As most of you know, I am a great fan of the late Brian Hamilton’s work. He was a talented youngster that I only wish were still here building his fabulous figures. Since he isn’t here I have tried my best to perpetuate his name here on Ventriloquist Central.
I was fortunate to come across this wonderful three page brochure that Brian put out early in his figure building career.
Being a prolific builder of Ventriloquist figures meant that as Frank Marshall grew and changed his characters and became more of his own style as far as his heads were concerned, remember he used the Mack heads at first, he also changed his hands.
He of course started using Mack’s flat hands but in the late 1920’s he changed his style and gave the fingers just the slightest bend (picture number 1).
I had a young fellow contact me and was asking me about the origins of the ventriloquist figure as we all know it today and I thought this was a great question and decided that instead of answering him privately I would write up a blog about this particular subject.
Back in the late 19th century and into the 20th century a ventriloquist named Fred Russell decided to make the art of ventriloquism a bit easier and eliminated the stage covered a family of ventriloquist figures by entering the stage and sitting center stage with just one figure which he placed on his knee, therefore becoming the first knee sitting ventriloquist figure.
This figure’s name was Coster Joe and was a cheeky boy figure. Fred Russell was a huge success and from this he became known at the father of modern ventriloquism.
Sometimes you really have to put it out there to find something and so today I decided to ask everyone if they know of anyone who has a Doug Anderson ventriloquist figure. Mr. Anderson did not produce figures for a very long time.
Frank Marshall not only produced great faces for his figures but he was a great craftsman on his bodies. I have been fortunate now to inspect and own nearly 40 different bodies that were constructed by this genius and he did do some different things to them.
I will try to cover some points.
First it is rumored that he would use orange crates for scrap wood to build his bodies. I think that is a misnomer because none of the bodies that I won were made from so called orange crates.
In fact I have found that for the most part the perfectly shaped shoulder boards are made of Maple which is a hard wood. There are 3 pieces of maple laminated together and cut on a band saw to make the shape of the shoulder. I can certainly let you know that was not scrape wood which was used.
