An Interview With Conrad Hartz – Part One

by | May 1, 2013 | How To Build A Ventriloquist Dummy, Ventriloquist Interview, Ventriloquist Video

Welcome to the new daily video blog here at the Learn Ventriloquism Course!  Every Monday through Saturday, a new post will release around 7:00 AM (EST).  I’ll be interviewing ventriloquists from beginner to pro and finding out what sparked their interest!  We’ll talk about their lives, their characters and their shows.

The clips will be short, so you aren’t locked into a long conversation.  Think of these as your daily dose of getting to know our community.

Conrad Hartz is a legendary builder of quality basswood ventriloquist figures.  Today we feature the first of an eight part interview to learn how Conrad became interested in ventriloquism and started carving his collectible figures which are used by some of the top pros in the business.

If you’d like to learn how to be a ventriloquist – check out Learn-Ventriloquism.com – the most comprehensive on-line ventriloquism course available – and the number one selling Internet Ventriloquism Course!

Check out the next part of this interview by clicking here.

Video Transcript:

Conrad,  you are a genuine legend in the ventriloquist community.
I don’t know about that.
well I think it’s pretty true you, tell me a little bit
 We’re recording this for the “ventriloquism” video blog that I’m going to
create for the learn-ventriloquism site and I’d like to to
ask you to tell everybody that’s going to be listening to this a little bit
about how you became interested in ventriloquism if you would.
I grew up with Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney show
and uh on television and um got my first figure uh it was a Jerry Mahoney 32 inch
dummy and got him in 1955 for Christmas and I was interested all along in
puppetry because my father had a theater and I remember the movie Lily with the hand
puppets and that just kind of gelled my interest in
puppetry right there and that was in (19)53.
so anyway so I got the first figure in 1955 and um
uh didn’t started carving though until I was 31 years old really yeah
so
I couldn’t find a figure I wanted and this was around 1977. and I was
running a Technical College extension which had a good woodworking shop so I
decided to try my skills in making a figure and so I made my first one in 1977 and for some
reason I wanted to work with wood not clay not anything else you know and
didn’t sell my first figure until 1979 but uh and then ever since you know
but, I had it was hard to get help trying to figure out how to do things
and I didn’t realize there was a pattern you had to cut out first uh hollow out things first
on the bandsaw pieces so it wouldn’t be solid block of wood you know so anyway uh but Foy Brown
helped me, way back he was a a good help and a wood carver himself.
Did you ever carve anything else or did you just start carving figures?
No I never carved anything in my life till I was 31.
That is something is this all hand chisel or are you using you know
No, uh everything is by hand people cannot conceive of that but it’s true Bill Boley
drove down one time to spend a couple of nights just watching me, but anyway uh I bought a set of
chisels in 1978, and one was a these were German (wood carving) tools and one was a uh about an inch and a
half wide flat chisel and uh I bought a mallet I bought a scooping tool and uh then several exacto tools and I
still have about six tools that I originally bought that is something and I have not uh I tried one time a dupli-carver
but I was faster than the dupli Carver so I gave it back.
I love that yeah that’s great …
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