Jay Johnson Transcript

A.E. Guy: [00:00:00] Welcome to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with your hosts, Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt. Phil and Ted's guest is Tony award-winning actor and ventriloquist extraordinary Jay Johnson, star of the Broadway hit show The Two and Only, and the breakthrough TV comedy series, Soap. And now you sexy boomer hosts Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt.

Ted Bonnitt: welcome to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show I'm Ted Bonnitt.

Phil Proctor: [00:00:30] And by the process of elimination, which I just did by the way.

Ted Bonnitt: No, you can't do that. You did that in the last show. I'm sorry. You're going to have to change jokes.

Phil Proctor: And there's somebody sitting with us at our beautiful outdoor studio here in my upper patio in, in blessed Benedict Canyon, uh, and who are, you?

Jay Johnson: My name is Jay Johnson. I'm a home inspector and what's going on here?

Phil Proctor: There's a party going on across the street, which turns out [00:01:00] to be a daycare center.

Jay Johnson: The daycare came over and asked us to hold it down.

Phil Proctor: Remember it got a little unruly? Well, our unruly guest is Jay Johnson, uh, who has a multifaceted career and you are probably best known for your ventriloquism and your comedy, your sharp wit -ouch- which I see you brought with you today. And most people of course know you from the television show, Soap. And probably from your [00:01:30] one man show the two and only is so named because?

Jay Johnson: Because, uh, that was what a character said. We would always be my first character. Squeaky was not on Soap. He was too sweet.So we had to recast. He said, it'll always be the two of us,.

Ted Bonnitt: It was an absolute delight. It was just so funny,

Phil Proctor: An amazing show because you really are telling the story of how you fell into your profession as it were. I saw it in New York at the Hayes.

Jay Johnson:It won the Tony for the 2007 season.

Ted Bonnitt: For people who are not acquainted with ventriloquism, they think that throwing the voice is a thing that you're able to somehow project your voice across the room. Of course, that's an illusion. So the question is, where's all that conversation happening?

Jay Johnson: Well, uh, I love to study, uh, the, uh, physics and physiology of, of speech, because it's very [00:02:30] interesting to me, but you have to, when you're talking about speech and, and sound, you also have to talk about the ear and how it works and how a human ear works so much different from an animal's ear. If you think about it, a horse has very poor eyesight because it's on side of their heads, but their ears can turn independently, like cat like a cat, right? Like a lot of animals, rabbits. They, they can turn their ears independently and then they can get [00:03:00] the direction of the thing.

We have ears that are stationary on either side of our head. So to get the full effect, we really have to turn our head. So the sound comes to us and the way we, we are led to that is by our eyes, our eyes will, you know, what does that sound? Oh, that's it. Now I know what that is. I knew what the sound was, but now it can identify where it is, the distance.

In ventriloquism you don't really throw your voice, but the sound wave has [00:03:30] amplitude and frequency. And the frequency is how many times that it repeats itself, but the amplitude is how big and long the wave is. When a sound is coming from some distance away, it travels to the atmosphere. So the amplitude gets smaller and smaller, smaller.

The further away it is, the frequency doesn't change, but the amplitude gets smaller as well until it, it, it doesn't move because it has no amplitude. Our ears, we don’t [00:04:00] use them as much as our eyes, basically years just counting what adheres as, uh, amplitude and frequency. And so it's obviously that sounds like a dog and it sounds like the dog is next door because the amplitude that I'm perceiving on my area that would make sense. So what a ventriloquist does is create that amplitude and then place in your mind, a reason for them to go there. Uh, okay. That sounds like it's. Yeah, it's coming from over there. I've just given your mind [00:04:30] a way. So now. You don't have to look your mind says, oh yeah, yeah. That's a guy that's down in the basement or whatever.

And that's when he went, ventriloquism is you can't throw your voice past the ear of a person. Um, we are, we're sitting here and I'm facing and if, uh, it'd be great. If I could make you think that somebody was behind you and you're turning to go wide, it doesn't does it cause sound stops at your ear. It doesn't go and come back.

Anything behind you. I can [00:05:00] make you think that there's something behind me because it's, it's coming to you. Isn't that right. But you can't do the limitations of, of the, um, con job are, are interesting for disappears.

