In the ventriloquist world, when it comes to top notch ventriloquist figures and repair work, Ray Guyll is second to none. Ray has been involved with the ventriloquist community since the 70’s, and he is still doing amazing work today. His attention to detail, his craftsmanship and his overall personality are simply the best out there.

 

A: So Ray tell me a bit about your early days with ventriloquism? How did this all begin?

R: Well, It goes back a long time. I remember when I was a kid, I would tune into cartoon radio shows, as most kids did at the time, and I remember one episode where Woody Woodpecker threw his voice for one reason or another. On the radio, Woody Woodpecker later said that he used ventriloquism; instantly after that I wanted to know more about it. So, for a while I checked out books at the library on ventriloquism, that sort of thing, but it wasn’t long before puberty started to hit and I became more interested in the opposite sex! This is when I started playing the saxaphone, because I knew the ladies liked a sax player! This sort of took over and the whole ventriloquist thing got put on the back burner. Some time passed, and college rolls around. At the time I was majoring in music with my saxaphone, and I had sort thought about ventriloquism again. I started in with building my first dummy in college because I couldn’t afford a professional dummy. At that time I bought the “Maher Studios Ventriloquist Course” and started practicing ventriloquism. I was never very good, but kept at it. Finally a time came along when I was teaching lessons, so I had accumulated some money, and a couple of guys called the Berlin Brothers lead me on to a dummy builder by the name of Jack Coats. I bought one of his figures, and it was really good. I had bought a couple others in the past and they were just crap. Also, when I got my Coats figure, I looked at the one I had built next to the Coats figure, and mine was so crude I destroyed it! So I learned from the Coats figure of how areas on the face should line up, how to do the mechanics and so on. That’s when I started building again. One day I was teaching a sax lesson and one of my students saw one of my dummies and had asked if I would build one for his brother, I said  yes, built it, got paid and thought to myself, “Hey! This might be kind of good!”

 

A: That sort of leads me right to my next question, who were the other builders at the time that influenced you? You had already mentioned  Maher Studios, Jack Coats, a name I am very familiar with. I  remember getting into this and seeing photos of Jack’s figures. To me, they were the most refined wooden figures; they looked professional. Whereas a Frank Marshall Figure, still a high end professional figure, could look rushed and slabbed together.

R: Marshall was also very influential in my building, and I agree some of his figures seemed a bit crude. However, I don’t know if too many people know this, but Jack Coats was a machinist, and he put the mechanics in most of the Maher studios dummies. So Jack’s were more refined because he had another job, unfortunately Jack was an alcoholic, so was Frank Marshall, I guess that’s where I missed the bowl, I guess I should have been an alcoholic! Unfortunately Jack also had a heart problem. Later on, Jack became a good friend of mine, and at one point he was going to build a special figure for me and I was going to do the same for him, but  unfortunately, I think it was 1973 and he was about 42 years old, he passed  away from that heart condition. That was a travesty because Jack was on his way to making some really amazing figures and he was a really really nice man. Frank Marshall was also a really nice man, and what Frank used to do was go to see a performance that the ventriloquist was using one of his dummies, and he would take notes on what you could see or what you couldn’t see, and he would refine them that way, for the stage. You could read a Marshall figure from a football field away, so they didn’t necessarily need to be refined and refined. Frank was also responsible for creating the look of the quintessential ventriloquist dummy.

 

A: I agree, you look at the figures since Marshall, and in most ways people are still trying to copy that face he created because it IS the  ventriloquist dummy look. Look at builders such as Al Semok and Conrad Hartz to name a few.

R: Yes, both Al and Conrad are great builders. I try to be friends with all of the builders because there is always something we can learn from each other.  There is nobody in the world who has ever reached perfection, even the  greatest artists strived to be better. The greatest musicians want to be better, so on so forth. Because our mind learns so much faster than our technical ability. By the time the technical meets the mental ability, the mental has gone way past that. That’s what keeps us learning, and it can be really  frustrating if you let it, for example, my figures. I would say most of my  figures, about 99% of them I would like to take and destroy! Ha ha ha, because that’s the way it is; you learn and learn, and as an artist, your eye only sees the mistakes. You look past how good that figure actually is and only see what still needs to be done, So you never complete a project, you  just run out of time. If you try to make something absolutely perfect, you will never get it done.

 

A: I agree completely. My next question that I have been dying to ask is, when you started becoming more and more serious in building and  doing repair work, what was going on in your mind when you took on  some of these projects working on some of the most iconic and valuable figures of all time? such as Marshall figures, McElroy brothers figures etc.

R: It’s really strange, but for some reason I had faith in myself! Probably more than I should, I thought “Hey I can do this and that!” *Ray’s wife Barbara  chimes in* “He thought very highly of himself…” *Ray chimes back in*“Ha ha ha! I did! And I sort of learned from that. At the time it was just all fun, it was like, “Oh boy I get to work on a marshall figure, or a McElroy  figure!” I was excited to learn from them not looking at the fact that I might destroy this thing!

 

A: Ha ha ha, I know exactly what you mean. Now, your work has progressed and progressed over the years that you are known more or  less as the go-to-guy when it comes to working on these figures. However, outside of the community, your name is really unheard of. People getting  into this and that sort of thing have no idea who you are, when in reality you are the most famous “unknown” builder out there. My question is, why did you choose not to advertise and be so low key all these years?

