Ventriloquism.org

Ventriloquist

John W. Cooper

America's Polite Ventriloquist. Five characters, one barber's chair, and hands too busy cutting hair to run the dummies, so his feet did it instead.

  • c.18–1966
John W. Cooper in his full barbershop tableau, with the customer in the chair, the manicurist, and Sam the bootblack sticking his head out of the towel box
Cooper's whole company on stage at once: the customer in the chair, Miss Auto the manicurist, Mr. Jenkins waiting his turn, and Sam the bootblack, head out of the towel box. Photo via Ventriloquist Central Blog.

Here's a name you should actually know, not just nod at when it comes up. John W. Cooper. The trade papers billed him "America's Polite Ventriloquist."[1] What he actually did on stage was run a full barbershop: a customer in the chair, a manicurist doing nails, another customer waiting to be called "Next," a bootblack singing from inside a towel box, and eventually a talking parrot on a perch, all with distinct voices, all in one running conversation.[2][3] He was the barber. His hands cut the hair. His feet ran the other four figures by fish line and foot pedal, hidden under the bottom of the chair.[2] I've read a lot of vaudeville acts. I have never come across another one built quite like that. He did it for the better part of thirty years, from small New England mill towns to the Canadian Maritimes to New York's biggest nightclub floors, and when a New York magician named Dr. Abraham Hurwitz needed someone to start his eight-year-old daughter on the ABCs of this art, he hired John Cooper to do it. The daughter's name was Shari Lewis.[1][4] Pull up a chair. This one's overdue.

A stable boy who got asked if the horses could talk

Cooper grew up in Brooklyn, attended Professor Dorsey's Institute, and worked as a stable boy at the Sheepshead Bay racetracks.[5] A white ventriloquist who spent time around the stables, whose name never made it into any record anyone's found, kept trying to convince young Cooper that the horses could talk.[6] That's how he got introduced to the art. Not a stage, not a course by mail. A grown man doing bits with a stable boy to pass the time, and the stable boy never let go of it.

In 1886 he joined the Southern Jubilee Singers, touring New England, Canada, and the Mid-Atlantic for four years.[6] Singing every night in front of audiences that were mostly white, he started writing his own ventriloquism routines on the road.[6] Late in his life, telling his own story to The Oracle in 1953 at seventy-nine, he gave it a different shape: ventriloquism as a hobby he picked up in 1895 after watching Harry Bryant and Al O. Duncan work, and his first professional show in 1897 at twenty-one, four figures, billed as "Prince Madagascar."[2] Performers tell their own origin story different ways at different points in a long career. I'm not going to pretend one telling cancels the other. Both are his, and both are on the record.

The strike that let him in

Cooper was already touring with Richards and Pringle's Georgia Minstrels, one of the country's major Black minstrel companies, by 1901, singled out by name in the trade press as its ventriloquist.[7] That same year, the White Rats, the white vaudeville performers' union, went on strike. Cooper, being African American, was not held to the walkout. He ignored it, filled the theaters' desperate need for entertainment, and became a fixture on the vaudeville circuit as a result.[6] He couldn't have joined that union if he'd tried. That also meant nobody could call him a strikebreaker for refusing to walk out with it. While the White Rats sat home, Cooper worked, and the houses that needed acts kept booking him.

By 1902 the trade papers had a name for him: "Black Napoleon," printed as a description of his standing among ventriloquists, not a costume he wore.[8] They also called him "Cooper the Great" and "the Wizard."[8][9] That same season he was running a full drill of "one-legged walking and talking" figures and working a "mysterious cabinet," and the whole company doffed its hats to him for it.[9] The following winter, a Council Bluffs reviewer caught him working four dummies as a quartette, then bringing out a one-legged Civil War veteran for an encore. In 1903 that soldier was still a living memory to the people watching, not a costume gag.[9]

In the summer of 1903 the Georgia Minstrels printed their olio, nine acts in order. Cooper opened the show. A fellow performer named S.H. Dudley closed it.[10] Within a decade Dudley would run one of the country's major Black theater circuits, and Cooper would be playing his houses.[11] Their names sat on the same bill at the start of both careers.

"Too much will not be said of this man who rises to the place of a genius." A Freeman reviewer, watching Cooper's barbershop act at the Crown Garden Theater, Indianapolis, 1913.