Ted Bonnitt: The eyes on the puppet are critical too. I think for spatial orientation.

Jay Johnson: Yeah. It also for acting and also for, for, uh, emotions and everything.

Ted Bonnitt: The eyes are really, uh, uh, really important. You know, I was [00:05:30] wanting to watch you to see if I could see any lips move or how you were trying to do it, even though it was obviously impossible to see it, but drawn to the puppet.

Phil Proctor: was highly animated to. That, uh, that are built in were, are quite remarkable.

Jay Johnson: And the idea is to make it look as much alive as you can. And we're not maybe changing now with all the social media, but we're taught to interact with it with a person that seems to be alive. [00:06:00] Rather than dismiss them. So all the talk shows I did back in the day, you would sit next to Mike Douglas or Dina Shore whoever it was, and they would want to talk to me, that's probably the question, but, but Bob is right there and they can't help, but look at bond.

Then they catch themselves looking at it. And I think every Merv Griffin that I didn't know, I remind that that's Mike would say, well, I'm talking to a puppet!That's why we're here.

Ted Bonnitt: Your monkey character Darwin. I [00:06:30] was absolutely focused on Darwin's hanging foot in front of you. I don't know why it was just so real.

Phil Proctor: That's another thing that's fun about the show. You get to demonstrate your skill with different kinds of puppets. By the way, why don't they call them dummies? Because it is that degrading to the little guys?

Jay Johnson: A lot of people call them dummies. In fact, uh, the, uh, world's greatest ventriloquist museum and right outside of Cincinnati, [00:07:30] uh, they refer to them as dummies all the time.

I, I never cared for that word. Because it comes from the root word dumb, which means unable to talk. Even words are important. If I believe that it really doesn't talk hard to me to convince somebody else. And in the show, I remind everybody that they prefer to be called wooden Americans.

Ted Bonnitt: Interestingly, your craft, your work has been compared to sewage and demonism through history [00:08:00]

Jay Johnson: Starting in 856 CE, I believe that was when, um, said that it is a wickedness lurking in the human belly, deserving to dwell in a cesspool.

Phil Proctor: That's why the Vonta, the French word for a stomach.

Jay Johnson: Yes. Ventriloquism actually means speaking through your stomach, the belly and Eliquis, meaning stump, uh, speak. So speaking through your belly, your belly long before puppets ventriloquism is used at a seance technique or speaking to the winds or talking to a [00:08:30] statue that perhaps yeah.

Everything. So it was, it was very mysterious and you didn't let on that. You were doing that, but you can see diaphragm movement on anybody that's doing anything vocally, you know, we kind of cover it up with clothes sometimes, but so I assume that they saw those first ventriloquist and they believed that that's where the sound was coming from, which.

Ted Bonnitt: But they thought it was a demon that belly of the beast. So this was an ancient superstition that still lives [00:09:00] today. In the show you were talking about a story about how some, uh, I guess fundamentalist Christians, did that really happen?

Jay Johnson: Yeah, that actually, uh,

Ted Bonnitt: Please tell the story.

Jay Johnson: So after the show, um, these people that were fundamentalists and, and evangelist, trying to save everyone came up and told me that I shouldn't do that because Satan was the first ventriloquist based upon the fact that Satan threw his voice into the snake in the garden of Eden. So they had taken that passage [00:09:30] of, uh, Satan, uh, talking to a snake as ventriloquism.

And I'd never heard that before. I had no idea that I was doing something satanic. Um, so yeah, it, it, it has that, even in the Bible, there are certain passages. I used to be able to quote them a book and chapter, but one case where a, uh, little slave girl is making a donkey talk and she was predicting and sooth [00:10:00] saying.

Phil Proctor: She was speaking through her ass?

Jay Johnson: Man! How did I miss that?Phil, thank you. Well, it's gone now. It's gone.

Ted Bonnitt: That’s why Phil gets the big bucks!

Jay Johnson: There'll be a new version of the two and only, and I know one on the jokes. So one of the disciples, uh, cast the demon out of her and she can't do that anymore. Uh, and so there were saying that's, you know, it's a, it's an evil spirit. So you, you can't, you shouldn't do that.

