Jerry Mahoney

This is the 400th post of my blog I started in December 2014.  

Jerry Mahoney is a ventriloquist's dummy created by Paul Winchell in the early 1940s.  He wears a red sport jacket and a bow tie.  Jerry has an outspoken personality which exasperates Paul.

Paul Winchell was born (originally Paul Wilchinsky) into a Jewish family in New York City on December 21, 1922.  At six years of age, he contracted polio.   

When Paul was about 12 years-old, he saw a magazine advertisement offering a ventriloquism kit for 10 cents.  Receiving school credit from his art teacher for creating a ventriloquist's dummy, he named his dummy after the teacher.

Paul worked on developing a comedic routine with his dummy, Jerry Mahoney.  He won first prize on the Major Bowes Amateur Hour in 1938.   Shortly thereafter, Paul became a professional entertainer at age 16.

Paul's first show (with Jerry) on the radio was in 1943.  However, he was overshadowed by the veteran ventriloquist, Edgar Bergen, whose daughter Candice was a classmate of mine at Penn from 1963 to 1965.

In the 1950s, Paul moved to television for The Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show.  The Saturday morning program was sponsored by Tootsie Roll, a chocolate flavored taffy.  I used to watch the show regularly.

On one trip to New York City with my parents, my mother (my father was busy with business at Nestlé) arranged for the two of us to attend a live broadcast of The Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show.  We sat near the back of the studio audience.

I remember there were at least three cameras between the audience and the principals on stage, which hindered our view.  Also, there was an electric sign which told us when to applaud.  We did as instructed.  It was a thrilling experience to be there for a live TV show, my only such experience.

Paul Winchell died in 2005 at the age of eighty-two.  Jerry Mahoney is at the Smithsonian Institution.