Fun in a Barber Shop

The barbershop idea had been sitting on Cooper's own stage for years before he made it his own titled act. In May 1902, the same season and the same company that later biographies credit him with first presenting the routine, his own troupe was already running a "barber shop quartette" as a separate comedy bit in the same show.[9] By W.S. Berger's own account, written when Cooper was seventy-nine, Cooper originated his "colored barbershop for white folks" in 1909, priced to the era: a fifteen-cent haircut, a ten-cent shave, and a nickel tip on top.[2] The Freeman had the title running in print that same December, and a Maine paper caught it the same week: "an act that men who wait in a barber shop can appreciate."[12]

Berger gives the real cast, and it deserves to be named in full: Mr. Haskins, a regular customer, in the chair. Miss Auto, the manicurist, waiting for him to get up. Mr. Jenkins, another regular, waiting to be called "Next!" Sam, the bootblack, in the towel box, his head sticking out. Jimmy, the newsboy, vending his wares.[2] Every figure got its own voice, plus Cooper's own, and the fish lines ran to foot pedals hidden under the bottom of the barber chair. He said himself it gave him plenty of headaches before it worked right.[2] Before Sam went into the box, he picked out banjo licks while Jimmy sang ragtime behind him. Once boxed, it was all distant-voice work.[13] By 1913 a talking parrot had joined the cast, and a Crown Garden reviewer put his finger on exactly what made the act different from every other multi-figure turn on the circuit: "Not one laid aside and another taken up as is the case so often. He makes these figures intelligent parts of a whole conversation."[3] That's the whole craft, right there. A lot of vents could throw a voice into five different dummies one at a time. Cooper kept all five alive in the same room, talking to each other, while he cut hair. The billing called it "a sub vocal production."[14] Around 1919, after watching Arthur Prince perform, Cooper started working a single figure too, the format that was taking over the trade.[13] He kept both acts in his pocket for the rest of his career.

A young John W. Cooper in white tie, standing beside Sam Jackson seated on a stool

Cooper and Sam, early days

The studio portrait Cooper used to sell himself on the circuit: white tie, a boutonniere, and Sam dressed to match. This is close to the picture Berger was still describing four decades later.

Photo via FamousFix
An older John W. Cooper in a tuxedo, looking down at Sam Jackson

Cooper and Sam, later years

Same partnership, decades on. By this point Cooper had taken Sam through minstrel olios, big-time vaudeville, church tours, veterans' hospitals, and New York's nightclub floors.

Photo via Ventriloquist Central Blog

The record he chased, and the road he worked

In September 1909 The Freeman reported that Cooper held the record among ventriloquists for singing three distinct voices at one time, and that he was already working toward four. The paper compared him to Wilbur and Orville Wright, the most famous record-breakers alive that year: "Cooper is like Wright, the American aviator. He believes in breaking his own records."[15] A Cleveland reviewer caught him at the Alpha Theater in September 1913 and called him "one of the world's greatest ventriloquists."[16] When S.H. Dudley's own circuit bought advertising space that same year, it named Cooper as the proof of the product: "The First and also Greatest Colored Circuit," with "John W. Cooper, One of the Cleverest Ventriloquists" as the headline underneath.[14]

The route survives in astonishing detail, printed within days of nearly every stand: New England, the Hudson Valley, Pennsylvania coal towns, Vermont, and the Maritime provinces of Canada, mostly small white houses playing one and three-day stands, for most of a decade.[11] He'd already played the Keith circuit's own big-time Providence house in January 1909, billed there as "the Ebony Ventriloquist."[17] He joined the Colored Vaudeville Benevolent Association that October, in a meeting so packed that the callers that same week included Scott Joplin.[18] He only started working the Black circuits, Dudley's, the Monogram, the Pekin, mostly from 1912 on, once those circuits existed to work.[11] One reviewer in 1912 called him, pointedly, "the only real colored ventriloquist with an act," meaning something specific: scenery, a company, a plot, not just a man and a doll in front of a drop.[19] That's a real distinction in a trade where most turns were exactly that: a man and a doll in front of a drop. Cooper traveled a barbershop.