The way I interpret [00:10:30] the Bible. In that case, being a ventriloquist, I think I'm blessed with the talent, not cursed by the talent. It was a trick that they were making money off of her and she was a slave getting nothing. So they were basically using her.

So it's not that the disciples cast out a demon because she was, he acts and casts out the demon of, of, uh, these rich guys capitalizing on this little girl. Had some sort of issue. So to me it wasn't like a ventriloquist, a exorcism, it was [00:11:00] a capitalist exercise.

Ted Bonnitt: But then as man evolved and got smarter..

Phil Proctor: Did he?

Jay Johnson: I can't wait to see that!

Ted Bonnitt: In the 1700s, uh, someone, a Frenchman announced that his studies indicated that it was not demons. It was just simply mental illness.

Jay Johnson: That's right. They commissioned this study, uh, the Royal academy of sciences to find out if ventriloquism was a demon possession, uh, physical abnormality or what, what it really was. And they, [00:11:30] they concluded it was neither one of those two, but it was mental illness.

Ted Bonnitt: The question really is, why were they studying it?

Jay Johnson: That's a question I can't answer. I think at that time they were trying to debunk the spirituality of it.

Ted Bonnitt: At the turn of the 20th century, mediums were very popular, like life after death. The new century made people curious about the unknown. They had a big industry at the time, you bet that's pretty much [00:12:00] ventriloquism at the time. Wasn't really so much show business.

Jay Johnson: Oh yeah. Before ventriloquism was combined with a puppet, uh, and it combined itself with puppetry, it was that a cult would be on the kin to a palm reading or astrology, or you would go to, and you might not have called them a, you would have called him the soothsayer.

For example, a women and you went to this cave and, uh, she would consult the wind. Now, uh, the, the [00:12:30] structure of this cave was that there was a, opening that vented, um, volcanic smoke. And so if you were in there for a little while you got a little bit high, busy, high acoustically, it was just perfect for a ventriloquist.

And then they would prophesize and tell all the things and that you would go and do that. So ventriloquism has been associated with those kinds of things, a lot more than comedy and puppetry and, and [00:13:00] stage performance.

Phil Proctor: Your affinity for music. Did that start as at a young age? Did you have piano lessons?

Jay Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. Both of my aunts were piano teachers. Yeah. So I got to choose which one I liked best. And, uh, my father, um, recognized early. He was an educator and teacher and eventually became superintendent. My mom was a teacher and a librarian, but they recognized really early on that, that I was not…[00:13:30]

Phil Proctor: Normal?

Jay Johnson: I was on some sort of spectrum. So they were going to find what spectrum it was. It turns out that, uh, I was dyslexic long before they even had a word for that. Great joke. Somebody told me, he said, uh, if you're dyslexic, you should join our theatrical group. And I said, oh yeah, that'd be fun. What are you doing now? And they said, well, we're now touring, “Annie, Get Your Nug.”[00:14:00]

Uh, so anyway, my folks would encourage anything that would keep my attention because books and education was not,

But I loved Houdini. And so they bought a book on Houdini.

Ted Bonnitt: I read that Houdini, because of his mother, was determined to debunk.

Jay Johnson: He wasn't. There was, there was a lot of that going on in his day and that the church of spiritual wisdom was all about St. Francis. And to this [00:14:30] day, there is a code word that he gave to his wife, Bess that he said, if I, if I can ever come back, I will give the code word. And only she had it and she died with it. We're not sure what it was.

Phil Proctor: Rosebud.

Ted Bonnitt: The story of how Houdini realized it was all fraud. He was taken by his father to talk to his (dead) mother and that was commonplace back then.It was basically a balm to help people who were grieving, like, uh, to try to calm that person down. You can talk to your lost mother or your husband. And so [00:15:00] they brought Harry as a young kid, I guess he was 13 or something to talk to his mother. And he asked his mother a question and the problem was. The medium answered in English.

And his mother never spoken English, I guess, Hungarian. And so he knew right then and there, it was a fraud and that pretty much pissed him off.

Jay Johnson: Yeah. Don't piss up a magician.

Ted Bonnitt: So ventriloquism became associated with an ilk if you will.

Jay Johnson: Oh yeah.

