Jeff Dunham
Dunham’s earliest television exposure was doing commercials for Datsun dealerships while in high school. During this period, he became so associated with his craft that he and one of his dummies “cowrote” a column in the school paper, and he would pose with his dummies for yearbooks.
Dunham was born in Dallas, Texas in 1962, and raised in an affluent neighborhood as the only adopted son of a real estate appraiser and a homemaker. He began ventriloquism at age eight, when his parents gave him a Mortimer Snerd dummy for Christmas, and he borrowed a how-to book on ventriloquism from the library the next day.
Dunham began practicing for hours in front of a mirror, studying the routines of Edgar Bergen, and the how-to record Jimmy Nelson’s Instant Ventriloquism, finding ventriloquism to be a learned skill, similar to juggling, that anyone with a normal speaking voice can acquire.
When Dunham was in the sixth grade, he began attending the Vent Haven Convention in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, an annual international meeting of ventriloquists that includes competitions, where he met Jimmy Nelson in person. Dunham has missed only one Convention since then, in 1977. The organizers of the Convention eventually declared Dunham a “retired champion”, ineligible from entering any more competitions, as other attendees were too intimidated to compete against him.
Dunham has been called “America’s favorite comedian” by Slate.com, and according to the concert industry publication Pollstar, he is the top-grossing standup act in North America, and is among the most successful acts in Europe as well.
As of March 2009, he has sold over four million DVDs, an additional 7 million dollars in merchandise sales, and received more than 350 million hits on YouTube (his introduction of Achmed the Dead Terrorist in Spark of Insanity is the ninth most watched YouTube video ever, making him one of the most-viewed entertainers of all time.
You don’t think I wrote all of this great info myself do you? I’m not that smart people. You can find all of this and more at the following URL;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Dunham
Also you may want to check out Jeff’s website for tour dates and other great things when you get a minute at;
Dunham’s earliest television exposure was doing commercials for Datsun dealerships while in high school. During this period, he became so associated with his craft that he and one of his dummies “cowrote” a column in the school paper, and he would pose with his dummies for yearbooks.
