ABSTRACT
Ventriloquism has taken many forms in the ancient world. Usually associated with priests and prophets, ventriloquism promoted the illusion that one person's voice was coming from another thing - sometimes a tree or stone, sometimes other persons or their representations. NBC and CBS radio, Bergen and McCarthy occupied airtime from 1937 to 1955, an odd but prominent piece of American culture. In choosing, Bergen/McCarthy one model among many, one from the institutional background of Western shows business and the context of comedy. While ventriloquism became popular amusement during the 1890s was the first to do ventriloquism with a single dummy-on-knee act. The key to the act is in the exchange-in the case of Bergen and McCarthy a rapid-fire interplay displaying the ventriloquist's talent for switching between significantly different personalities. To illustrate the Bergen/McCarthy paradigm, and to investigate its utility, compare the ventriloqual exchange with a certain designated period in the history of art that calling 'the work in progress'.