Phil Proctor: When did it really take the turn to vaudeville? Do you have any idea who might've created the [00:15:30] first puppet act?

Jay Johnson: The first person that we know or at least we have a record of that actually worked with a puppet. It was a, uh, uh, actually a Nutcracker carving. His name was St. Gilley and he didn't know about the sounds of ventriloquism, but he realized he could make this talk for children. And that became a performance rather than some spiritual experience.

Ted Bonnitt: When was this?

Jay Johnson: 1772?

Ted Bonnitt: I wonder if he had an uphill swim in terms of trying to make it a clean art.

Jay Johnson: Probably. Then [00:16:00] what happened after, after him, uh, the rule of the day was large puppets- live size, arranged on a stage and you do a play. And so there's one guy that's doing all the voices for all the characters and not unlike us a quick change artists that they used to do as well.

Aa guy named Fred Russell had “Witness for the Prosecution,” 20 characters on a stage. Then he later [00:16:30] was the first guy to shrink a puppet down so he could hold it and walk right to the audience, holding this little puppet. And the newspaper said that women swooned and fainted, and they couldn't deal with the fact that they, it wasn't real, but it was.

Phil Proctor: Like one of my first dates.

Jay Johnson: That gives rise to the segment of control. It wasn't because when, when people would see that act, they were [00:17:00] basically a stare into mannequins that at a mouth movement. So you look at it and go, well, there's, there's a whole stage full of dummies.

Ted Bonnitt: The ventriloquist puppet has been maligned in the horror genre as well because it's in a scary clown territory of a being that isn’t real, but maybe it is real?

Phil Proctor: You’ve done TV shows where the dummy causes you to become a murderer.

Jay Johnson: Yeah. Uh, it was, um, after a Colombo, they did Mrs. Colombo. And so Mrs. Colombo solved these things. So I played the part of ventriloquist who has lost control of who he thinks these puppets are. And eventually has to kill the guy who made the puppet because the puppet was controlling him.

So, you know, for all the times I rail against, uh, uh, those, those parts and characters, I've played several.

Phil Proctor: You actually had a very extensive acting career. Maybe you still do.

Jay Johnson: If there's a part for a ventriloquist, my age that comes up, I'll get it, you know, and a few times some people got it. But they never saw a ventriloquism as acting.

They never saw that as an actor now, weird. It’s like a stand-up comic is not always a great comedy actor, but this is dialogue.

Ted Bonnitt: You should have gotten paid twice. [00:18:30] You're listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with our special guest, Jay Johnson. We'll be right back.

A.E. Guy: You're listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt. To hear all the sexy boomer shows, go to our website, sexyboomershow.com. And please tell your friends about the sexy boomer show. If you want to know when fresh sexy boomer shows are posted, press the subscribe button in your podcast player for free delivery to your ears. Back to Phil and Ted and their [00:19:00] special guest Jay Johnson, star of the Tony award winning Broadway hit show The Two and Only.

Ted Bonnitt: Hi, I'm Ted

Phil Proctor: and I’m Phil. And we're back with the sexy boomer show. Who are we talking to today, Ted?

Ted Bonnitt: Jay Johnson!

Jay Johnson: Hello there.

Ted Bonnitt: You broke ground with your art by bringing it to television in the most extraordinary way, which was the sitcom, Soap.

Jay Johnson: Soap was an amazing experience. And yeah, [00:19:30] it, it was perfect for me.

Ted Bonnitt: Soap at the time was considered very cutting edge and risqué. Kind of avant-garde to tell us what soap was and the significance of what you did coming to that show.

Jay Johnson: Time Magazine got a, a copy of the script. They said that soap is 99 and 44 percent impure. Because we had a character [00:20:00] that was gay. Impotency was in the first to a couple of episodes. Um, there was going to be a scene that really never happened- a priest was going to seduce a woman in the confession.

Well, uh, well, the thing about it is, oh, you're talking about comedy setups, not talking about really doing that. It's not, yeah, it's not, it wasn't, it was always going to be a comedy. And the hook was that it [00:20:30] was a long arc. Nothing happened in just 30 minutes. It would, it would go over several episodes. So we had the advantage. Uh, we never had a script that had a name. It wasn't a “Chuckles the Clown.” So it was show five show number 7 or 8, show nine to 10, because that's what they shot. But since all the scenes were interchangeable, there was no 30 minute arc that you had to pay off here. They could say, well, [00:21:00] we're light with comedy here.