The Black press also put him to a different kind of work. In 1910, replying in print to a columnist who'd claimed Black performers only sang and danced, a writer for The Freeman built out a whole list of acts that did something else, and Cooper's name sat right in it: "John W. Cooper, ventriloquist."[20] You could argue all day about whether a dance number was art. You could not argue with a man making four voices at once. That's why this trade mattered so much to that argument, and why Cooper's name kept getting used to make it.

The pivot, the war, and the clubs

By September 1916, moving pictures were closing the small houses that had carried acts like his for years. That December, The Freeman caught Cooper leaving vaudeville for the Invincible Concert Company, a jubilee-singing outfit playing churches and colleges under the direction of Chas. P. Williams.[21] He didn't fail. He changed circuits before the circuit failed him. Through the 1920s he was lead performer with Father Quinn's Entertainers, touring Catholic churches across the country for a decade, Sam still at his side.[6]

When vaudeville itself finally closed out in the 1930s, Cooper kept going alone with Sam: private parties, New York nightclub floors including the Kit Kat, the Hotel Lexington, and El Morocco, and a run on the Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour radio show.[6][22][1] During the war he and Sam played veterans' hospitals and USO camp shows across the country, and he made a point of entertaining children in New York City's hospitals besides.[6] He'd joined the International Brotherhood of Ventriloquists early, carrying card No. 35, and Berger made him a Life Member in 1952.[2]

By the summer of 1957, at eighty-four and hospitalized three times in the previous two years, Cooper was working Hubert's Museum on 42nd Street, billed as "The Polite Ventriloquist," the barbershop scene still the big attraction.[23] A fellow member named Charles Hook, writing his own recollections around the same time, put it plainly: "Colored vents were hard to locate, but the best that I ever saw was John W. Cooper, who was a fine actor. One year he had a barber shop scene, with the usual smart kid, a customer in the chair, and a parrot on a perch. He took the part of the barber."[23] In January 1959, described as New York's oldest active ventriloquist, about eighty-six, Cooper co-sponsored a new IBV member alongside a much younger colleague: Shari Lewis.[23] He retired in 1960, in his mid-eighties, closing out a working career that ran seventy-four years.[6] John Cooper died in April 1966.[24]

Sam, and what he left behind

Sam Jackson, Cooper's main figure for most of that career, came out of the Theodore Mack workshop in Chicago, the same shop that carved Charlie McCarthy a couple of decades later.[22] By 1998, Sam's home was the Brooklyn Historical Society. That year, Cooper's daughter, Joan Maynard, gave her consent for Sam to travel to the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta for an exhibition, and she was there in person for the opening.[1] Cooper himself has an entry in the Dictionary of American Negro Biography, by Logan and Winston (W.W. Norton, 1982).[1] Years later, the PBS series History Detectives devoted a segment to Sam and the man who made him talk.

Sam Jackson, John W. Cooper's ventriloquist figure, examined decades later on the PBS series History Detectives
Sam Jackson, examined on the PBS series History Detectives. Via Ventriloquist Central Blog.

And there's the teaching. Her father, Dr. Abraham Hurwitz, was the City of New York's official magician, and he hired three working ventriloquists to train his young daughter: Monsieur Brunard, family friend Stanley Burns, and John W. Cooper, who introduced her to the ABCs of the art when she was eight years old.[1][4] The daughter was Shari Lewis, and this whole family has been watching her carry it ever since. There was a friendship, too, one that crossed the color line without anybody making a production of it: in 1905, a fellow ventriloquist named Ed Reynard, touring England as "the ofay ventriloquist" in the paper's own words, sent Cooper theater programs from London and Glasgow. The Georgia Minstrels' own correspondent thought it worth printing that Cooper's friend had played the Empire.[25] The trade was one trade, even where the theaters were not. The International Ventriloquist Society named John W. Cooper to its Ventriloquist Hall of Fame.[26]

influenced by Harry Bryant influenced by Al O. Duncan taught Shari Lewis friend Ed Reynard figure Sam Jackson honored Ventriloquist Hall of Fame
Freddy Fiddlesticks, the Ventriloquism.org spokesdummy

Five characters running at once and only two hands to blame for any of it. The other three were down at his feet the whole time, which means Cooper is the only act in this archive who could truthfully say he ran his business by the seat of his pants.— Freddy Fiddlesticks, spokesdummy

