Ventriloquist Central - A Tribute To Ventriloquism

Natan and Liliana are puppet builders in South America. They build all kinds of puppets including figures for ventriloquists. They have just sent into Ventriloquist Central this video of their shop and also a head of a woman which is done with animatronics. I thought you all would like seeing this.

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Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com
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Steve Axtell had done it again.  He now has a Remote Control VENT Chimpanzee.

See more at http://www.axtell.com

Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com
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All writings here are copyrighted by Dan Willinger and Ventriloquist Central. You may not use them without written permission but you may link to the posts or give out a link to the posts.

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You never know who you will meet when you associate with other entertainers. That was the case for me last month. I attended a monthly magicians club meeting and some older fellow came up to me and said that his father loved ventriloquism. We hit it off right away, he told me stories when he was younger and saw his father do a vent act for the family and do simple magic.

The man’s name is Jim and he lived in Houston as a child, his father loved magic and vent but only did it as a hobby. Jim then went into detail about his fathers dummy. I said it sounds like a Frank Marshall. He said, “Yes, my father got it directly from this Marshall guy in the 30’s. We both got more excited in our conversation, Jim loved talking about his dad and I loved hearing stories about vent.

We decided to meet for lunch and we were to bring our dummies. Above is the photo of our lunch date, Jim brought his father’s dummy, it is signed inside the head 8/10/38 by Frank Marshall. What is also unique about this dummy is that it smoked, it has a piece inside the bottom lip where a fake cigarette would be and inside the control stick is a connector for a tube to blow out smoke. 

In the picture, you can see the section in the mouth were the cigarette would go. I thought it was a broken section of teeth. The dummy is still dressed the same way Jim’s father used him from his early days. The dummy you see me holding is my newest member of my dummy family, a Bob Isaacson figure that is a great treasure and an incredible creation made by Bob himself. 

The point of this story is, you never know who you will meet when it comes to vent. So get outta the house and start meeting people, vent is bigger than we think!!
 
Bob Abdou
www.mrpuppet.com
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Since it’s election time….we want your VOTE!!! 

I am so happy that the past couple blogs caused a bit of excitement and comments and so with the help of my wonderful webmaster, Steve Hurst, we have decided to make this thread run a bit longer by getting everyone involved with an honest public survey or maybe we can call this a poll (located in the right hand column).
 
We will leave this up to you to give us your vote for which type control, cord ( string) or direct linkage you prefer. We will let this run for one week and at the end we will publish the results so we all will know which style is liked best. I hope you enjoy this and I am sure it will be fun.

Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com

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Well I guess I may have stirred a bee’s nest because I have had a bunch of emails from those that have figures with direct linkage and how much they like them. OK I will say uncle. Direct linkage is great and if done right I guess it too will last a lifetime. The McElroy mechanics in my three have lasted 70 plus years.
 
Direct linkage has been done by Cecil Gough, Len Insull, Tim Selberg, Kem Poyner, Brant Gilmer, Greg Claassen, Lee Dunn and Ray Guyll to name a few others beside the McElroy brothers. I will admit I have never had a Ray Guyll figure with direct linkage so I can’t comment on his work first hand but Bill Nelson, who now owns Ray’s creation Kirby has told me that the mechanics are a thing of beauty and work as smooth as silk. I also have never owned a figure by Greg Claassen so I can’t comment on his work either. I do own a Brant Gilmer and his mechanics are very smooth and very quiet.
 
I purchased Lee Dunn’s first McElroy replica and his mechanics are wonderful and also very very quiet. You can see pictures on my site. Cecil Gough’s mechanics were not very good as far as I was concerned. I found them to be sloppy and noisy. I have had figures by both Tim Selberg and Kem Poyner and I had to have them both repaired to function correctly and found them to be rather noisy and squeaky. I will make an exception to Tim’s figures though, because when the mechanics were done by Greg Crist they were of top notch quality. Tim and Kem PLEASE I am not cutting your work down. I am just telling of the observations I have made on figures by you that I have owned. The Insull are direct linkage inside the heads then attached to strings down to the headstick levers. They are quiet but it does take some getting used to to use the controls.
 
I guess I still will stick with my first observation and say in my opinion I would rather have the cord controls for the ease of the repair.

Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com

P.S.  If you haven’t checked out the Ventriloquist Marketplace lately, do so NOW!!!
www.ventriloquistmarketplace.com

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All writings here are copyrighted by Dan Willinger and Ventriloquist Central. You may not use them without written permission but you may link to the posts or give out a link to the posts.

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