Let's do that scene. That's funnier. And they would just shuffle the scenes around because they had no relationship to the one before it necessarily. So that was kind of breakthrough.

Ted Bonnitt: What year was this?

Jay Johnson: First show is 77. We went to 77 to 81.

Ted Bonnitt: Mary Hartman Fernwood Tonight, the seventies were a real open period of creative experimentation.

Jay Johnson: We were first show to say the word “horny.” Now, when you think about that now, yeah, yeah, there [00:21:30] was nothing. And to get that word into the script at the time we were allowed to maybe say one hell and one, damn. Maybe if it was relevant and that it was whatever, but you couldn't say more than two in an episode.

So this, this script was just full of hell this and damn that what the hell? And, and. Oh, there's, there's no way. There's no way. Well, when they said, well, you can't say hell five times. You got do, maybe once. Okay. And damn, you have to say [00:22:00] it. Maybe let's don't say damn, I don't know. Argue, argue, argue. And they just, weren't looking at the word horny.

Jay Johnson: They just didn’t hear it.

Ted Bonnitt: It's amazing what slipped through because of that subjective judgment of the sensor was stuck on something that got to them personally, and they completely missed the point of the real joke.

Jay Johnson: And, and I think that, uh, censorship not. For it or against it? Well more for it than against it, perhaps I think back then it made for [00:22:30] better writing because you couldn't just throw it down and say all these things I'm going to say, well, okay, you can't say the word pregnant. Okay. So how do you get around saying. Writers became very good at, at, at wordsmithing around those things to make it subtle. And, and so the people would get, it would get it.

Ted Bonnitt: How did a ventriloquist character get into the soaps scenario?

Jay Johnson: The first year the plot twist at the end of the year was who killed Peter Campbell.[00:23:00] Brother stepbrother to Jody. And anyway, so we were real brothers, so Chuck and Bob were supposed to be the murderers of Peter Campbell. And Susan got that from the book Magic by William Goldman. So she had read that, that he was a murder, a murder. Uh, very dark portrayal of ventriloquism. And she said, well, that'd be fun to have the villain be a ventriloquist.

And so I was on the show for seven episodes to be the killer, and they would write me off, but [00:23:30] we found a niche that helped us like Benson was to the, to the Tate's Chuck and Bob were to the Campbell's to be that great chorus to say, you know, they're insane, insane. And somebody has to say that, are you just accepted?

Well, this is crazy. Chuck and I got to say that. So we stayed and they found another way to get the killer. And the plot of the show really does take a detour at that point.

Phil Proctor: Bob was your original puppet, right?

Jay Johnson: Uh, no, that was Squeaky.

Phil Proctor: Did squeaky play [00:24:00] the part of Bob?

Jay Johnson: No. Um, Squeaky, they decided was much too sweet to play this part. So, uh, they recast, they recast and literally, uh, here is a puppet that I've, I've had made by a man that becomes my mentor and every, every stroke of a chisel, I, I know why. And now they just say, here's your partner. And the mech mechanism was not, not comfortable. It was just, uh, you know, worked a long [00:24:30] time just to make it workable for self.

Ted Bonnitt: Who built it?

Jay Johnson: It was built by a Renee's and de Haas who was a marionette maker. And then he, he did a stock ventriloquist puppet. It was bought by a guy named Jack Shafton. Jack Shafton changed the face a little bit and then sold it to Thomas Harris. So it had gone through three or four machinations before I even got it.

So by the time the second season came around and I was, I was on the show. Uh, I had them do a, a better Bob, you know, [00:25:00] so there were actually two Bobs.

Ted Bonnitt: The original Bob is at the Smithsonian. So you have Bobs twin brother.

Phil Proctor: Bob was also treated as a member, the cast.

Jay Johnson: Oh yeah. And very, very much. So I said, let's just treat Bob, like you would treat anybody else.

Knowing that, you know, all my experience was that they're going to talk to them anyway. So might as well just say he's real. Uh, one day the director, I said, you know, Bob is not on the call sheet, I'm on the call sheet, but Bob's not on the [00:25:30] call sheet. And if he's not the call sheet, he says, he's not coming in.

