Peter Rich

Peter Rich and "Zingo, Boy From Outer Space," a Frank Marshall figure built with a telephone dial and a light bulb in its head. Studio portrait, Bruno of Hollywood, via Ventriloquist Central Blog.

Most performers protect what works. Peter Rich wrote it down and published it. What a church social pays you (nothing, but a free meal and a friendly crowd). What a hillbilly circuit pays you (ten dollars a show plus gas money, and don't laugh, George Gobel and Andy Griffith started exactly there). The seven questions every audience is going to ask you, in the order they're going to ask them. How long your act should run, and why the worse the room, the longer they want to keep you up there. He gave away the whole rulebook, for free, year after year, under a byline, in the trade's own paper. Pull up a chair. This is the story of the man who told the family how it actually works.

A town with no book on the subject

He was born Peter Badrich. No birth certificate sits in this record, only the trade's own count: the community threw him a ninetieth birthday party on June 17, 2011, and the arithmetic behind that date, checked twice against the calendar, points to June 17, 1921.^[1] As a teenager he went looking for a book on ventriloquism in his hometown library, a town of forty thousand people, and there wasn't one. It wasn't even mentioned in the magic books.^[2] So he taught himself, alone, on a secondhand Frank Marshall figure, "practically stuttering" through his first church shows.^[2]

Western Maryland College gave him a waiter's scholarship. A year in, World War II took him for four years. He spent that stretch as a G.I. entertainer in the China Burma India theater, and in his own words, "not a good way to win a war, but good training for a shy guy who wanted to get into show business."^[3] A St. Louis tailor made his figure a custom uniform, free, "his contribution to the war effort," and the tailor's own office staff applauded once it fit right.^[3]

A month after he got out, a second rate magician introduced him to a second rate agent, who booked him as, in his own phrase, a third rate act. That was the start of a lot of bumps. Over the years there were fewer bumps and more pluses, and he made "a comfortable living, with a lot of ego trips intertwined with a lot of downers."^[2] No polish, no shortcut. Just the honest arithmetic of a working act finding its feet.

Church halls to cruise ships

He worked out of Hagerstown, Maryland, for years, the kind of pro who'd stop in Cincinnati for a phone gab fest with other vents before flying off to a date in Texarkana.^[4] In April 1955 he played two weeks at Abe's Colony Club in Dallas, "virgin territory" for him, and the local press "commented profusely on his ventriloquial talent."^[5]

He also worked the account business, the kind of date vaudeville never listed. At Shillito's Garage in Cincinnati he did a live commercial for Westinghouse Electric while his figure Oscar tried to wreck it, and never managed to. He was, by report, "great on ad-lib during the commercial."^[7] He and Oscar also turned up on Cincinnati's "Uncle Al's" television show, and worked the Westinghouse booth at the Better Homes Exposition on the Mississippi State Fairgrounds under the slogan "Be Sure, If It's Westinghouse."^[6] Late in his career, by his own colleagues' account, he spent most of his working years on cruise ships and trade shows, promoting for General Electric with his figure Rawhide at his side.^[10] One surviving flyer puts him on the bill as "Peter Rich, Comic," on a program headlined by Frank Sinatra Jr.^[9]

The columnist who gave away the trade

For decades he wrote a column called "Peter Rich Rites," carried in The Oracle, its successor New Oracle, and Dialogue. He'd earlier written a column called "The Masked Ventriloquist" in Double Talk.^[11] None of it read like a man protecting his edge.

His 1958 career guide printed the actual rate card of the American vent trade. Church socials: no fee, "you can expect a free meal and the friendship of a nice crowd that will give you confidence," no more than once a month per church. Luncheon clubs: a teenager should charge five to ten dollars, though the usual booking fee for a speaker ran twenty five. Hillbilly circuits: ten dollars a show plus transportation was fine, and if it turned into five nights a week, "that ain't bad." Night clubs: local acts as low as ninety dollars a week, traveling acts one hundred twenty five to one hundred seventy five for a single, with ten percent to the agent, and a warning worth framing: "you cannot draw more than you worked. If you do that the first night, the club owner will think you're a drifter and you're broke."^[12]

The same guide printed the seven questions he said every audience asked, in the order they asked them: is there such a thing as throwing the voice, how far can you throw it, what about Bergen's lips ("he's a writer, and a good one"), how does Paul Winchell make the dummy move its arms and legs, what about Senor Wences ("he's the classic vent"), can anybody learn this, and are there any books.^[12] He printed a full children's Christmas show format too: ten minutes with the knee figure, a chalk talk, a songfest "even if you can't sing," and a parakeet gag made from a hanky over a child's hand, closing with the instruction to "keep your wallet open so the smiling entertainment chairman will drop the money in gently."^[13] In 1959 he surveyed six working acts, Bergen, Jimmy Nelson, Bob Karl, Senor Wences, Al Robinson, and Eddie Garson, on nothing but how they walked on stage.^[14] By 1966 his advice on set length was blunt and durable: ten to twenty minutes, or a tight fifteen, two figures to help you pace it, and "the worse the room, the longer they want you to work."^[17]

