For some reason lately, I’ve received a few emails from people wanting to know more about Mortimer Snerd and where he came from.
About five years ago, we did a blog along with a video of the lady that sculpted Mortimer, Virginia Austin Curtis.
As we all know one of the most famous Ventriloquist figures ever used was Mortimer Snerd. Of course he was used by Edgar Bergen.
What most people do not know is where he came from and for that information we are happy to provide you all with this video of Virginia Austin Curtis, the lady who did the original sculpting of “Elmer”, later renamed Mortimer Snerd.
Virginia also made “Clippo the Clown”. This is a treat if you have never seen it before.
This video supplied by Bob Abdou/Mr.Puppet was retrieved from the garbage. When Virginia decided to move, she had to get rid of most of the stuff she collected, when a puppet friend visited Virginia while cleaning up, he noticed that she was throwing out most of her valuables.
Realizing the importance of keeping the Virginia Austin story alive, he found this video in the garbage can and gave a copy to Bob Abdou.
Bob in turn sent it to us so we can share it with the ventriloquism community.
Thanks, Bob.
[flashvideo filename=http://vc-videos.s3.amazonaws.com/virginia-curtis/virginia-curtis.flv /]
(Please be patient for the video to download)
Have you signed up for the Ventriloquist Central Birthday Bash?
Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com
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Ventriloquist Central is the brainchild of Dan Willinger and Steve Hurst. Dan 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. Steve is a ventriloquist as well as builder of ventriloquist figures. He also has a background in sales, marketing, building websites and computers. Because they both love the art of ventriloquism, the website Ventriloquist Central was born. For more information about the website, go to: http://www.ventriloquistcentral.com
Copyright 2013 by Dan Willinger and Steve Hurst
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WONDERFUL Video of Virginia Austin Curtis…….many thanks to Bob Abdou. I’m sure many of us were introduced to puppets by owning a Clippo as a youth……I was .