Ed Thomas

Photo via Ventriloquist Central

A father hands his ten-year-old son a ventriloquist's dummy. Most kids play with a thing like that for a summer and forget where they put it. Ed Thomas never let go. That same dummy, a fellow named Hugo, has been riding along with him ever since, through a college almost-audition for The Ed Sullivan Show, an entire corporate career Ed had to keep quiet about, and enough newspaper clippings to fill a scrapbook.^[1] Ed Thomas is a friend of mine, and he is very much still out there.^[2] Pull up a chair, folks, and let me tell you about him.

A dummy from his father, a MAINEiac's start

Central Florida's "the hi-gloss." CITY Magazine once introduced Ed Thomas to its readers as a MAINEiac: born and raised in Maine, the genuine article.^[1] His father handed him a ventriloquist's dummy the year he turned ten. With no formal training and nobody standing over his shoulder to teach him, the boy figured it out for himself.^[1] He named the dummy Hugo, and by the time the pair turned up in Ventriloquist Central's own pages years later, Willinger was addressing him as a partner in his own right, not a prop: "the partner of Ed Thomas," who lives in Altamonte Springs, Florida.^[3]

Two different accounts, both close to the source, put a maker and a decade on that dummy. Willinger, who has had Hugo in the room with him, names the carver as Revello Pettee (his own blog spells it Revelo elsewhere in the same post, so take your pick of spellings) and says Ed's father bought the figure sometime in the 1940s.^{[4] [5]} That lines up neatly with Ed's own website, which dates the whole act back to 1947.^[6]

By the time Ed graduated high school, he and Hugo were already working steadily across much of the northeastern United States.^[1] In college at Nasson College in Maine, Ed landed an audition for a spot on The Ed Sullivan Show. He turned it down, because he had exams to pass to graduate.^[1] A diploma over the biggest stage in the country. That is not a small thing to give up, and by every account, he never seemed to regret it. Ed graduated Nasson in 1962, and by the college's own account, Hugo graduated right along with him, with a photo of his own in the yearbook.^[18]

Meet Your Neighbors

Julia Coleman's profile of "Altamonte Springs residents, entertainers" Ed Thomas and Hugo ran in the January-February 2009 issue of Central Florida's "the hi-gloss." CITY Magazine.

Photo via Ventriloquist Central Blog

A day job, a low profile, and a Boston classroom

After college Ed married, started a family, and took a job with Jordan Marsh Department Stores in Boston. He kept the bookings coming, but a year of juggling travel against a young family convinced him and Hugo to stay closer to home. He started teaching ventriloquism at the Boston Center for Adult Education instead, with, in his own words, "a little help from Hugo."^[1] He never quit the stage. He just built a rule around it: book gigs close enough to drive home the same night, and far enough that no Jordan Marsh executive would catch wind of them.^[1]

That rule nearly broke on him once. Ed climbed the corporate ladder all the way to director of employment, the company's chief negotiator through a set of contentious union contract talks. Right in the middle of all that, he booked an important engagement, Hugo and all, and sandwich boards went up around town advertising it. One of the company's vice presidents pulled him aside and suggested, with a straight face, that "a comedian is perhaps not the best representative Jordan Marsh could have during difficult contract negotiations." Ed apologized, and from then on he kept his two lives carefully separate.^[1] That is the exact tension every working performer with a day job has to manage, and Ed managed it for years without anybody in the boardroom the wiser.

The first vent act on Maine television

On the side, Ed built a second character entirely his own: Dr. Horace P. Goodfellow, a solo storytelling act built on his "downeast" Maine roots. Doc Goodfellow toured conventions, fairs, and business banquets around New England, became a regularly featured newspaper columnist, and told stories about the goings-on in his invented hometown of Potato Bend, Maine, syndicated in papers throughout the region.^[6]

But the claim that follows Ed everywhere, repeated independently by his own website, by Ventriloquist Central, and by Clinton Detweiler's Mr. D's Daily Ventriloquist Journal, is this one: Ed Thomas and Hugo were the first ventriloquist act to perform on television in the state of Maine.^{[6] [7]} A 2012 press release put the partnership at "more than 50 years" strong by that point, which backs into a start somewhere around 1962 for the professional touring act, even as Ed's own site rounds the whole story back to 1947.^{[7] [6]} Either version puts a lot of decades on the same dummy's shoulders. A ventriloquism teaching site was still interviewing Ed on video as an elder statesman of the craft as late as October 2014, and he was still telling his stories of those early television days.^[8]

Out of retirement, coast to coast

Ed and his family eventually settled in Altamonte Springs, Florida. One day, on one of his regular walks around Crane's Roost Park, Ed decided to come out of retirement and start performing with Hugo again.^[1] The result was billed as the "Out of Retirement Tour": a forty-five minute act taken across five states, from Maine down to Florida, built for 55+ communities with comedy clubs and churches filling out the calendar.^[1] Ed's own closing line for that tour tells you everything about the man's philosophy: "you don't stop laughing because you are getting old, you get old because you stop laughing."^[1]

Hugo, for the record, was "as cranky as ever" about the whole comeback. "You just wouldn't believe some of the things he says, and gets away with," Ed told the magazine. "You wouldn't catch me saying anything like that."^[1] That's the bit, and it's a good one: the figure gets to be the difficult one, and the man gets to be the good sport who puts up with him.

