James Edward Nelson (December 15, 1928 – September 24, 2019) was an American
ventriloquist
Ventriloquism, or ventriloquy, is a performance act of stagecraft in which a person (a ventriloquist) creates the illusion that their voice is coming from elsewhere, usually a puppeteered prop known as a "dummy". The act of ventriloquism is ve ...
who appeared on
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
in the 1950s and 1960s. He is most famous for commercials for
Nestlé
Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since ...
chocolate featuring
Farfel the Dog
Farfel the Dog is a hound dog ventriloquist's dummy created by Jimmy Nelson. The Farfel character is best known for television commercials for Nestlé's Quik which ran from 1953 to 1965. An original talking Farfel can be seen at the Chocolate E ...
. He also hosted a children's show sponsored by Nestlé.
Early life
Jimmy Nelson was born in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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,
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...
on December 15, 1928. When he was ten years old, his aunt won a toy
ventriloquist's dummy
Ventriloquism, or ventriloquy, is a performance act of stagecraft in which a person (a ventriloquist) creates the illusion that their voice is coming from elsewhere, usually a puppeteered prop known as a "dummy". The act of ventriloquism is v ...
named "Dummy Dan" in a
Bingo
Bingo or B-I-N-G-O may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Gaming
* Bingo, a game using a printed card of numbers
** Bingo (British version), a game using a printed card of 15 numbers on three lines; most commonly played in the UK and Ireland
** Bi ...
game and gave it to her nephew for
Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year ...
. He learned ventriloquism, and a year later, his father upgraded the dummy's mouth control from a simple string-and-loop to a lever-system like those used in professional ventriloquist's dummies.
Nelson began taking "Dan" to school, where his fourth-grade teacher allowed him to use the dummy when speaking in front of the class. In this way, Nelson taught himself to overcome his fear of public speaking. He soon started using jokes in his presentation, discovering he could make his classmates laugh.
[
He then started performing for church groups, schools and American Legion posts. By the time he was a teenager, he started earning money competing in amateur talent contests held at the local movie theatres, where the prize was five dollars for the most popular act.
]
Professional career
In 1945, Nelson asked famed Chicago ventriloquist figure maker Frank Marshall to make him a professional-quality dummy. Marshall, who had made Paul Winchell's ''Jerry Mahoney'', would only do this after seeing the ventriloquist's work. He came to one of Nelson's theatre performances and was impressed, so sold Nelson a custom-made dummy, which he always carved to bear a resemblance to the ventriloquist.
Nelson gave Dummy Dan's replacement the full name ''Danny O'Day'', which he chose because it contained none of the consonants
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
impossible for ventriloquists to say without moving the lips, unlike "McCarthy" and "Mahoney". He then hired a manager and started touring professionally.[
By 1947, Nelson was a professional success and Danny O'Day began to show signs of wear, so Nelson hired Marshall to build him a second one. However, Marshall's hand-carved originals (which he tailored to the personality of the ventriloquist) were impossible to duplicate identically, and Nelson felt the second dummy didn't look sufficiently like Danny to replace him. So he decided to maintain Danny, and added heavy eyebrows, eyeglasses and a beret to the new dummy, creating a foil for Danny named ''Humphrey Higsbye''.
In September 1950, Nelson made his first appearance with Danny on ]The Ed Sullivan Show
''The Ed Sullivan Show'' is an American television variety show that ran on CBS from June 20, 1948, to March 28, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan. It was replaced in September 1971 by the '' CBS Sunday Night M ...
.
In the late 1950s, Jimmy Nelson released two LP records, One being "Pinocchio", which involved his four major dummies, which was released on Cricket Records in 1959, and the other being "Jokes and Riddles", which was done before a live audience of children, released on Rocking Horse Records.
Farfel the dog
One night that year, while working a late show in a Wichita, Kansas
Wichita ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Sedgwick County. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 397,532. The Wichita metro area had a population of 647,610 in 2020. It is located in ...
nightclub, he picked up a stuffed dog a patron had left on the piano, and improvised a low-pitched voice to make it talk. This gave him the idea for a new character which he had Marshall build. He named it Farfel
Farfel (Yiddish: פֿאַרפֿל, ''farfl''; from Middle High German ''varveln'') is small pellet- or flake-shaped pasta used in Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine. It is made from a Jewish egg noodle dough and is frequently toasted before being cooked. ...
, after the Jewish pasta dish he had seen on the menu of the Borscht Belt
The Borscht Belt, or Jewish Alps, is a colloquial term for the mostly defunct summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in parts of Sullivan, Orange, and Ulster counties in the U.S. state of New York, straddling both Upstate New York and the nort ...
resorts in upstate New York
Upstate New York is a geographic region consisting of the area of New York State that lies north and northwest of the New York City metropolitan area. Although the precise boundary is debated, Upstate New York excludes New York City and Long Is ...
where he performed. His famous line was: "No, I wouldn't say that."
Television career
In 1950, Nelson was hired as a regular on the Texaco Star Theatre
''Texaco Star Theater'' was an American comedy-variety show, broadcast on radio from 1938 to 1949 and telecast from 1948 to 1956. It was one of the first successful examples of American television broadcasting, remembered as the show that gave Mi ...