His sharpest column, "You're Guilty," was written as a straight accusation at every vent who bought a figure swearing they'd be original and then ran the same stock bits everyone else ran, the same songs, the same smoking-and-crying routine, right up to the new suitcase they bought thinking it would make the act look classy. His verdict landed in one line: "sameness killed vaudeville."^[8] He also ran a topical script service called Topic Talk, timed material two months at a stretch so working vents wouldn't have to stall on the same old lines, and it reached the number two spot in the trade by mid 1958.^[6][15] His own pitch for it doubled as his philosophy: "it's a matter of delivery. Confidence. A good performer should be able to take the oldest known joke and deliver it well."^[16] And when Clinton Detweiler wouldn't print how to do the drinking bit in public, calling it a trade secret, Peter Rich had already explained it in a newsletter years earlier, in plain print, for anyone who wanted to read it.^[18]

He kept his sense of humor on the page too. In 1980, writing from aboard a Caribbean cruise ship, he published a column called "Ventriloquism With Porpoise": a ventriloquist figure survives a shipwreck, washes ashore, teaches a porpoise to talk, the porpoise gets discovered by Marlin Perkins for Wild Kingdom and signed by Disney for a feature titled "The Prince and the Porpoise," and the whole thing ends with the figure warping from underwater exposure while "the egotistical porpoise doesn't notice his act falling apart. He's too busy blowing bubbles without moving his lips."^[19]

Oscar, Rawhide, and the boy from outer space

His figures tell their own story. Oscar came first, the figure he used through the 1950s for the Westinghouse dates and the club circuit.^[7] Frank Marshall later converted that same figure into Rawhide, who stayed at Peter's side for the next six decades, right through his final performing years in San Antonio.^[9] And somewhere in the middle, Marshall built him something genuinely strange: a figure named Zingo, "Boy From Outer Space," with an actual rotary telephone dial set into the chest and a light bulb built into the top of the head. Zingo eventually passed out of Peter's hands into the collection of ventriloquist Jay Johnson.^[20]

The family and the community

He was married to Maisie for fifty four years.^[21] His son Stephen was already following in his footsteps by age ten, doing his own shows with his own Frank Marshall figure at Fun Night and school programs.^[22] Maisie died in 1998, after a stroke five years earlier, and Peter moved to San Antonio to be near Stephen, who taught at San Antonio College.^[2]

In San Antonio he kept doing exactly what he'd always done: talking shop. He and fellow San Antonio vent Ian Varella held weekly two hour "bull sessions."^[23] At ninety, he was guest of honor at the first Texas Ventriloquist/Puppeteers Gathering, sharing dinner stories about Frank Marshall and Paul Winchell and, by every account, stealing the open mic session.^[24] One young collector, too young to get into the club where Peter was working, remembered it plainly: Peter took him to lunch instead, and back at the hotel showed him his figures. "Just a class guy."^[25] Asked the secret to reaching eighty seven still working, he had an answer ready, same as always: "clean living and clean liquor."^[26]

The last years

The community that had followed his column for decades followed him into old age the same way, in public, in the same blogs. His ninetieth birthday in 2011 brought a scrapbook organized by a fellow vent, Bob Abdou, who asked well wishers to mail cards, photos with their own figures, and clippings, all bound together for Peter to keep.^[1]

Still laughing, 2014

Bob Abdou visited Peter near his 93rd birthday, in the middle of a week booked for fourteen shows in eleven Texas towns. "No matter how busy I am," he said, "seeing Peter Rich was priority number one." Health weak, spirit good.

Bob Abdou, via Ventriloquist Central Blog

By his ninety second birthday he was living at a health and rehabilitation center in San Antonio, and the same community was still mailing him cards through the same blogs.^[27] In 2015 he entered hospice. Bob Abdou passed the word along: "So sad to report our beloved ventriloquist brother, Peter Rich is now in hospice, all communication is no longer available. It's now just a matter of time."^[28] He died August 13, 2015, at ninety four, shortly after a visit from Stephen and his family.^[10]

He never headlined the rooms the way Bergen or Winchell did, and he never seemed to want to. He just kept telling the whole family, in print, exactly how it worked: what a room pays, what an audience asks, how long to stay up there, and why sameness is the one thing that actually kills an act. He gave the answers away for free for sixty years, and the family kept writing back until the very end.

A telephone dial and a light bulb for a head, and here I thought I had it rough being made of wood. Ninety years of free advice and the man never once charged for the secret, which if you ask any dummy, was the real trick all along.— Freddy Fiddlesticks, spokesdummy