Ken Spencer

The fullest account we have is a profile from the July–August 1960 issue of The Oracle, the publication of the International Brotherhood of Ventriloquists, reprinted on Ventriloquist Central. Spencer was born on August 30, 1899 in Iowa — the source spells the town Frontenelle, the site's maker directory spells it Fontenelle — and the family moved by covered wagon to Highmore, South Dakota.

He ran a small motorcycle business around the First World War, gave it up, and worked his way to Chicago in 1919 to a job at the Excelsior Motorcycle factory. His interest in ventriloquism dated from 1915. He enrolled at the Chicago Musical Seminary, where a fifty-dollar course taught figure work and another fifty bought distant voices; the teacher was a clever performer but taught him little he could use. He tried again with Harry Fetterer at a dollar an hour and spent 188 dollars on lessons before he was proficient.

He bought his first good professional figure from Theodore Mack & Son on West Harrison Street. He hung around the carving department on Saturdays and Sundays so persistently that Charlie Mack put him to work roughing out hands. In 1934 he left the motorcycle factory, bought carving tools, and turned professional as both ventriloquist and figure maker. He joined the I.B.V. in 1941 and was given member number 53. His studio was on Columbus Avenue in Minneapolis and he sold a catalog for ten cents.

The act was as broad as the trade allowed — medicine shows, circuses, carnivals, churches, night clubs, and eventually his own road show. His best-known production was Rubeville Five, a mechanical novelty using five figures, one of them a head in a barrel with two distinct faces.

Willinger describes him as a contemporary of Frank Marshall's who had worked a while in the Mack shop. Foy Brown, writing to a customer in 1988, remembered him less warmly, judging his figures large, awkward and frightening to children — an act for adults.

The mechanics

The Spencer figures here run to a slot jaw with side-to-side eyes moved by weights, rolling winker-blinker eyes that work singly or together, and raising eyebrows; one carries a fright wig. J.C. Turner is said elsewhere on the site to have copied Spencer's exposed-metal upper-lip design, painted over.

Status Deceased recorded first-hand by Jimmy Vee, which outranks any web source — maker websites in this field routinely outlive the maker