Sightings in the newspapers

136 dated notices between 1902 and 1949, sampled evenly across the career to show 60 here. Each links to the scanned page at the Library of Congress. Browse all Career Snippets

  1. 1902Jun 14 A performer billed as 'J. W. Ooperr, ventriloquist' (name possibly garbled in OCR) appeared as part of a large traveling variety/circus organization alongside acts including Wm. Shields the hoop juggler, the Housely Bros., the 'Cuban Emperor of Music,' J. E. Sherman, Ed Tolliver, and others; the troupe traveled in its own private cars with an orchestra and brass band, per a newspaper notice dated 1902-06-14. page
  2. 1905Oct 14 A 1905 newspaper item (The Freeman, October 14, 1905) refers to 'John Cooper, the ventriloquist,' though the sentence is cut off in the OCR text. page
  3. 1909Jan 1 John W. Copper, billed as 'the ebony ventriloquist,' appeared on a vaudeville bill alongside Fred Seasman, Emilie Rose, Ruby Raymond and company, Sid Baxter and company, Sophie Everette and company, and Smith and Smythe (theater and town not stated in this clipping). page
  4. 1909Dec 6 John W. Cooper Company, billed as 'America's representative ventriloquist,' performed the comedy 'Fun in a Barber Shop' at the Coliseum theatre Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (per Dec 6, 1909 newspaper). Coliseum page
  5. 1909Dec 6 John W. Cooper was noted as the only colored gentleman doing the ventriloquist act, described as 'a scream,' with special scenery and good lighting effects, at the Coliseum theatre (per Dec. 6, 1909 newspaper). Coliseum page
  6. 1909Dec 18 John Cooper, 'the great ventriloquist,' has been playing successfully through New England (per Freeman, Dec 18 1909). page
  7. 1910Jan 4 John W. Cooper performed a sketch entitled 'Fun in a Barber Shop' as part of his ventriloquist act. page
  8. 1910Jan 4 On the same bill as John W. Cooper were an acrobatic act with four women, a juggling duo performing a restaurant pantomime sketch, monologist Jimmy Coveny, and a singing and dancing act by Taylor and Fabian. page
  9. 1910Jan 4 Newspaper reviewer wrote: 'As a ventriloquist he ranks among the best ever seen here.' page
  10. 1910Jan 22 John W. Cooper, described as 'America's representative colored ventriloquist,' was the hit of the bill at the Empire Theater, Hoboken, N.J., week of January 10, 1910. Empire Theater page
  11. 1910Jan 22 John W. Cooper, described as 'America's representative colored ventriloquist,' was reported as 'the hit of the bill' at the Empire Theater, Hoboken, N.J., week of January 10, 1910. Empire Theater page
  12. 1910Jan 29 John W. Cooper is listed as a ventriloquist among vaudeville performers in a newspaper column (1910-01-29). page
  13. 1910Jun 11 Billed as a 'Ventriloquial Novelty' act at Perth Amboy's Real Theatre, Perth Amboy, for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, June 13-15, 1910, on a bill with Bob Fischer Co. ('Fun in a Barber Shop'), Marr and Evans, Winfield Douglas, Moscrop Sisters ('The Musical Comedy Trio'), Stuart K and Murray, and McMahon and Nugent. Perth Amboy's Real Theatre page
  14. 1911Apr 22 The N.Y. Clipper described vaudeville performer John W. Cooper as 'in the ranks of the foremost exponents of ventriloquism,' as reported in The Gazette (Cleveland, O.), April 22, 1911. The Gazette page
  15. 1911Jun 10 John W. Cooper, ventriloquist, pleased audiences the week of June 10, 1911 at the Lyric Theater, Hoboken, N.J. Lyric Theater page
  16. 1912May 4 John W. Cooper, ventriloquist, appeared on a vaudeville bill (reported May 4, 1912) alongside acts including Joseph Coyne, Coverdale and White, McGarry and De Vore, the Sinlletta Sisters, and others. page
  17. 1912May 7 John W. Cooper, described as 'an ebony hued ventriloquist,' appeared on the bill at the Lyric theater, along with Morrisini's Society Circus, McGarry and De Vere, and the Hallett Sisters (1912, per this newspaper clipping). page
  18. 1912Jul 6 John W. Cooper, ventriloquist, appeared at the opera house in Orange, N.J., assisting Clarence Powell, alongside Holmes and Holmes, Al Bryant, Wheeler and Bryan and others (reported in a 1912-07-06 newspaper item). page
  19. 1912Aug 17 John W. Cooper, billed as 'the Polite Ventrilo,' and his 'Fun in the Barber Shop' company played to capacity at Hopkins Theater, Wilmington, Del., the week of August 1 (1912). Hopkins Theater page
  20. 1912Aug 17 John W. Cooper's company opened at the Royal Theater, Asbury Park, week of August 5, 1912, and was reportedly doing great business. Royal Theater page