TV show hosted by Milton Berle. Nelson and Danny O'Day would appear in Texaco
Texaco, Inc. ("The Texas Company") is an American oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an independent company unt ...
gas jockey uniforms. Nelson was host of several TV shows in the early 1950s, including ''Bank on the Stars'' on NBC and ''Come Closer'' (originally titled ''Take My Word'') on ABC.
In 1958, he added another animal dummy to his character repertoire, a cat named Ftatateeta after a character in George Bernard Shaw's play '' Caesar and Cleopatra''. The cat's voice was based on Ed Wynn's. In 1954, Nelson served as emcee on the game shows ''Bank on the Stars
''Bank on the Stars'' is an American game show that aired on CBS and NBC from 1953 to 1954. The series was hosted by Jack Paar, Bill Cullen
William Lawrence Francis Cullen (February 18, 1920 – July 7, 1990) was an American radio and televi ...
'' and ''Come Closer''.
In 1960-61, he hosted a 30-minute local TV show in New York titled ''Studio 99-1/2'' on WNTA-TV, channel 13. Ostensibly aimed at children, ''Studio 99-1/2'' featured satirical sketches with new puppets, all voiced by Nelson, who supposedly were part of the TV station of the show-within-the-show. The show generated the release of two children's LP's on Cricket Records, "Pinocchio" and "Peter and the Wolf."
Nestlé commercials
In 1955, the Nestlé company hired Nelson to do commercials selling their chocolate candy and Nestlé's Quik chocolate milk flavoring. The Nestlé executives had him audition by spontaneously performing their newly written jingle
A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. Jingles are a form of sound branding. A jingle contains one or more hooks and meaning that explicitly promote the product or service being advertised, usually ...
. Nelson sang the first two (musical) lines in Danny's voice:
:''N-E-S-T-L-E-S,''
:''Nestlé's makes the very best...''
He finished with Farfel slowly singing the last word "chocolate," in two syllables. Nelson was so nervous that his hands sweated, and when Farfel was finished, his finger slipped off the control, causing the mouth to audibly snap shut, a mistake no ventriloquist should make. Nelson left the audition thinking he had blown it, but was surprised to learn he was hired; in fact, the executives actually liked the mouth-snapping effect and asked that he keep it. This became his trademark as the commercials ran for ten years.
When advertising Nestlé's Quik, Danny O'Day would say it "makes milk taste...like a ''million''" (dollars), again slowly and pausing for effect.
During the 1992 Christmas season
The Christmas season or the festive season (also known in some countries as the holiday season or the holidays) is an annually recurring period recognized in many Western and other countries that is generally considered to run from late November ...
, Farfel returned to television, now a hand puppet and accompanied by his large, identical-looking family, to advertise Nestle's then-new holiday candy wrapping.Just like the original Farfel, he ended the commercial by snapping his jaw shut after singing "chocolate," now joined by his family.
Film career
In 2009, Nelson was featured in the ventriloquist comedy documentary ''I'm No Dummy'', directed by Bryan W. Simon
Bryan. W. Simon, is a stage and film director, and writer. Simon grew up in Waukegan, Illinois and attended Waukegan High School, College of Lake County. Simon directed his first professional stage play at age 17, the regional tour of a children ...
.
Later years
Nelson and his wife Betty were residents of Cape Coral, Florida since the 1960s. He appeared with Danny and Farfel at local schools and retirement homes and was a longtime spokesperson for First Federal Savings and Loan of Fort Myers, where he later became an executive for marketing and public relations.
Nelson was dubbed "The Dean of American Ventriloquists" in 2011.
Nelson collaborated in 2011 with maker of professional ventriloquist figures Tim Selberg
Timothy Selberg (born in Waterford, Michigan) is a sculptor of three-dimensional carved mechanized figures, most of which are specifically used in the performance of ventriloquism. Selberg and his team at Selberg Studios, Inc. create handcrafted ...
to produce a character that pays homage to his Danny O’Day.
He died on September 24, 2019, at the age of 90, from complications of a stroke suffered earlier in the year.
Family
Nelson and first wife Margot had three children: twins Larry and Leejay, and a third son Jerry. They lived for many years in Forest Hills, New York
Forest Hills is a mostly residential neighborhood in the central portion of the borough of Queens in New York City. It is adjacent to Corona to the north, Rego Park and Glendale to the west, Forest Park to the south, Kew Gardens to the southeas ...
and later in Jamaica, New York
Jamaica is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. It is mainly composed of a large commercial and retail area, though part of the neighborhood is also residential. Jamaica is bordered by Hollis to the east; St. Albans, Springf ...
. Nelson married wife Betty in 1956 and together they had three children: Marianne, Elizabeth and James. Nelson moved his family to Cape Coral, Florida in 1968 and he resided there until his death in 2019 at age ninety.
References
External links
*
Talking Comedy.com: Jimmy Nelson: Warm Memories of Danny O' Day, Farfel, & Chaaawwwwclate
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nelson, Jimmy
1928 births
2019 deaths
Male actors from Chicago
American male television actors
Ventriloquists