R: That is a good question, and I’m going to answer that the best I can. I placed an ad in 1971 in the ‘Vent-o-gram’ magazine, issue number one after the Berlin Brothers sold the rights to new publishers. Since that ad all those years ago, I have been flooded with orders, I can’t imagine what would happen if I advertised today!

 

A: No kidding! I guess my next question is how your wife Barbara got  involved with all of this?

R: Ha ha ha! Do you want to answer this Barb, or should I? *Barbara chimes in* You go ahead and answer it, we will see how this goes! *Back to Ray* Okay ha ha ha. Well, I was playing in a Rock and Roll band, I’m sure I   mentioned the famous people I played with in the past? You know the Fats   Domino, Herb Ellis, Jan and Dean and Paul Revere and the Raiders. Anyway, I had just come off the road from doing clubs and cruise ships and that sort of thing, and I was in my forties at the time. And you know, it just didn't hold the same amount of fun as it did when I was on the road about nineteen or twenty, somewhere in there. Also, I had daughters who were in  school at the time, and I wanted to be back home to be with them. So I started teaching private lessons from home and playing in smaller rock and  roll bands. At the time, I was playing with this one group called “Rudy and  the Tube shakers.” We had a gig at a place that Barbara was working at the time. One of Barbara's friends was dating the lead singer of the band at the time, so she told Barbara and a few other friends of theirs to come down to see this GREAT band! So Barbara and the rest of the girls were sitting at  this table, and I walked in carrying my saxaphone. So anyway, Renee, one of the girls dating the guitar player at the time started introducing the band to all of the girls, and I pointed at Barbara and said, “Who’s that?” So after that, we were friends for about six months, and then we started dating.  At the time she knew nothing about my ventriloquism or anything else. One day I walked into a magic shop with Barbara to ask about the ventriloquist  dummies around the area, that sort of thing. One of the owners of the shop asked what my name was, and when I told him, he gasped and asked for my autograph! Ha ha ha, I was taken back by it, and from that moment on,  Barbara started asking about the ventriloquist thing, and I started telling her about it. One day, I got a call from Jimmy Nelson telling me his figures needed restoration and all that. At the time, the only ventriloquist dummy Barbara had ever known was Jimmy Nelson’s Farfel the dog, sure enough, Farfel ended up being the first dummy she ever worked on! That was sort of  how she got started into all of this. She started helping me on figures here and there and I realized, “Hey, this lady has a lot of talent,” so she started  getting more and more involved with the building so she could work at home and still be with her kids, who were much younger at the time. So that’s how that happened!

 

A: That’s so great! Sorry to keep you, but I just have a couple more questions. What are some of the biggest names you have done work for? Ventriloquist related or not?

R: Oh that’s fine, Sunday is my day to relax so I’ve got nothing going on! Oh  man, Robert De Niro, Jimmy Nelson, Edgar Bergen, Paul winchell, Jeff   Dunham, David Copperfield, Kelly Asbury, to name a few.

 

A: What kind of work did you do for Robert De Niro?

R: Okay ha ha, Robert De Niro loved Kucklehead Smiff, (Character used by  Paul Winchell) at the time, Barb and I were building Jerry’s and  Kucklehead’s for Paul Winchell directly. Robert had contacted me saying how much he loved Knucklehead and how he wanted one. So We built him  the figure and shipped it out to him. After he got him he wrote us a letter saying how much he loved him and how it looks just like his son! Ha ha ha, and last I heard he is still sitting in his office in New York.

 

A: Unbelieveable, really great stuff. I guess I just have one final question for you, and that is where do you see the art of ventriloquism heading?

R: Ventriloquism, over the years seems to stay about the same. There is more   information out there today, but it still seems kids get into ventriloquism for  a little and then they discover the opposite sex and forget about it, and later  in life rediscover ventriloquism. I feel like a lot of people tend to pick it up as  a hobby, that sort of thing. There are more ventriloquists out there today, but  the level of ventriloquism stays about the same. I’ve noticed some really  creative people out there today, but then again, there were really creative people in the past too. I think ventriloquism has a better reputation now  then it has had in the past, but I don’t see it ever really becoming THE thing. Jeff Dunham has an excellent reputation, but I don't think that’s because of  his characters, that’s because of Jeff himself. Jeff is an great business man,  not taking away from his act, he is a good ventriloquist and he is funny, but I  think it’s because of Jeff. I think the biggest problem with ventriloquism has always been the same. Somebody buys a dummy and says, “Okay, I can go out  and make a few bucks with this.” That’s like somebody buying a saxaphone and going out thinking they can get a job doing this, you know? You need  to practice at it. Ventriloquists seem to always want to learn, but when it  comes to the fundamental stuff they need to learn, they don’t practice it enough, they don’t get the idea. The other big problem with ventriloquists is the fact that most of them don’t take the time to develop a character that works for them. Most people just buy a dummy that looks good to them and  they try to work with it, which is the opposite of what you should be doing.  They buy a dummy, they don't create an act. They don’t realize that people  like Jeff Dunham didn’t get to where they are by creating one character. Jeff  has tried just about everything to eventually end up with the the characters he has now. I mean, he tried everything from talking pizzas to talking jelly  beans, you know? And he has acquired some great figures over the years, but he uses the ones that work best for him on stage. When I build a dummy, I don’t think in my head, “What a great face, I want to build that face,” I  build a dummy based on it’s character. If I think a character in my head is  good enough, then I will build it, but that is what is most important to me.

 

A: Well put, I agree so much. Listen Ray, I just wanted to thank you for all of your time and information, it means a lot to me! Really great talking to  you again, take care!

R: No problem! Talk to you soon!