Shirley Dinsdale Layburn, better known by her maiden name of Shirley Dinsdale, was an American ventriloquist and television and radio personality of the 1940s and early 1950s.
Background
Dinsdale was born in San Francisco, California in 1926. After being badly burned in a household accident when she was 5 years old, she was given a ventriloquist"s dummy by her father, who manufactured dummies for department stores, as part of her recovery.
Career
She is best remembered for her dummy, "Judy Splinters", and for the early 15-minute children"s television show that bears that name. That dummy, which she named Judy Splinters, inspired her to make her break into radio. Lawrence Johnson, a ventriloquist, helped Dinsdale improve her natural talent for throwing her voice.
Dinsdale was an A student at Drew School in San Francisco.
By the time she was 16, she had received a Distinguished Honor Citation from the United States government for her promotion of war bonds. During the war, she was student chairman for Southern California Schools at War.
Radio Dinsdale made her start in radio in 1941 with a program, Judy in Wonderland, on KGO in San Francisco. The program later moved to KPO in San Francisco.
In 1942, she and her family moved to Los Angeles and she was given a spot on Eddie Cantor"s program
She was called "radio"s most refreshing discovery in years." A successful season on Nelson Eddy"s Electric Hour program on Columbia Broadcasting System in 1945 led to a tour lasting almost 11 months, during which she visited patients in military hospitals under the auspices of the United Service Organizations and participated in more than 500 United Service Organizations shows during that span. Post-Ventriloquism In 1953, she embarked on the second phase of her life: getting married and retiring from show business. In 1966 she enrolled at the State University of New York at Stony Brook to study respiratory and cardiopulmonary therapy.
In 1958 she appeared as a guest challenger on the television panel show "To Tell The Truth".
She served as the head of the Respiratory Therapy Department at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital in Portuguese Jefferson, New York from 1973 to her second retirement in 1986. On July 14, 1953, Dinsdale married Frank Layburn, a field engineer, in Springfield, Massachusetts.
She died from cancer May 9, 1999, at her home in Stony Brook, New New York
Membership
During World World War II, she was an active member of the Hollywood Victory Committee.