George Tizzard

Pull up a chair for this one, because the stage isn't where George Tizzard did his best work. He crossed the Atlantic from Bridport, a small town on the Dorset coast of England, and turned up in New York City as a ventriloquist, a writer, and a musician, all three at once.^[1] Ventriloquism caught him in 1938, and by the early 1950s he'd built something rarer than a good act: a mail-order business selling other vents the words to say.^[5]

The family act, before the vent bug

Years before ventriloquism took hold of him, Tizzard already had an act, and he shared the stage with his own son. He and William Tizzard worked together as The Tizzards, The Musical Comedians, a novelty act built on instruments nobody else was mining for comedy: bottles, banjos, mandolins, guitars, and ocarinas, producing real music out of all of it.^[5] It's a small detail, but it tells you something about the man. Years before he'd argue in print over which consonants a ventriloquist figure was allowed to use, he was already a working musician who could make a bottle sing. He came to ventriloquism already knowing how to make an audience listen to something unlikely.

New York, and the Oracle desk

He settled at 110 West 76th Street in Manhattan, became interested in ventriloquism in 1938, and joined the International Brotherhood of Ventriloquists in 1942.^[5] By 1952 he was writing so much material for the Brotherhood's magazine, The Oracle, that the editor did the practical thing and put him on staff instead of just running his submissions.^[3] Tizzard was, in the magazine's own word, a professional "gagster."^[3] He sold his scripts under the label VENTRILOQUIAL DIALOGUES, five dollars a dozen or twelve dollars for three dozen in 1952, mailed straight out of that apartment.^[2] By 1954 the price had come down a little, four dollars a dozen or ten for three, same address, same trade.^[6] A working vent short on new material could write a letter and get a stack of fresh dialogue back in the mail. That was Tizzard's whole business, and for a performer without the time or the knack to write his own act, it was probably worth every dollar.

The labials argument

Every trade has its house debates, and Tizzard picked a real one. He submitted a script to The Oracle written entirely free of labials: no M, no P, no B, the three consonants that force a ventriloquist's own lips to move.^[4] That is a serious craft flex, a whole dialogue built around a restriction most vents never attempt for more than a line or two. The magazine printed it, then printed the other side of the argument right along with it.

Tizzard never got the last word in that argument, at least not in what survives. But he put his name on the harder version of the craft, in front of the whole Brotherhood, and let them argue back. That is a writer with some nerve.

The last column

He kept at it. His dialogues were still selling out of the West 76th Street address into 1954.^[6] Then he fell ill, was sick for some time, and when a second bout struck him, he died six days after being taken in, on September 8, 1954.^[5] The Oracle ran his obituary that November and said the plain thing a working magazine says about a working contributor: his column would be missed, since it "contained some very good material for the vent."^[5] Not a headline. Not a legend. Just the honest line an editor writes about a writer who never missed a deadline.

Four dollars a dozen in '54, marked down from five. Even a fella's punch lines depreciate, but at least Tizzard never charged me for the ones I flubbed.— Freddy Fiddlesticks, spokesdummy