  21. 1912Oct 5 John W. Cooper appeared at Dudley's theater the previous week with his act 'Fun in a Barber Shop,' which included ventriloquial feats. page
  22. 1912Oct 19 John Cooper, ventriloquist, was a member of the Sylvester Concert Company, which toured New Jersey alongside Clarence Powell (humorist) and the Fountain City Quartet (William 'Billy' Green, baritone; James Settle, tenor; the Glover brothers). page
  23. 1912Nov 9 John W. Cooper, billed as 'the polite ventriloquist,' performed with the Musical Spillers at Hurtig & Seaman's Music Hall in Brooklyn, N.Y. at the Sunday concert on November 3 (reported in the November 9, 1912 edition). Seaman's Music Hall page
  24. 1913Feb 22 John Cooper, described as 'the ventriloquist,' was reported busy adding new novelties to his act, including a talking parrot described as 'a scream' (Eastern Theatrical News column, 1913). Eastern Theatrical News page
  25. 1913Mar 15 John W. Cooper, the ventriloquist, is scoring a big hit in Canada and this week (per the March 15, 1913 newspaper) is playing at the Grand Opera House, Ogdensburg, N.Y. Grand Opera House page
  26. 1913Apr 5 John W. Cooper, the ventriloquist, scored a distinct hit last week at the Merrimac Square Theater, Lowell, Mass. (reported in the April 5, 1913 edition). Merrimac Square Theater page
  27. 1913Apr 19 John W. Cooper, the ventriloquist with an act, scored a big success at the Columbia Theater, Attleboro, Mass. (week reported April 19, 1913). Columbia Theater page
  28. 1913Apr 19 John W. Cooper, the ventriloquist, was reported 'scoring a success' at Akers' Theater, Halifax, N.S., during the week of this April 19, 1913 report. Akers' Theater page
  29. 1913May 10 John W. Cooper was reported to be scoring a big success through Canada with his ventriloquistic act, per the Freeman column dated 1913-05-10. page
  30. 1913May 24 John W. Cooper, described as 'the ventriloquist,' is reported back in the States and doing well ('cleaning up, as usual, down East'), per a May 24, 1913 newspaper item. page
  31. 1913Jun 11 John W. Cooper, billed as a ventriloquist, performed a comic act titled 'Fun in a Barber Shop' this week (per the 1913-06-11 newspaper), described as 'a big time act, right from the Boston Theatres' with 'a big hit with lots of laughs,' shown with an illustrated picture program changed daily, afternoons 2:30 to 5 and evenings 7:15 to 10. page
  32. 1913Jun 12 Billed as 'John W. Cooper, Ventriloquist' performing 'Fun in a Barber Shop' at the Empire theater, Elliot and Main Streets (Lawler Brothers, owners), described as 'a big time act, right from the Boston Theatres' (North Walpole area newspaper, June 12 1913). page
  33. 1913Jun 13 An advertisement or notice billed 'John W. Cooper, Ventriloquist' as 'One of the best in the show business,' in a clipping mentioning a barber shop; the surrounding text is too garbled to determine venue or date beyond the paper's 1913-06-13 date. page
  34. 1913Jun 14 John W. Cooper, billed as a ventriloquist, performed at a theater (Lawler Brothers, owners) at the corner of Elliot and Main Streets, with a review noting 'Judging the way Mr. Cooper "went" last evening, he will be a success, as he made a decided hit with the audience,' printed in a paper dated 1913-06-14. page
  35. 1913Jun 21 John W. Cooper's ventriloquist act played June 9-11 at Natchez, Miss.; June 12-14 at Empire theater, Brattleboro, Vt.; June 16-18 at Star theater, Lawton, Mass.; and June 19-22 at Premier theater, Fall River, Mass. (1913). page
  36. 1913Jun 21 John W. Cooper, ventriloquist, played the last half of the week at Fall River, Mass., as reported in a June 1913 trade notice. page
  37. 1913Jun 21 A theatrical notes column (by Billy E. Jones) reported that John W. Cooper's ventriloquist act was 'meeting with great success' on Loew's New England circuit. page
  38. 1913Aug 9 John W. Cooper, billed as 'the polite ventriloquist,' was playing the Hippodrome in Richmond, Va., on the Consolidated circuit (week of August 9, 1913). Hippodrome, Richmond, Va page
  39. 1913Aug 30 John W. Cooper, called 'that premier ventriloquist,' performed 'Fun in a Barber Shop' at the Palace Airdome (Washington, D.C.), new to Palace audiences and reportedly making a profound impression with lots of applause. Palace page
  40. 1913Sep 20 John Cooper, the ventriloquist, was the headliner at the Monogram theater this week (as reported in the Freeman, Sept. 20, 1913). page
  41. 1913Sep 20 John Cooper used four dummies in his ventriloquist act; his voice was described as clear and distinct with his lips seldom seen to move. page
