Terri Rogers - Nominee

Born in Ipswich, Terri Rogers was determined to build a career in show business. During the 1950s she worked as a supporting act in music halls, finding fame as one of Britain’s top ventriloquists. Following her gender confirmation surgery in the early 1960s, Rogers continued to perform as a ventriloquist - the only hint she had once been assigned male at birth was the deep male voice she gave her ventriloquist dummy, Shorty Harris. She appeared in the 1968 review ‘Boys Will Be Girls’ at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, performed on the U.K. cabaret circuit, and toured the world with Shorty. Rogers was a guest on TV and took her act to Las Vegas and The Magic Castle in Hollywood. In addition to ventriloquism, she was also an ingenious designer and developer of magic tricks for such names as David Copperfield and Paul Daniels. She released several effects commercially, including The Master-Key which many performers consider the best book-test ever created. Rogers’s DVD, ‘Secrets: The Original Magic of Terri Rogers,’ includes demonstrations and explanations of The Razor Blade Trick, Last Second Ring on Rope, The Flying Ring, The Aggravating Arrows and Smaller Than That. Some of these effects and others were released in her three books Secrets, More Secrets, and finally Top Secrets. Terri Rogers died in London in 1999, at the age of 62, following a series of strokes. She was survived by her husband Val Andrews.