Terry Hall (ventriloquist) Terry Hall (ventriloquist) Terence "Terry" Hall (20 November 1926 – 3 April 2007) was an English ventriloquist. He appeared regularly on television with his puppet, Lenny the Lion, whose catchphrase was "Aw, don't embawass me!" Hall is credited with having been one of the first ventriloquists to use a non-human puppet. Hall was born in Chadderton, Lancashire, where his parents ran a working men's club. He was educated at St Patrick's School in Oldham and at De La Salle College in Pendleton, Salford. Hall initially worked as a ventriloquist with a boy dummy, named Mickey Finn, and won a talent
Jimmy Nelson (ventriloquist) five dollars for the most popular act. In 1945, Nelson asked famed Chicago ventriloquist figure maker Frank Marshall to make him a professional-quality dummy. Marshall, who had made Edgar Bergen's "Charlie McCarthy" and 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 impossible for ventriloquists to say without