  42. 1913Sep 20 John Cooper, the ventriloquist, was the headliner at the Monogram theater this week (per Freeman, Sept 20, 1913 issue); he had just come from Louisville, where a newspaper (the News) praised him. page
  43. 1913Sep 27 John W. Cooper was billed as 'the Polite Ventriloquist' and also described as 'One of the Cleverest Ventriloquists' in the Colored Consolidated Vaudeville Exchange listings, 1913. page
  44. 1913Sep 27 A review stated Cooper 'has worked out a great act' and that 'throwing the voice is not it alone; he uses it with five dummies, not to speak of his own part, which is considerable.' page
  45. 1913Sep 27 John W. Cooper, called 'the polite ventriloquist,' performed an act set in a barber shop using five dummies (a customer, a Negro comedy character, a lady manicurist, a newsboy, and a parrot) plus his own part, reviewed in a 1913 newspaper as 'one of ability' who 'worked out a great act.' page
  46. 1913Oct 18 John W. Cooper, described as 'the polite ventriloquist,' was the curtain raiser at the Pekin Theater, Cincinnati, Ohio (bill reported 1913-10-18), using several figures and creating continuous laughter; his act was called 'the largest ventriloquist act ever shown at the Pekin.' Pekin Theater page
  47. 1913Nov 8 John W. Cooper, 'the ventriloquist,' was reported carrying a bunch of special scenery and 'going big everywhere,' per a theatrical column dated 1913-11-08. page
  48. 1913Dec 13 John W. Cooper's route included the Strong opera house, Burlington, Vt., week of December 15, and the Park theater, Glen Falls, N.Y., week of December 22 (per the Dec. 13, 1913 newspaper item). page
  49. 1913Dec 13 John W. Cooper's route was listed as Strong opera house, Burlington, Vt., week of December 15, 1913, and Park theater, Glens Falls, N.Y., week of December 22, 1913. page
  50. 1914Apr 11 Cooper was booked April 13, 14, 15 at a theater in Salem, Mass., with another theater to follow (per item at the Michaels Agency). Salem, Mass page
  51. 1914Apr 11 John W. Cooper was booked April 13, 14, 15 at a theater in Salem, Mass. (name garbled, possibly 'Bijou'), according to the April 11, 1914 clipping. Salem, Mass page
  52. 1914Aug 13 John W. Cooper, described as a comedy ventriloquist, presented 'Fun in a Barber Shop' at the Majestic Theatre on Aug. 13, 1914, sharing the bill with Marie Elmore and Johnny Ritchie (singing, talking and dancing act) and the Frisco Four (singing quartet). Majestic Theatre page
  53. 1914Aug 13 At the Majestic Theatre, South Bend, on Aug. 13, 1914, John W. Cooper shared the vaudeville bill with Mario Elmore and Johnny Ritchie (singing, talking, and dancing act) and 'The Frisco Four' (singing quartet). Majestic Theatre page
  54. 1914Aug 15 John W. Cooper, billed as 'comedy ventriloquist,' appeared on the vaudeville bill at the Majestic theater, alongside the Frisco Quartet and Elmore and Ritchie (comedy singers and whistlers), with the run concluding that day (per the 1914-08-15 edition). page
  55. 1915Nov 6 John W. Cooper, 'the ventriloquist,' opened his season and was reported working successfully in and out of New York, per a November 6, 1915 New York News column by Billy E. Jones. New York News page
  56. 1916Sep 23 John Cooper, the ventriloquist, arrived in Chicago from New York (reported 1916-09-23); he will not appear in any Chicago theater but leaves at once to fill western lyceum dates with 'the Invincibles.' page
  57. 1916Dec 16 John W. Cooper is described as 'the noted ventriloquist of Brooklyn, N.Y.', touring with The Invincible Concert Company in Arkansas, playing churches and colleges, per a December 16, 1916 notice. page
  58. 1926Aug 20 John W. Cooper is described as 'the race ventriloquist' in an August 1926 Washington D.C. newspaper item about his wife's death. page
  59. 1939Jan 10 John Cooper, described as 'well-known in the ventriloquism world as the colored Edgar Bergen,' performed at the Loew Poli theater in Waterbury for one performance only at 9 p.m. on 1939-01-11 (per the 1939-01-10 announcement), alongside performers from the Cotton Club, Plantation Club, and Harlem Uproar Club including the Hillman brothers, Babe Mathews, Slim and Eddie, Charlie and Fay Banks, and the Five Crackerjacks. page
  60. 1944May 5 John Cooper is described as an old-time minstrel man and ventriloquist, part of a touring variety act that also included George Watts (emcee), the Three Poms, Sandy Burns, Myra Taylor, Patterson and Jackson, the Three Cabin Girls, Smiles and Smiles, and Eubie Blake (1944 newspaper item). page

