Radio: McCarthy’s Rival?

A wooden-faced doll named Judy Splinters muscled in on Charlie McCarthy’s business on NBC’s Eddie Cantor program last week. Furthermore, she is coming back this week and may be around for some time.

Judy Splinters’ substitute for an Edgar Bergen is a 16-year-old San Francisco girl, Shirley Faye Dinsdale, who, says the real Bergen, is “the best natural ventriloquist I ever saw.” What impresses ventriloquists most is an unusual accomplishment—Shirley Dinsdale can actually make her puppet sing, in a clear, sweet soprano.

Shirley made her first public appearance last year at a San Francisco church social. At first she was handicapped by having only Judy Splinters’ head. Father Dinsdale had not finished carving the body. So he tore the head off of Mussolini, one of his animated puppets, fitted Judy’s head to it. Result: all Judy could do for animation was give the Fascist salute.

When Shirley and her mother went to Hollywood two months ago, the child ventriloquist had eight months of weekly radio behind her. A shy, quiet little girl, she used her brash puppet to say the things she could not bring herself to say. Eddie Cantor hired her ($100 weekly) the first time he heard her.

In her first big-league appearance Judy turned out to be a knowing, unmanageable gamin (“Shirley, watch my language!”) who thought Eddie Cantor was a puppet (“Oh, he talks!”) and distrusted his fiscal attitude (“Get the cash, get the cash!”). Says Cantor: “We’re going to goon as though Charlie McCarthy didn’t exist.”