Our good friend Andy Gross sent in these photos to share with us. He was doing a gig in Hopkinsville, KY, and went into a museum there to find a shrine to the late Col. Bill Boley.
The figure that you see is not a Bill Boley but is in fact a Finis Robinson. I am not sure if the museum has the figure labeled as being made by Bill but it was not.
The items were donated to the museum by the Boley family according to what Andy told me but it is possible they didn’t know this particular figure was made by Finis Robinson.
That being said it is really nice to see a display was made in honor of this great Ventriloquist Bill Boley
Dan
www.ventriloquistcentral.com
Have you seen the Frank Marshall Tribute DVD, click here
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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 2012 by Dan Willinger
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He is in good company coming from Hopkinsville, KY. I believe that is where Paul Stadelman was from also http://gogproductions.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=395 and of course the world famous psychic, Edgar Cayce http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Edgar_Cayce
The museum probably did not even know that Mr Boley was a vent figure maker… they probably displayed items that were used by Mr Boley. Like a Bergen shrine would probably include Charlie, Snerd and Klinker despite the fact that Mr Bergen did not make those figures.
Of course I’m just guessing… :)
Now if the inscription says the figure was made by Mr Boley, then that’s a different story.