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Jay Johnson | |
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| Born | July 11, 1949 |
| Occupation | Ventriloquist |
| Years active | 1977–present |
Jay Johnson (born July 11, 1949) is an American ventriloquist and actor, best known for playing Chuck (and Bob) Campbell on Soap .
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Johnson was born in Lubbock, Texas, and raised in Richardson, Texas. He attended Richardson High School.
Johnson is best known for his role on the sitcom Soap , in which he played ventriloquist Chuck Campbell and his dummy Bob. Chuck treated Bob as though he were real, and, when performing as Bob, displayed a rude and sarcastic personality that would often provoke violence against the dummy.
In addition to his role on Soap, Johnson has also appeared as a celebrity guest on many game shows and hosted two series of his own, So You Think You Got Troubles (1983) and Celebrity Charades (1979).
He performed in an episode of Mrs. Columbo , playing a ventriloquist who finds his dummy is acting independently of his will and kills the man who carved it. Other post-Soap TV credits include appearances on The Love Boat , Gimme a Break! , Simon & Simon , The Facts of Life , Empty Nest (reuniting him with his father from Soap, Richard Mulligan), and Dave's World .
He starred in Broken Badges (1990), a Stephen Cannell CBS television production in which he played Stanley Jones, a depressed police officer who was also a ventriloquist.
In 1999, he reprised his role of Chuck (and Bob) Campbell in the closing credits of an episode of That '70s Show that referenced Soap. Post-2000 appearances include the 2001 TV Movie What's Up, Peter Fuddy?, an appearance on Reno 911! , and the role of Christopher Davis—biological father of "The Miniature Killer" Natalie Davis—in the CSI: episode "Living Doll".
Jay Johnson: The Two & Only! written and performed by Jay Johnson, opened on Broadway to rave reviews at the Helen Hayes Theatre on September 28, 2006. This was preceded by an acclaimed off-Broadway run at the Atlantic Theatre Company in New York. The show also performed at the Zero Arrow Theatre, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Brentwood and Colony Theater Company in Los Angeles, California. The Cambridge performance garnered the New England Critics Award, and in Los Angeles, Johnson received the 2006 Ovation Award for Best Solo Performance.
The show deconstructs and demonstrates Johnson's lifelong obsession with the art of ventriloquism. The show is a Valentine, not only to the art, but also to his mentor and friend Arthur Sieving, who created Johnson's first professional puppet. The show is aided and abetted by a cast of ventriloquated characters, including his Soap alter ego, Bob. Johnson won the 2007 Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event for the show. He is the only ventriloquist to ever be nominated and win an American Theatre Wing Tony Award or an Ovation Award.
The show was filmed on September 15, 2012, in Thalian Hall in Wilmington, North Carolina. Johnson enlisted film and stage director Bryan W. Simon to direct the film adaptation of the performance. Johnson first met Simon in 2009 when he starred in the comedy documentary I'm No Dummy , [1] [2] directed by Bryan W. Simon.
The original Bob puppet featured on Soap was added to the entertainment collection at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in May 2007. He currently uses a replica Bob for Jay Johnson: The Two & Only! and other appearances.
Michael John McKean is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, composer, singer, and musician. Over his career he has received a Grammy Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Ventriloquism is an act of stagecraft in which a person speaks in such a way that it looks like their voice is coming from a different location, usually through a puppet known as a "dummy". The act of ventriloquism is ventriloquizing, and in English it is commonly called the ability to "throw" one's voice.
Soap is an American sitcom television series that originally ran on ABC from September 13, 1977, until April 20, 1981. The show was created as a nighttime parody of daytime soap operas, presented as a weekly half-hour prime time comedy. Similar to a soap opera, the show's story was presented in a serial format, and featured melodramatic plotlines including alien abduction, demonic possession, extramarital affairs, murder, kidnapping, unknown diseases, amnesia, cults, organized crime warfare, a communist revolution, and teacher-student relationships. In 2007, it was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-Time", and in 2010, the Tates and the Campbells ranked at number 17 in TV Guide's list of "TV's Top Families".
