One of our regular contributors to Ventriloquist Central, Lee Dean sent us this photo page from The Yucca, Yearbook of North Texas State University, 1964.
The bottom left picture shows Lee with a Frank Marshall Walking figure.
When Lee attended Baylor University in 1958, he had Frank Marshall build him “Chubby Cub”. For more information about this, click the link below.
Click here for more about the Frank Marshall creation, Chubby Cub
Thanks Lee for sharing the yearbook photo with us.
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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I will share this too. You see, on November 6, 2009 you all did a post on Jay Johnson’s blog http://ventriloquistcentral.com/blog/ventriloquist-jay-johnsons-blog/ wherein I say I posted my response to his blog about my bet with John Moehring in 1962 (which however was 1964 as shown by the Yucca article) that I would outdo him in this show, and included the funny story about us being captured by the police. Moehring and I had worked at Six Flags in 1962, in the 110 degree temperature doing three shows a night all summer at the outdoor ampitheatre, where he would outdo me every night doing his magic, and he worked there also in 1963. So this was my turn in 1964 when he asked me to help him at North Texas State show. He was from Denton and had graduated from NTS, so I said I would and used the Marshall walking figure just traded for believed talked about in the Chubby Cub article, but I made it clear to him that I was going to show him up. I did so as evidenced by that yearbook mentioning me by name with photo, and no mention of him except as the magician. Moehring had told me back in 1962 he was scheduled to be on Ed Sullivan, and sure enough he was the very next year after that 1964 show, and he kept promise he had made that he would drop every card in fanning card trick and which he did right there on the Suliivan show because he had said he was going on to medical school and wanted to become a doctor. When I talked to him couple of years ago he said he had changed his mind and wanted to be a writer, which he did and for several years was chief editor of Magic Magazine. He sent to me several issues with articles on magic that he had written. He has written books on his art. I followed his career from there and he went on to become editor of M.U.M. which is Society of American Magicians magazine and from which he has retired for whatever reason. I have told the “funny story” one last time under title Reminiscing as one of 80,000 who participated in the July 24th Life In A Day event on YouTube, but I did not make the cut in preselected videos for Sundance film to be made http://www.youtube.com/user/lifeinaday?blend=2&ob=1 and believe it or not I was the only ventriloquist in the world to participate, but even if had been selected I would be more proud of that North Texas State show and fact that I was at Baylor before Dunham and at North Texas State before Johnson.
Ventriloquist Central is truly a labor of love. Happy LABOR of love DAY.
I have to correct some year errors. As wise Willinger said in the Chubby Cub piece, “And as everyone knows time passes…” to which I must add, and things start running together. I graduated from college in 1964 so no way I had the walking figure in 1964, and it had to be 1965 that I made the several trades mentioned in the piece, and last trade not mentioned was the 42″ boy figure for the Marshall walker. And so it had to be 1965 that I did that show at North Texas State about which was covered in the NTS yearbook for 1964. Finally, it was not 1965 that Moehring was on Sullivan, rather 1966 as noted in TV TOME http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0724766/ also on with him Dave Clark Five, other famous entertainers, and not to leave unmentioned Topo Gigio.