Sources

  1. Puppet Arts Museum ventriloquism exhibit program, 1998 — scanned document, Jimmy Vee collection
  2. The Oracle (International Brotherhood of Ventriloquists), Jan 2, 1953 — scanned document, Jimmy Vee collection
  3. The Freeman, Feb 22 & Sep 27, 1913 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  4. Dialogue Magazine, Winter 1998 issue — scanned document, Jimmy Vee collection
  5. Trav S.D., "John W. Cooper: Pioneering African American Ventriloquist," Travalanche, Feb 4, 2013
  6. International Ventriloquist Society, "Ventriloquist John Cooper"
  7. The Freeman (Indianapolis), Oct 26 & Nov 2, 1901 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  8. The Freeman, Apr 19, 1902 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  9. The Freeman, May 17 & Jun 7, 1902, and Feb 28, 1903 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  10. The Freeman, Jun 27 & Jul 4, 1903 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  11. The Freeman, route sheet, 1909–1916 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  12. The Freeman, Dec 1909–Feb 1916 (title run), and the Daily Kennebec Journal (Augusta, Maine), Dec 6, 1909 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  13. W.S. Berger, "Fun in a Barber Shop," as reprinted on Ventriloquist Central Blog
  14. The Freeman, Jul 27, 1912 – Sep 27, 1913 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  15. The Freeman, Sep 4, 1909 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  16. The Freeman, dated notices, 1910–1916 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  17. Pawtucket Gazette and Chronicle (Rhode Island), Jan 1, 1909 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  18. The Freeman, Oct 23, 1909 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  19. The Freeman, Nov 2, 1912 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  20. The Freeman, Jun 26, 1909, and Jan 29, 1910 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  21. The Freeman, Sep 23 & Dec 16, 1916 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  22. Ventriloquist Central, "Tribute to Ventriloquism: Vaudeville Ventriloquists"
  23. The Oracle, Mar 4, 1957; Jul 8, 1957; Nov 12, 1957; and Jan 2, 1959 — scanned documents, Jimmy Vee collection
  24. FamousFix, John W. Cooper profile
  25. The Freeman, Apr 22, 1905 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America
  26. International Ventriloquist Society, Ventriloquist Hall of Fame