Ed kept working the wider vent community too. He sent photographs to Ventriloquist Central from a regional Florida Vents gathering in January 2010,^[10] and he met a Massachusetts collector at a Vent Haven ConVENTion, then followed up the next year by sending along his new promotional video to be shared with the rest of the hobby for free.^[11] Ventriloquist Central's own directory of regional and local ventriloquists listed Ed Thomas and Hugo under Florida for years, pointing readers to his own site.^[12]

The act picked up other kinds of work along the way. A Ford sponsorship deal required Ed, for once, to leave Hugo at home, since the gig called for a solo appearance.^[13] Ed also worked in front of the camera on his own account: a movie audition called "A Visit With Pearl," the short "Where's Babies Come From," "A Golfer's Lament," the Ford Fiesta short film "The Great Fiesta" (that same Ford relationship, on screen this time), a "Magic Plus" teaser, and a three-part "Trick or Treat" series.^[14] By his own site's account, the full act carries two more figures besides Hugo: Yuk the Duck and a character named Lugie, with Hugo billed as "the star of the show."^[6]

The Laugh Makers Show

Ed teamed up with British comedian Larry Larkin for a joint variety show built around a street segment called "A Buck for a Yuk." Ventriloquist Central's write-up called Ed "a nationally known comedian/ventriloquist... who has appeared from coast to coast with his buddy Hugo."

Photo via Ventriloquist Central Blog

Filling in at the Birthday Bash

In 2011, Ventriloquist Central's Dan Willinger threw a "Birthday Bash" in Boston, and Ed Thomas and Hugo ended up on the bill almost by accident. Willinger had booked another performer, Gary Willner, on one condition: if a paying job came up, Willner got to bow out. The paying job came up. Willner bowed out. Ed and Hugo stepped into the Saturday night show in his place, and when Willinger wrote his thank-you note after the event, Ed was first on the list.^{[4] [15]}

Willinger wanted something else out of that Boston trip too: Hugo himself. "His partner Hugo is a wonderful character," Willinger wrote in the run-up to the event, "and some day I hope I can get him to come reside in the Ventriloquist Central Collection. (Ed, hint hint!!)"^[4] As far as this archive can tell, Ed never took him up on it. Hugo stayed on Ed's arm, not in anybody's display case.

Don't Be a Dummy, Vote

In August 2012, Ed and Hugo turned their act toward the ballot box. Their press release, dated August 2, 2012, out of Altamonte Springs, put the partnership at "more than 50 years" strong and announced a new theme: "Don't Be a Dummy, Vote."^[7] The pitch, straight from Ed: "This was Hugo's idea. He was upset that he couldn't vote because he is a dummy, so he wants to be sure that everyone who is not a dummy votes."^[7] Ed and Hugo wore matching shirts reading "Hugo Says, Don't Be a Dummy, Vote" everywhere they performed, and gave the same shirts away to their audiences.^[7]

It's a non-partisan pitch built entirely on a pun, and it belongs to a much longer tradition in this trade of message shows: drug-free assemblies, safety programs, hospital wards, civic clubs, and now the voting booth. The figure is the one disqualified from doing the responsible thing (he can't vote, same as he can't be careful or can't be healthy in a dozen other message shows this trade has run), so the lesson lands as a joke at the figure's expense instead of a lecture aimed at the audience.^[7]

Steve Hurst, co-founder of Ventriloquist Central, put his name behind the campaign in that same release: "Ed Thomas is a master performer, and I love that he is using comedy and ventriloquism to get a message out to encourage people to vote. Nobody wants someone to tell them what to do or to preach about the importance of voting, but Ed does it in a way that makes you have fun and want to cast your ballot."^[7] The local Seminole Chronicle picked up the story too.^[16]

The Seminole Chronicle

The local paper's version of the same "Hugo Says, Don't Be a Dummy, VOTE" shirts, flags in hand for the occasion.

Photo via Ventriloquist Central Blog

Don't Be a Dummy, Vote

Ed and Hugo in the shirts they gave away to their own audiences, all across the 2012 tour.

Photo via Ventriloquist Central Blog

Seventy years and counting

Here's the thing that gets me about this whole story. Hugo is not a prop Ed picked up along the way for a bit. He is the same figure Ed's father bought sometime in the 1940s, carved by Revello Pettee, and by the time he shared a Birthday Bash stage in 2011, the collector who had him in the room was calling it a working figure bought in the 1940s and still performing decades later.^[5] Willinger's own read on old figures still working is worth repeating here: "the performers that do use old figures today, in most cases, have been using them all their life."^[5] Ed Thomas is exactly that.

In July 2018, Ed and Hugo went home. The Portland Press Herald announced a pair of homecoming shows at the Nasson Little Theatre, on the very campus where young Ed once turned down Ed Sullivan for a set of exams.^[18] A page on his own site, titled "Hugo Talks About the 2016 Election," is a plain marker that the act was still commenting on the world, in character, that recently too.^[17] And as recently as a February 2026 snapshot of his own website, Ed Thomas and Hugo's business, right down to separate phone numbers for the two of them, was still standing exactly the way it always has: "Ed Thomas and Hugo are back!!!" the page announces, with Ed bookable direct and Hugo on his own line.^[6] That is not a man in retirement. That is a man still answering the phone.

Revello or Revelo, I don't much care how you spell the carver's name, only that Hugo got a yearbook photo in 1962 and I'm still waiting on my invitation to any graduation.— Freddy Fiddlesticks, spokesdummy