Maurice Hurling

The cover of his second book, "The Concert Ventriloquist and Children's Entertainer," 1951. From the Jimmy Vee Collection.

Some men in this family never crossed an ocean, and ran half of it anyway. Maurice Hurling worked the British Isles his whole career: church halls, seaside piers, and the odd stately home, and never once played an American stage. For seven years he held the second-highest office in an outfit that called itself, with a straight face, the International Brotherhood of Ventriloquists.^[1] He signed both of his books "The Voice Illusionist," and that's as good a description of him as any I've found. Pull up a chair. Let me tell you about the Englishman who kept a whole family's British branch alive almost single-handed, and paid for it with his health.

Two books, seventeen years apart

In 1934 a slim green booklet came out of L. Davenport & Co. on New Oxford Street in London: A Short Cut to Ventriloquism, "including new and original dialogues," by Maurice Hurling, The Voice Illusionist.^[2] Seventeen years later, in 1951, George Armstrong's "Magic Wand" imprint put out The Concert Ventriloquist and Children's Entertainer, illustrated by Lamonte, same byline, same trade name.^[2] Between those two covers sits basically his whole working life. The second book's own title page already lists him as Vice-President of the International Brotherhood of Ventriloquists, two full years before the IBV's own 1953 Directory of Ventriloquists puts the same office next to his name, with a Torquay address and a telephone number attached.^[2][3] An Englishman held the number-two chair of an "international" American brotherhood for at least three years running, and the paperwork took a while to catch up to the fact.

The Concert Ventriloquist stuck around, too. Four years after it came out, W.S. Berger listed it for sale by mail out of Kentucky at $1.60 a copy, right alongside Winchell and Stadelman.^[14] Both books, cover and title page, are in my own collection, which is where I got to actually hold them.^[2]

A Short Cut to Ventriloquism

His first book, 1934, published by L. Davenport & Co. of London. Seventeen years before he was ever Vice-President of anything, he was already "The Voice Illusionist" on his own title page.

From the Jimmy Vee Collection.

How he actually worked

By his own account, published not long before he died, Hurling had been a professional entertainer for "40 years or more," working the British Isles as a specialty ventriloquist and magical entertainer.^[1] He started in concert party as a pianist and ventriloquist both. He never used an agent in his life. Every booking came by recommendation, one connection leading to the next around London, until the work included the Guildhall for the Lord Mayor of London, the Crystal Palace, Alexandra Palace, Queen's Hall, and a season at St. George's Hall alongside Maskelyne and Devant.^[1] He turned down most of the offers to tour the music halls. "I much preferred home life to touring," he wrote, "and have never regretted the decision."^[1] Winters went to children's shows and Masonic functions. Summers went to the seaside resorts, where he sometimes ran the front of house too, or the whole operation. That arrangement, in his own words, "helped me to learn the business on both sides of the footlights... and provided sufficient bread and butter for myself and family and even a little jam as well."^[1]

The connections paid off in some wonderful rooms: Harewood House, the mansion of Lord Harewood; Gordon Selfridge's own house, with Royalty in the audience; a night at Edinburgh Castle where he actually stayed over. "It took years of solid hard work and partly good luck," he wrote, "to enable me to entertain in such high society."^[1] The same man, in the same breath, named the toughest East End crowds in London as a credential worth just as much.^[1] That's the whole trade in one sentence: the room changes, the job doesn't.

Reported dead, twice

This is my favorite Hurling story, and it's entirely his own telling. In 1934 an accident put him in hospital for ten months. While he was laid up, word got around that he was gravely ill, and the rumor grew the way rumors do, until somebody decided he'd stopped breathing altogether. A newspaper printed his death.^[1] He kept the clipping. "I still have that report," he wrote years later, "and although I have read it many times... I still don't believe it."^[1]

He didn't forget the lesson, either. In 1953, when The Oracle printed a report that fellow ventriloquist Arthur Quisto had died, it was Hurling who cabled in the correction himself: "There is no truth in the news about Mr. Quisto's death. In fact... he is very much alive and in good health, and I have been invited to go and see him."^[4] A man who'd already been buried once in print made sure nobody else got buried by mistake on his watch.

