Jeff Dunham (born 1962 in Dallas, Texas) is an American ventriloquist and stand-up comedian who has also appeared on numerous television shows, including Star Search, Late Show with David Letterman, Comedy Central Presents, The Tonight Show and Sonny With a Chance. He is familiar to Comedy Central audiences for his three specials on that network: Jeff Dunham: Arguing with Myself, Jeff Dunham: Spark of Insanity, and Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special. Dunham also starred in The Jeff Dunham Show for one season on the network in 2009.[1] His style has been described as "a dressed-down, more digestible version of Don Rickles with multiple personality disorder".[2] Describing his characters, Time observes, "All of them are politically incorrect, gratuitously insulting and ill tempered."[3] Dunham has been credited with reviving ventriloquism,[4] and doing more to promote the art form than anyone since Edgar Bergen.[1]
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,[5] 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[1]), making him one of the most-viewed entertainers of all time. Spark of Insanity received the best reviews of any DVD on Amazon.com in 2008, and A Very Special Christmas Special was the most-watched telecast in Comedy Central history, with its DVD going quadruple platinum (selling over 400,000) in its first two weeks.[6] Forbes.com ranked Dunham as the third highest paid comedian in the United States behind Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock,[5] and reported that he was one of the highest earning comics from June 2008 to June 2009, earning approximately $30 million during that period.[7]
Dunham was born in Dallas, Texas in 1962,[8] and raised in an affluent neighborhood as the only[9] 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,[1] finding ventriloquism to be a learned skill, similar to juggling, that anyone with a normal speaking voice can acquire.[10]
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. The Vent Haven Museum devotes a section to Dunham, alongside Señor Wences and his idol, Edgar Bergen.[1]
Dunham began performing for audiences as a teenager,[8] in various venues such as school, church, and during his job at Six Flags. By his middle school years, he began to perform for banquets attended by local celebrities such as Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach, having developed his style of lampooning those he performed for, using the puppets to say things too risque for him to say without them.[1]
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. In college, he flew around the country on weekends to perform private shows for customers such as General Electric, whose CEO, Jack Welch, he mocked during his routine.[1] After graduating from Baylor University in Waco, Texas in 1986,[10] he moved to Los Angeles, California,[8] never having, as he has commented, "a real job."[2][11]
some claim the death was faked to cover up the fact that dillinger had gotten away clean from his nemesis, [[link:melvin purvis,http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/melvin_purvis]] and to avoid embarrassment for fbi director j. edgar hoover. ...
... stanleyyork why melvin purvis killed himself, is it really bcoz of cancer he had or only pure accidental; thebodybreaks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M elvin_Purvis; deanlisenby If you missed the "Carolina Stories" about Melvin Purvis ...
Melvin_Purvis * Film to opowieść o losach Walta Kowalskiego (Clint Eastwood), rasistowskiego weterana wojny w Korei, który przez swój samochód - klasyczny Gran Torino z 1972r. poznaje rodzinę azjatyckich emigrantów. ...
... robber who terrorised american banks in the early 1930s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/j ohn_dillinger while bale plays the fbi agent tasked with bringing dillinger and his gang to justice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/m elvin_purvis ...
It's a place where you can find everything about anything. It's an all-in-one site that's jam-packed with the most useful content. It contains a collection of user-submitted writings, videos, news, images, blogs and more about everything, here you will be able to use a search box to find whatever you need on a single page, No need to browse through hunderds of search results.
