart for kids’ clothes, trying to find things that looked as much like an old man’s as possible. On a visit to Dallas a few days later, Dad let me have his thin red clip-on bow tie that he’d saved since his high school years. Done, and in only two weeks from start to finish.
Walter: Lazy ass.
Jeff: What?
Walter: You were in such a rush to finish me, you forgot my hair.
I named the dummy Walter after Keith’s dad, as well as after another Walter who had a welding shop not far down the street from my apartment complex. The two Walts knew each other, and both those guys were cut from the same cloth. It was a delight to see these two old grumps carry on a “conversation.” What inspiration.
“Shut the hell up!” and “Who the hell cares?” were expressions that just spilled out of my Walter’s mouth. Those words became his catchphrases and breaths of life.
Next I gave Walter a back story. At the time I made him a Korean War veteran (and twenty-five years later he’s morphed into a Vietnam vet). He is also a retired welder, has been married forever, and is chronically pissed off at his wife. Well, at least he says he is. He’s just a curmudgeon and actually loves his wife unendingly. He just wants to kill her half the time too.
I don’t remember the first time I took him onstage. All I know is that he was a huge hit. What I mistakenly thought would be an extra few minutes in the show quickly became a monster success. Comedy works and characters succeed when an audience can identify with what’s being said and who’s saying it. Well, everyone knows someone like Walter. They’re either married to him, or they work for him, or they’re related to him. Whatever it is, we all know the guy. Walter and José were now numbers one and two of a soon-to-be threesome that would define and change my act and my life for good. They would help me accomplish goals and attain heights I had dreamed of and aspired to even as a young boy, but they would also be part of a bigger team in the distant future that would take me places I never dreamed I would perform… or where I ever thought I could.
As big a hit as Walter was, I didn’t really think of him as ever being the main character. I thought of him as a great addition, and that I hadn’t found the perfect main sidekick yet. So, the search continued.
Walter: Although the search continued for a main sidekick, I knew deep down in my heart that Walter was truly the one—
Jeff: Excuse me, what are you doing?
Walter: I was typing the rest of the story for you.
Jeff: I’m writing this book.
Walter: Dammit.
It was now the spring of 1988, and all was well. I was still living single in my Waco apartment, flying my newly rebuilt helicopter as much as possible, and hanging out with friends in the newsroom at KWTX. Jordan Cox, Kelly Grinnell, David Franks, Barry Ray, Robin Johnson, Dave
Evans, Skeeter Williams, Archie Woodard, and Laura Emerson: These were all folks whose friendships I cherished. I was the only one without a real job, but a lot of us had been at Baylor together and had remained friends, so they tolerated me hanging around. Every once in a while they would use the characters and me on air in the Baylor homecoming parades, or during the local segments of the Jerry Lewis telethons, or for pretty horrible local television commercials. My favorites were for the Central Texas Wild Animal Park. I would take a character or two out to the preserve and we would set up the camera with me standing next to or holding one of the live animals. Then I would try and ad-lib a thirty- or sixty-second spot getting in as much information as possible before either I or the puppet were pecked, poked, strangled, or chewed to death by the particular wild beast. Snooky the young chimp wins for using up the most tape for retakes. I used the gray monkey one day, and Snooky had NO idea what to think. Every time my ape would start to talk, Snooky would jump on my lap and either try to choke the ape, rip his head off, or bite his neck. And of course, the ape’s neck and head were my arm and hand! The outtakes are something to behold.
As time went by and as I experimented with more and more characters, including Walter and José, I realized that I really needed my main character to have a powerful personality without extreme personality traits that would pigeonhole him. In other words, he needed to be “broad.” Think Mickey Mouse, Kermit the Frog, Bart Simpson, Bugs Bunny, or even Harry Potter. They aren’t extreme caricatures such as Barney Gumble on The Simpsons, Cruella De Vil, or Yosemite Sam.
Achmed: When do we get to me?
Jeff: Later.
Achmed: I’m bored.
Bubba J.: Can I get this book on VHS?
I also knew that I wanted a main character to move. He needed to have energy to jolt the audience into attention. I’d seen the boring vent acts and I wanted to be different. I wanted some pop in my show and it had to come from the right character and the right puppet. I spent a lot of time alone in my hangar, tightening belts, checking torques, getting greasy, and putting duct tape on bloody cuts when I ran out of Band-Aids. All that time allowed my mind to wander to the problem of a main character. I will never forget after a long day at the hangar, standing in the middle of my apartment, and the image of Peanut just popping into my head. It all came together and made so much sense. Finally.
I called Verna, who had made a couple soft figures for me already, and started describing him to her in great detail. I told her, “I don’t want him to be human, but at least humanoid. Not a monkey or an ape. He needs to be a unique creature unlike anything else, but certainly a mammal because mammals are warm and fuzzy. He needs to have appeal and be something that people would want to hug.” I knew that if this was going to be my main guy, I wanted commercial potential.
One of my goals even as far back as high school was to have toy versions of my characters on the shelves of stores one day, and if one of these guys could be plush and huggable… well… all the better.