And so they put out another call sheet the next day. And I was coming in at 10 o'clock and they had Bob coming at eight.

Ted Bonnitt: So when you talk about the puppets, having personalities, there's a reverence. And I don't think it's stagecraft. You mean it when you put the puppets back in their boxes and their suitcases and place a piece of black fabric over their eyes.Which sounds almost superstitious. What is that about?

Jay Johnson: [00:26:00] Well, you know, it was something that my mentor and the man who made Squeaky told me to do. And it was based upon his belief that like the Greeks and maybe Romans, I think Greeks, for sure, believe that at your death, the spirit left through your eyes. Since that little puppet has a spirit that you have given it, put something over the eyes since they can't be closed. So that, that spirit doesn't get up and walk around and leave and not be there. When you, when you're [00:26:30] back.

Phil Proctor: Do you know, in, in Celtic and Irish, the word for eye is sol.

Jay Johnson: Well, see, there you go. I'd never heard that.

Ted Bonnitt: When you talk in your show about putting the black fabric over the eyes, uh, it also meant in order to maintain a connection. The way somebody would to the Stradivarius. Right? You do have an honest relationship. If you're going to convincingly bring spirit through this wooden device, you're going to have to hypnotize yourself. [00:27:00]

Jay Johnson: That's the way I saw it and right or wrong. That's the way I've, I've lived with their instruments. They need to be taken care of. The cloth protects them. There's a lot of reasons. One time on the Mike Douglas show, I was on with Itzhak Perlman, famous violinist and his violin comes from Beethoven's orchestra, a Stradivarius that was used in Beethoven's orchestra.

Very expensive. Now I've got Squeaky at the time or could have been Bob in my little carrying case next to my chair and [00:27:30] Itzhak is sitting next to me in it's in a case with his violin right next to him. So I looked over and I, you know, what were we both guys with axes? You know, here we are, he's got an axe, I got an axe and a guy comes stumbling in the room and he's not going to knocking everything over.

And I gently picked up the suitcase and put in my lap. And looked over and Itzhak’s done exactly the same thing.

The reason ventriloquism was so important for soothsayers and spiritual matters and things like that. It's because [00:28:00] before recordings, you couldn't duplicate the human voice. You couldn't store it. You couldn't send it.

You couldn't replay it. A voice happens live at the time. Or just didn't. So there was no other way to say, well, it could have been supported. There's no such thing. So if you heard something that spoke and you were convinced that came from that statue. There was no question that it wasn't a spirit because how else would that be done?

I was so fascinated by [00:28:30] ventriloquism being used as a seance. I thought I'd love to do that. Just to see if it works. I love to tell ghost stories. So I’m telling ghost stories and then one time a friend said, well, you wish should have a seance. And I had no idea except a couple of ideas, what I was going to do.

And somebody said, oh, well, yeah, wait a minute. Now you're a ventriloquist. And I said, yeah, but I wouldn't use it for this. And that's all I had to say. Man, no one accused me. Nobody questioned it because I said, I [00:29:00] know this is in trouble. Cause this stage, this is different. There was a technique I used and I just came up with this, my own stare at the candle.

And we will know when the spirit induced by the candle, by the flicker of the candle. Well, eventually a candle is going to flicker. So it's just a matter of time. Everyone did was staring at the candle. What I did was avert my eyes and close them if I could so that when somebody says that's it blow out the candle there in the dark, I've already adjusted, so I have some time when [00:29:30] I can see their faces and they don't know anybody can see them very good. And when you don't have your eyes, you listen with your ears. And I would get away with murder and it was great date night and have to go scream and say, ‘I'll take care of that spirit.’

You know, the one thing about magic and ventriloquism magic operates on the idea that you don't know what's happening and it gets. Now once, you know, you're not fooled in the same way. You can appreciate the brilliance. You can say, wow, [00:30:00]t hat’s a skill. You appreciate it. My God, how did that happen?

