By the time he was a teenager, he started earning money competing in amateur talent contests held at the local movie theatres, where the prize was five dollars for the most popular act.
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 moving the lips, unlike "McCarthy" and "Mahoney".
However, Marshall's hand-carved originals (which he tailored to the personality of the ventriloquist) were impossible to duplicate identically, and Nelson felt the second dummy didn't look sufficiently like Danny to replace him.
One night that year, while working a late show in a Wichita, Kansas, nightclub, he picked up a stuffed dog a patron had left on the piano, and improvised a low-pitched voice to make it talk.
[3] Nelson was host of several TV shows in the early 1950s, including Bank on the Stars on NBC and Come Closer (originally titled Take My Word) on ABC.
[8] Ostensibly aimed at children, Studio 99-1/2 featured satirical sketches with new puppets, all voiced by Nelson, who supposedly were part of the TV station of the show-within-the-show.
Nelson was so nervous that his hands sweated, and when Farfel was finished, his finger slipped off the control, causing the mouth to audibly snap shut, a mistake no ventriloquist should make.
During the 1992 Christmas season, Farfel returned to television, now a hand puppet and accompanied by his large, identical-looking family, to advertise Nestle's then-new holiday candy wrapping.
[15] He appeared with Danny and Farfel at local schools and retirement homes and was a longtime spokesperson for First Federal Savings and Loan of Fort Myers, where he later became an executive for marketing and public relations.
[citation needed] Nelson collaborated in 2011 with maker of professional ventriloquist figures Tim Selberg to produce a character that pays homage to his Danny O’Day.