Ventriloquist Chuck Fields did a show where a relative of “The Great Lester” was in the audience.
Here is their email to Chuck:
It was a pleasure to meet you Mr. Field at St. Matthews Church in Schaumburg on behalf of our New Beginnings Organization. I thoroughly enjoyed your performance; and that of the audience particiants…you gave us a good laugh. Thank you! I will highly recommend you to my family and friends. I was very pleased that your remembered my Mother’s Brother, my Uncle and God Father, The Great Lester. Unfortunately, I was too young to appreciate him or his talents. He traveled quite extensively and it wasn’t until we were both older (and by now he was ill and no longer heavily involved in theatre) that we met. I know I missed a Great Man. My Uncle constantly wrote articles in “The Oracle” and when he passed away Mr. W.S. Berger, President of “The Oracle” was kind enough to send my Mother the September-October, 1956 issue dedicated to my Uncle entitled, “Great Lester Memorial Edition”. I would be happy to make you a copy if you so desire. Also, you mentioned a video of my Uncle. It would please me to no end if you could display that for me so I may make a copy. My family and I would be most interested and appreciative. Members of my family have visited the “Great Lester Room” in Vent Haven located in Kentucky. I am making plans to visit in the near future. Thank you again for a very pleasant evening; and will look forward to seeing the video. Gratefully yours, Gloria Swart
If you’re interested, here’s Chuck’s website:
My thanks to Chuck for letting us share this with everyone. Also want to thank Bob Abdou for bringing this to our attention.
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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The Great Lester was the most influential ventriloquist of the 20th Century in theatres all over the world, before many others primarily Edgar Bergen on the radio appeared on the scene.