It doesn't happen anymore. A Ventriloquist walks on stage and you know what he's going to do, you know that he's going to do the voice and he's going to operate a puppet. In about two minutes, they get involved with that character. Yeah. It goes much deeper than just being fooled. It goes into, I had a playmate one time that I wanted my daughter to talk and it never did, and I always wanted it to, and, [00:30:30] and maybe I had an imaginary playmate and all of that comes back, uh, psychologically.

Ted Bonnitt: Can we put you on the spot for a moment? So we're recording this with three microphones. You have your own microphone. Everything's in mono. There is no stereo here at work. It's a podcast. They can't see you do your craft, but can you create your illusion with that sort of a limitation?

Jay Johnson: It's much better if you, if you see [00:31:00] what I'm doing, but I can describe what I'm doing. Okay. Back in, um, uh, I'll preface this by saying that when Edward Bergen did the Rudy Vallee show,there’s a wonderful three or four minute introduction where they say ‘ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bergen, is wearing a top hat and has a nice white tie and tail, his little partner, Charlie is in the same thing with a monocle.

And he's just as sassy as well. They described Charlie. And so, yeah. So I don't have a Charlie, but I, I [00:31:30] have, uh, this, uh, sparkling water bottle that you have given me to drink and it's empty now. So right here, you can do it. That's what, when sound gets compressed. I don't know, in a bottle like that, then, um, it, it has a particular sound, but if you take your voice out of your, out of your mouth, you go like this.

I'll just sing a little song. Cause it's easier to hear, uh, repetition. So. I am not doing that duck, but I wish I had[00:32:00]

Before I do this today, I've just bought a, we'll do something, but I'm waiting at the airport for my. Ron Lucas, who is also a really wonderful ventriloquist, known him for a very long time. We're going to fly to San Francisco together and we're going to meet at the gate and I'm sitting at the gate and suddenly I hear somebody go Jay, way off in the distance to go, oh, no.

It's probably right there and I'm not going to [00:32:30] give him, I'm just gonna ignore it. He can do disappoints all day long. I'm not, I'm not falling for it. J J not doing it, not doing it. And then I realized it actually is Ron way or the other side of the airport. And I'm ignoring him. Like, I don't even know who he was.

So when you compress a sound in a bottle, it just sounds different. So I'm going to take it, my voice out of, out of my voice, which is here and I'm going to put it in my. So you kind of hear the hand, like, right.

And then I'm going to put it in this [00:33:00] bottle and just see what you do with compress sound. So I hope that works in non stereo and here we go, there it is.You use your hand and we're giving you a hand. Thank you very much.

Ted Bonnitt: You must have been great on dates.

Jay Johnson: You know, I rarely use it as a parlor trick. [00:33:30] Although the lady I've been married to for almost 50 years now, the first time we were on a date. We had bench seats in this car and she was sitting way over here and I gotta get her in. So, uh, I don't do it as well now because my voice a little older, but I used to do a great siren, great siren, and it doesn't have to be looking around and then I'd roll down the window and it get louder and wrote it out and said, I better pull over. I pulled over and I was able to go over here. We don't know what's going to happen. She's never forgotten that. [00:34:00]

Phil Proctor: Now my wife, Melinda, wanted you to tell a story about Harry Anderson. We both loved Harry very, very much. He's a very close friend and a generous, wonderful, funny man. Uh, but he was an veteran practical joker as well. And, and you told at his, uh, at his Memorial service a story that Melinda just loved. It's the chauffeur's hat.

Jay Johnson: Oh God. Yes. He always wore a fedora. And, uh, was that forties kind of character that Damon [00:34:30], con man?

Ted Bonnitt: Who is Harry?

Phil Proctor: Harry Anderson from Night Court he was the judge for a long time. That was his great. And then he did Dave's World. One of those shows.

Jay Johnson: He started in Cheers. And that was the character he loved the boat. Most. Uh, character close to what he really was, was a guy walked into a bar doing tricks for me, Zana.[00:35:00]

So Harry asnd the hat. So we were having lunch, which we would a lot, uh, probably a couple of margaritas or more. Uh, and we end up in an old junk store that was on a Melrose Avenue. And he says, go see what's in here. So we looked around and they had a bunch of stuff, but they had a whole rack of hats and he went, oh my God. So he said, oh, I have to have this one. I have to have that one. You have to have this one. I have to have that one. I have to this. So he just, we leave and he's bought, you know, 10 hats we're walking [00:35:30] out. And I think, uh, yeah, I was driving that day. And so he said, which hat do you want?

