Figure maker
John Carroll
A New York maker who worked very much in Frank Marshall's idiom and supplied the mail-order figures Roy Douglas sold.
Carroll was known for his association with the professional ventriloquist Roy Douglas and made the figures Douglas sold through his mail-order company — including, the site says, a two-headed figure. He also built the ventriloquist figure that appeared in the Tareyton cigarette advertisement of the 1960s, a figure made around the late 1940s or early 1950s.
The site's maker directory says outright that he worked very much in the style of Frank Marshall, and the collection bears that out: one of his figures here is a Tommy Knots, the face Marshall made popular, with a slightly wider nose and different eye placement.
His best-documented figure is Ronnie, carved in basswood in October 1952 for Vicki Taylor, one of the leading female ventriloquists of the mid-century and one of the few said to be able to do the double voice. She kept him for fifty-six years.
The mechanics
Carved basswood heads, hands and bodies, with a slot jaw and side-to-side moving eyes.
The figures
18 photographs across 1 cataloged object. Each object is one entry in the register — where a character name covers two physical figures, they stay two entries, because the character outlives the object more often than the record admits.
Vicki Taylor & Ronnie 18 photographs
- Materials
- basswood
- Movements
- slot jaw / moving mouth; side-to-side eyes
- Dates given
- 1952
