A frequent contributor to Ventriloquist Central, Marcelo Melison, sent us this email along with pictures:
Hello Dan & Steve,
Some time ago I sent you a little information on Spanish ventriloquist Francisco Sanz (click here to see the information Marcelo sent in a few months back). I found some more material which I think could interest you and the readers of your blog.
There is a poster announcing Sanz’ shows, it’s very interesting to read the very last line: “Son hombres o muñecos?”; “Are they men or dolls?”.
The greatest goal a Hispanic ventriloquist of those days wanted to achieve was to create a perfect automata, a “robot”, a figure with very realistic and human looking movements. It’s my feeling that this Sanz guy didn’t care much about his lip control, because in these clips from a record he made exactly one hundred years ago in Spain, you can listen to him very clearly and it’s obvious that he is not using any substitute sound for the labial consonants; he was able to hide his lip movement with his monstrous moustache…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTJCrXlDPWQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4bkhhkVNOA
Sanz would travel all over Spain and South America, and in his company he always had at least two artisan mechanics to help him to keep the figures in working order. Their mechanisms are just amazing, moving not only every possible movable part in their faces, but arms, hands, fingers, legs, shoulders, waists, hips, etcetera, too. Very, very cleverly created mechanisms indeed.
I thought you would fin this information interesting.
Marcelo Melison
Marcelo, this is great information. Thanks for sharing it with everyone.
Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com
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Dan Willinger is a ventriloquism enthusiast and ventriloquist figure collector. He has been collecting for over 25 years. He created the Ventriloquist Central Collection. It now has over 100 ventriloquist figures and over 50 of them are Frank Marshall figures. Because of his love for the art of ventriloquism, Mr. Willinger created the website Ventriloquist Central. For more information about the website, go to: http://www.ventriloquistcentral.com
Copyright 2010 by Dan Willinger
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