Raymond Alan Whyberd was an English ventriloquist, television entertainer, and writer. His career spanned over half a century, though he was most popular from the 1950s until the 1980s. He was associated primarily with the dummies Lord Charles and Ali Kat and later with the puppets Tich and Quackers.
Wenceslao Moreno Centeno, known professionally as Señor Wences, was a Spanish ventriloquist and comedian. His popularity grew with his frequent television appearances on CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show during the 1950s and 1960s. Later, he became popular with another generation of fans on The Muppet Show.
Puppets Who Kill is a Canadian television comedy series produced by PWK Productions and originally broadcast on The Comedy Network. It premiered in Canada in 2002, and Australia on The Comedy Channel in 2004. It has also been broadcast in India, South Korea and Germany. The series was on the digital network Hulu and is currently on CONtv and Tubi in the United States.
Jeffrey Douglas Dunham is an American ventriloquist, stand-up comedian and actor who has also appeared on numerous television shows, including Late Show with David Letterman, Comedy Central Presents, The Tonight Show, and Sonny with a Chance. He has seven specials that run on Comedy Central as well as two Netflix specials among others. He also starred in The Jeff Dunham Show, a series that ran in 2009. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and holds the Guinness Book of World Records record for "Most tickets sold for a stand-up comedy tour" for his Spark of Insanity tour.
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David Strassman is an American ventriloquist, stand-up comedian, actor, and voice artist. He is best known for his ventriloquism act with Chuck Wood and Ted E. Bare.
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Frank Vincent Ferrante is an American stage actor, comedian and director known for his improvisation and audience interactive comedy. He has performed as Groucho Marx in the Arthur Marx/Robert Fisher play Groucho: A Life in Revue and in his own An Evening With Groucho. Ferrante was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for 'Comedy Performance of the Year' for the title role in Groucho: A Life in Revue in London's West End in 1987. He had previously won New York's 1987 Theatre World Award for 'Outstanding Debut' for the same role.
Terry Wayne Fator is an American ventriloquist, impressionist, stand-up comedian, and singer. Born in Dallas, Texas, he developed an interest in ventriloquism from a young age, developing both this and a talent for singing. After initially performing with two bands, Fator eventually conducted solo performances, combining ventriloquism and singing with comedy. He gained national recognition for his talent when he won the second season of America's Got Talent, which helped to boost his career.
Otto Sol Petersen was an American ventriloquist, comedian, and actor known for his act Otto and George, which he performed with his dummy George Dudley. Petersen began performing with George as a street act in Manhattan and Brooklyn in the early 1970s. In the late 1970s the act moved into night clubs and began to evolve into an "X-rated" act.
Paul Kreppel is an American actor and director. On television, he was best known as pianist Sonny Mann on the show It's a Living. In his work as theater director-producer-creator, he received the 2007 Tony Award for Jay Johnson: The Two and Only.
James Edward Nelson was an American ventriloquist who appeared on television in the 1950s and 1960s. He is most famous for commercials for Nestlé chocolate featuring Farfel the Dog. He also hosted a children's show sponsored by Nestlé.
Bryan W. Simon is a stage, film director and writer from Waukegan, Illinois. He directed his first professional stage play at 17, the regional tour of a children's show entitled Jack and The Wishing Beans, for the Roundtree Players.
I'm No Dummy is a 2009 documentary film about ventriloquism directed by Bryan W. Simon and produced by Marjorie Engesser through Montivagus Productions. It premiered at the 2009 Seattle International Film Festival before being released to the United States by Salient Media and NBCUniversal in 2010.
Valentine Vox is a British born American ventriloquist and author known for his scholarly book on the history of ventriloquism, I Can See Your Lips Moving: the history and art of ventriloquism, which traces the practice back some three thousand years.
Darci Lynne Farmer is an American ventriloquist and singer. She has been credited with the revival of ventriloquism, earning praise and numerous accolades for her work.
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