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Saturday, February 16, 2013

February 16, 2013: Is your head made of wood? Well, yeah.


Some times the combination of a man and a dummy is awesome entertainment. Ventriloquist dummies, mannequins, marionettes and puppets can all get away with saying things and doing things that flesh and blood humans could never get away with.

In 1903, Edgar Bergen was born in Chicago, Illinois. Edgar Bergen was not the best technical ventriloquist in the world but he had that certain something that is just magic. Edgar worked with Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd and his act was gold. Bergen was hilarious even though he usually didn’t get credit for being funny, the dummies did, which is the trick, getting people to forget you are the comic and the straight man the puppet and the puppeteer. Bergen appeared on a couple of Disney TV shows and the movie, Fun and Fancy Free. Conversely, Walt appeared on Bergen’s radio show. The last thing that Bergen performed in was 1979’s The Muppet Movie. To honor Edgar Bergen, let’s go to the Muppet 3D show in Hollywood Studios.




James Baskett was the first live actor ever hired by Disney to play in a feature film and you can’t watch the movie in the USA (at least not a legal copy). Baskett was born in 1904 and in 1945 he auditioned for a voice part in a Disney feature based on the Uncle Remus stories. Walt liked him so much that he hired him on the spot to play Uncle Remus in Song of the South. Baskett shined as Uncle Remus and received an honorary Academy Award in 1948 making him the first black male to win an Oscar and the first actor to win an Academy Award for a performance in a Walt Disney film. You know where to go: Magic Kingdom: Splash Mountain. It’s a zipadeedoodah day.

Loading for a Southern Mountain Excursion.


Brer Fox

Everybody sing.

Remember, your best excuse is always: waiting for your dreams to come true.


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