And I said, I'd never thought about it, but I looked and I said, well, since I'm driving, I'll take the chauffeur's hat. So we get to the car now and I think he's going around. No, he makes me open the back door for him to get in and then he slams it and then he's looked up.

He's got the Shriner's fez hat on it. So now he's a shriner [00:36:00] in the back of a, of a limousine in his mind. “Where are the women, where are the men where” There's a conference here or something like that? Just gotten into town. We got to go like this. I said, well, yes, sir. And so now I just played the part in the chauffer. So we're going around and he'll roll down the window and look out and go, ‘where's the girls?’

And he said, Jay, turn, turn here, like a chauffeur and turn turn there, turn down. Okay. Go around here. And he's leading me to this, a neighborhood that I've never been before and we pull up to a house and he goes, ‘Hey, go up and see if this is where the convention is.’ Then I [00:36:30] go, wow. All right. So I go and knock on the door and I stand back and I'm thinking I got to go along with this. And he's kinda standing in the yard, kinda like this and this, this girl, this woman. Opens the door. I don't know who she is.

And uh, I said, uh, I'm on here. It goes, ask her, ask her. I said, I'm here to ask if this is where the convention is. And just about the time I think that she's going to [00:37:00] do something, Martin Lewis, another magician comes from the back of the house with a Shriner's Fez on and said, “what kept you?”

This was Martin Lewis, his house, and he had seen Harry drive up and thought, “I got a fez hat. Okay. Whatever it is, I’ll play along.”

Ted Bonnitt: What are you doing these days? Y

eah, really? Uh, I say semi-retired, but it's just, cause I'm not actively pursuing things. You know, if they come, I'll take them if I want to do them, but it just did a corporate, uh, the [00:37:30] other day in Orlando. And it was pretty good except for flying with a mask on.

Um, but. Nice to be back. I'm doing the Two and Only” again in November at the North Coast Rep, which is right down at Salonas Beach. It's been pushed three times now. Hopefully it will make it.

I've always wanted to write a book about ventriloquism, but I was find them so technically, and kind of boring. So I'm working on an idea that, uh, it would be basically [00:38:00] a novel based upon my life, but there's a twist, uh, in it that, um, I don't tell right now, but I think it's a good twist.

Phil Proctor: Well, Jay it's it's, it's been absolutely wonderful talking with you.

Jay Johnson: You guys are the best! Now, did we get to any sort of sex that the boomers have? Because I really thought this was, you know, telling me about how the sexy boomers…

Ted Bonnitt: We get that question a lot.

Phil Proctor: Yeah. Well now wearing pants.

Jay Johnson: Oh.

Ted Bonnitt: it's in the mind of the beholder, [00:38:30]

Jay Johnson: My beholder is quite comfortable.

Ted Bonnitt: Jay, thank you so much.

Phil Proctor: Where can people, where can they find you?

Jay Johnson: Oh, God, you know, uh, I, I have an Instagram, but it's just where I post once a day and put a drawing that I've done. Uh, but I'm Jay Johnson on Facebook and my website is monkeyjoke.com

Ted Bonnitt: If you haven't seen The Two and Only, the taping of Jay's stage show, highly recommended it. It's on [00:39:00] Amazon.You can rent it for $2 and 99 cents. Not $3, but 2 .99

Jay Johnson: Priced to move.

Ted Bonnitt: Oh man. It is so fast and funny. Absolutely brilliant.

Jay Johnson: Great. Thanks.

Phil Proctor: Thank you, Jay. Terrific.

Ted Bonnitt: Well, that was great.

Phil Proctor: Wonderful show. I really enjoyed talking to him.

Ted Bonnitt: We have some great shows coming up, so stay tuned.

Phil Proctor: Bye.

A.E. Guy: You've been listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show featuring Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt and their special guest Jay Johnson.

Music by Eddie Baytos and the Nervis Brothers.

I'm A. Earnest Guy. Stay tuned for the next episode of Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show produced by radiopictures.com. The makers of fine podcasts for seasoned hipsters, man.