Ventriloquist Paul Winchell was one of my early heroes. I had, like many guys in my age bracket, my own little Jerry Mahoney ventriloquist figure and I watched everything "Winch" did on TV, trying to learn how to do what he did. I never wanted to be a professional ventriloquist or even a performer like him. I just wanted to be able to do a vague approximation of what he did because it was so wonderful.
In Paul's last few years, I worked with him (even directed him for cartoon voices) and got to know him a bit. I think "a bit" was about as well as anyone could get to know the man and I am still a bit stunned by the contrast between two memories I have. One is sitting in my parents' living room at age six or so watching this magical person on TV operating Jerry Mahoney. The other is me as an adult, sitting in Paul's living room watching him operating Jerry Mahoney for me and a few of our friends. In the latter memory, Paul and Jerry are doing jokes that would get bleeped on The Howard Stern Show. It was one of those "Gee, I've sure grown up" moments.
Paul's bachelor apartment — this was during a period he was separated from his wife — was the usual destination after we all had dinner at a delicatessen in Encino. Paul would hold court, talking about his career and his adventures in medicine and various inventions he'd come up with…and he'd tell dirty jokes. The dirtier, the better. He would also talk at length about his lawsuit with Metromedia over the Winchell-Mahoney Time TV series he'd done from 1965-1968. Metromedia had destroyed the tapes of the 288 episodes and Paul sued, asserting that as the copyright holder and a part-owner of the show, they'd destroyed something that was of potentially great value to him. He won a judgment of over $17 million dollars which was later pared down to a lower but still impressive number.
Here's a few surviving minutes from that show which, needless to say, I watched often…