Running the British section, mostly alone

Hurling joined the IBV in August 1945 and was made Territorial Vice-President for the British Isles that same year.^[1] His first column ran in the Grapevine News, the bulletin that later became The Oracle, in 1947.^[1] He was elected full Vice-President of the IBV in 1948 and held the office until he died.^[1] Along the way he started the first lending library for ventriloquists anywhere, stocked out of his own home, first in Enfield and later Torquay. W.S. Berger, writing after Hurling's death, put it plainly: "He found time to establish the first lending library for the ventriloquists... This feature alone, to promote and popularize ventriloquism, required a great deal of detail and plenty of time and energy."^[5] Berger wanted an American library too and admitted he simply couldn't manage it: "I am always knee deep in details."^[5] Hurling, on top of everything else, apparently could.

And there was plenty else. For years he single-handedly ran the whole British Isles section as Vice-President, columnist, convention organizer, secretary, treasurer, librarian, office boy, and, in his own department's honest job title, "stamp licker" for the dues.^[7] In October 1954 he organized what he called, without a trace of exaggeration, "our first convention": the first-ever International Brotherhood of Ventriloquists gathering held anywhere in the British Isles, in Torquay.^[6] He wrote the dinner menu himself, and it's the best proof I've got that the workload never crushed his sense of humor: "Fillet of Fish for New Gags, Boiled and Roast Potatoes (no turning or winking eyes), Cauliflower Moving Ears, IBV Green Peas, Sherry Trifle de Distant Voice."^[7]

The last convention he'd arrange alone

By the summer of 1955 Hurling was already sick. His column for July and August ran as usual, but by the next issue he was writing what turned out to be his final words for The Oracle: "Much has happened since I wrote my last column. I have been ill, very ill... but I have recovered sufficiently to write these notes."^[1] He reported the next British Isles convention six weeks off, and said plainly it would be "definitely the last Convention that I shall arrange on my own," meaning to hand the job to a committee once it was done.^[1] He didn't get to see it through. He died suddenly at his home, 229 Babbacombe Road, Torquay, on August 30, 1955, aged 63, after a heart attack a few days earlier: about a month before he was due to preside over the second annual British Isles convention himself.^[1][8] The column he'd been compiling notes for was finished and published under his name by his daughter, Yvonne Figgins.^[1]

What they did with his name

Six weeks after he died, at the Second British Isles Convention in Torquay, the membership renamed the Arthur Prince Ring in his honor: the Maurice Hurling Ring, "with the entire approval of the IBV."^[5] Two years after that, in October 1957, the first Maurice Hurling Cup was awarded, at the first-ever IBV convention held in London. Hurling himself had floated the idea at his last convention: a small silver cup for the best five-minute act, judged on presentation, novelty, and originality.^[9] Nine competitors went for it. Len Belmont won it, with the Rev. E.P. Schofield close behind in second and Johnny Howes third; George Reed, a blind ventriloquist working with his figure Joey, placed fourth.^[10][13] Hurling's widow, Amy, presented the cup herself, guest of honor at the dinner alongside their daughter Yvonne.^[10] A quieter Maurice Hurling Fund ran too, seeded by a British member named Bobbie Collins with a contribution of three shillings, all of it turned over to Mrs. Hurling.^[11] The next Vice-President the IBV appointed, John Bouchier in 1958, was named in the masthead as "the first [holder of the office] since the late Maurice Hurling." Three years had passed, and nobody else had taken the job.^[12]

And two total strangers, discovering this whole art fresh, still found their way in through his name after he was gone. A machine tool fitter named Leslie Hinsley wrote to a newspaper reader's service asking how to learn ventriloquism, and they pointed him straight at A Short Cut to Ventriloquism.^[8] A sixteen-year-old named Derek Travis got one of Hurling's books from his mother, right alongside his first knee figure.^[8] The man had been dead two years by the time either of them opened the cover. The books didn't know it. Neither did the readers.

Vice-President for years before the paperwork noticed, four bucks a book by 1955, and never once played an American stage. That's what I call running an empire by mail order.— Freddy Fiddlesticks, spokesdummy