“I want skinny long arms and big hands so he can gesture easily. I don’t want him to sit, so his legs need to be short enough so he can stand next to me, but not be too tall. I think he should have tan fur all over him, but his arms, legs, hands, and feet need more of a skin. His head should be that way too, and his belly.” For the color of the skin… almost nothing made sense. If the skin was red, he’d look like a devil. Green, he’d look like an alien. Blue would be too Smurf-like. Yellow is too light for the bright lights; brown or gray, he’d look like a monkey. “So… purple? Not dark, but more of a lavender. I don’t know of any popular characters who are purple.” (This was pre-Barney the dinosaur.) “Give him a big tuft of green hair on top, green eyes, big lips. And make his nose removable.”
“What?” Verna said. Purple skin didn’t faze her, but a removable nose apparently got her attention. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just want to make sure he doesn’t look too human, so maybe a nose I can take on or off. Can you put Velcro on the back of it?”
“Oh, well, yes,” she replied.
After a few more conversations describing and showing what I wanted, plus sending some drawings back and forth with notes here and there, a few weeks later Peanut showed up. He was absolutely perfect.
I’d also asked her to give him one shoe. This would guarantee at least one good laugh with him in every show. My longtime friend and fellow vent David Erskine gave me the joke, and it dates back to vaudeville, from what I understand. I think it was the first joke Peanut ever told.
Jeff: Peanut, you lost a shoe.
Peanut: No, man, I FOUND one! (And then he would laugh hilariously at himself.)
One of the moves that I used very early on with Peanut was with his left hand swooshing over his head through his hair, and him yelling, “NNNNEEOOWWWW!” I used it to make fun of myself or someone in the front row for not understanding a joke. He did it his first performance ever, and he still does it today. It became a “catch” thing for him, just like José’s “on a steek!”
Peanut: When I joined the act, everyone loved me.
José: I didn’t.
Peanut: Everyone who didn’t have a pole coming out of their butt…
Once I started working with him, all his mannerisms and his personality evolved very quickly. I named him Peanut because that was easy to remember and the name simply fit the character. It seems so simple now. As for his voice: Once again, it fits him. I tried to give him a back story that would give him an Earth origin, but something exotic that would be difficult to deny and easy to imagine. So it turns out he was from a race of people just like him who lived on the Micronesian Islands near Guam.
Another of Peanut’s first jokes was corny as hell, but never failed to get a huge laugh:
Jeff: I understand you have some brothers.
Peanut: Yep: Eeny, Meeny, Miney, and Fred.
Jeff: Fred? What happened to Moe?
Peanut: Moe? Oh, my mama don’t want no mo’! (And once again, he would laugh his maniacal crazy laugh.)
Peanut debuted in Northern California at a firefighters fund-raising event that was an outdoor show for the public. It was an all-ages, family crowd and the first show out, Peanut killed. On that same weekend, we headed back down to Los Angeles and did a guest spot at the Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach. Once again: gold. From that weekend forward, he was a hit in front of every imaginable crowd, blue collar and white collar, young and old, bikers and businessmen. The material was wacky and he was loud, obnoxious, and just plain crazy. He would make fun of me incessantly, telling me I was a loser for never having any dates, or he would pick on any poor soul in the front row, laughing at them and all his own jokes to boot.
Next I hit gold when I matched José and Peanut. Peanut was the perfect character to make fun of the slowpoke José, but José in turn would always one-up Peanut. Eventually I even got one of those cassette courses to teach myself some Spanish so the two could converse while leaving the bewildered me out of it all. Add to this mix Walter, who was almost the exact opposite style of comedy. Walter became my secret weapon when it came to winning over tired and soured audiences at corporate gatherings.
Walter and Peanut were perfect foils back then. Peanut almost always ended up being hero of the night when the audience was made up of fans. But any business crowd preferred Walter. Most of the businessmen at the end of a long evening of drinks, dinner, awards, and speeches certainly didn’t want to have to sit through another painful forty-five minutes from a ventriloquist dummy. Well, Walter didn’t want to be there either and was pissed he had to be there with them. Bringing Walter out and meeting these guys at their own level was an easy way to win them over.
Given the many soft and lovable characters Jim Henson had created, I was surprised that even the late Muppets creator liked Walter better than Peanut. At the Tenth Anniversary celebration for the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Henson told me, “I just love Walter.” He asked to see Walter up close and he complimented
me on how much character I’d put into him. That was a huge moment for me. Later that evening between shows, I found myself alone backstage, and there lay Kermit the Frog, dead and on a table, like he’d been stepped on by Big Bird. I knew it was a major no-no, but I couldn’t help myself: I went over and picked up Kermit and put him on my hand. COOL.
In the summer of 1988, my career clock began ticking. I was friends with a guy named John Williams, who was an old-time pilot with a hangar next to mine in Waco. He’d shared plenty of wisdom with me over the past couple of years. Once I came flying back to the hangar with summer storms flashing lightning all around the airport and winds gusting pretty high. I should have landed somewhere else to let the storms pass. After I landed and shut down that day, he came over to me and said, “Every pilot is given a certain amount of luck with his flying, and you’ve just used up a good portion of yours.”
One day that summer, I was truly soul-searching, and I said to him, “I love just being here and flying, John. I’m making okay money, and I’ve never had more fun. I just wonder if it’s time to move to Los Angeles and really chase after my dreams.” John was in his seventies and was never happier than when he was flying, so I thought I had an ally when it came to staying in Waco and enjoying my helicopter. His answer surprised me. “Are you kidding me? Don’t be crazy. Move to Los Angeles. Follow your dream. You can take up flying anytime, anywhere.”