Jacko: The Most Famous McElroy of All

 If Johnny is the figure everyone wants, Jacko is the figure everyone talks about.

Jacko is a monkey — a chimpanzee, to be precise — and he is widely considered the most extraordinary figure the McElroy brothers ever built. He was custom ordered by W.S. Berger, the founder of what would become the Vent Haven Museum, sometime around 1940. He has never left the museum's collection since.

What makes Jacko special is not just the sculpt — though George McElroy's work on that face is remarkable, capturing something simultaneously animal and almost human. What makes Jacko special is the sheer ambition of the build. Every McElroy trick is in there, pushed to its limit.

Jacko is one of a kind. There is no cast, no replica, no copy. You can see him at Vent Haven in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. You cannot buy him. You cannot borrow him. You can only look.

I've spent a lot of time looking at photos.

There is something about knowing a thing exists, that it was made by human hands, that it is sitting in a museum in Kentucky right now — that makes the obsession feel almost reasonable.

Almost.

Alessio

How Many McElroy Figures Exist?

 

This is one of the most debated questions in the collector community — and the honest answer is: nobody knows for certain.

The McElroy brothers themselves once claimed to have built around 100 figures. Most serious collectors believe this number is inflated. The current best estimate is somewhere around 28 to 30 documented figures, all in private collections or museums.

Think about that for a moment. Thirty figures. In the entire world.

They are owned by a very small group of collectors and institutions: the Vent Haven Museum, Dan Willinger's Ventriloquist Central Collection, Jeff Dunham, David Copperfield, Andy Gross, and a handful of others. Some are displayed. Most are not.

The brothers only built figures for a few years — roughly 1936 to 1941 — before moving on to other work. In that short window they created something that collectors are still chasing nearly ninety years later.

Scarcity alone doesn't explain the obsession. Plenty of rare things exist that nobody particularly wants. What makes the McElroy figures different is that they are also, genuinely, the best. The rarest and the finest, at the same time.

That combination is almost unfair.

Alessio

Building From Italy: The Isolation Problem

 There's something particular about being a McElroy enthusiast in Italy.

In the United States, there's a community. There are collectors, builders, restorers, conventions. There's Vent Haven in Kentucky with original figures on display. There's a Facebook group where people who truly understand these figures talk to each other. There's Greg Claassen in Kansas, Tyler Ellis at Dapper Dummies, Chance Wolf at Wolf's Magic.

Here in Tuscany, there's me.

I don't say this to complain. Isolation has its advantages — you develop your own solutions, you trust your hands more than you trust instructions, you build a relationship with the craft that's entirely your own.

But there are moments when you finish a mechanical assembly, something clicks perfectly into place, the floating eyes move exactly as they should — and you have no one to show it to. No one who would understand what it took to get there.

That's part of why I'm writing this blog. And part of why I've been reaching out to the American community lately.

If you're reading this from the other side of the Atlantic — hello. I'd love to hear from you.

Alessio

The Typewriter Control Post: Glenn's Masterpiece

 

If there is one element that defines a McElroy figure above all others, it's the control post.

Most ventriloquist figures of the 1930s and 40s were operated with a simple wooden stick and one or two levers for the jaw and maybe the eyes. The McElroy control post is something else entirely.

Glenn McElroy designed a system of typewriter-style keys and levers mounted on a box at the top of the headstick. Each key or lever controls a specific animation: one for the left winker, one for the right, one for the eyebrows, one for the tongue, one for the nose. The jaw is controlled by the thumb. The upper lip by the index finger on the other side.

The result looks like a tiny musical instrument. And in a way, that's exactly what it is — a instrument for playing expressions.

What fascinates me most is that Glenn designed this system to be operated with one hand, while the other hand is free for gestures or props. Every control is positioned so that the performer can reach it naturally, without looking, without thinking.

That's not just engineering. That's ergonomics. That's craft at the highest level.

Replicating this system is one of the greatest challenges — and greatest joys — of building a McElroy replica.

Alessio

Glenn and George: Two Brothers, Two Geniuses

 The McElroy story is really two stories in one.

George was the artist. He sculpted the faces, painted them, gave each figure its personality. Those Norman Rockwell-like expressions — the dimpled cheeks, the bulbous noses, the eyes that seem to follow you — are entirely his work. George had the ability to sculpt a face that was simultaneously comic and deeply human.

Glenn was the engineer. He designed and built the mechanical systems from scratch, with no blueprint to follow and no tradition to draw from. He invented solutions to problems that no one had solved before: how to make eyes float in all directions with a single cable, how to fit fourteen independent functions into a head the size of a child's, how to make it all accessible to one hand.

Together they created something neither could have made alone.

What I find most moving about their story is that they worked in relative obscurity. They weren't famous performers or celebrated inventors. They were two brothers in Harrison, Ohio, building extraordinary things in a workshop, selling figures through Abbott's Magic catalogue for a few years in the late 1930s.

And yet here I am, in Tuscany, Italy, in 2025, still trying to understand what they figured out.

Alessio

The McElroy Body: What Makes It Different

 Most people who discover the McElroy brothers focus on the face. And I understand — those faces are extraordinary. But the body is where the real engineering story begins.

The McElroy body is not just a shell. It's a working space designed around the control post. The chest cavity is deeper than most figures of the era, the neck opening is wider, and the internal structure is built to allow the cradle — the mechanism that connects the head to the headstick — to move freely in multiple directions.

This means the performer can tilt the head, turn it, and animate the face all at the same time, with one hand inside the body. That level of control is what separates a McElroy from everything else.

I have a body cast from an original McElroy mold. Every time I look at it I'm struck by how deliberate every dimension is. Nothing is accidental. Glenn McElroy thought through every millimeter of that interior space before a single figure was built.

That's the level of craft I'm trying to honor with this replica.

Alessio

Building McElroy Mechanics: Where I Start

A lot of figure builders focus on the head first — the sculpt, the paint, the face. I understand why. The face is what people see.

But for me, it always starts with the mechanics.

I come from a background in micro-mechanical work, and the McElroy control system is where I feel most at home. Metal stock, brass rods, small pivot points, levers that need to move with exactly the right amount of resistance — this is the part of the craft I love most.

The floating eye mechanism alone is a small engineering problem worth solving. The eyes need to move freely in all directions, return to center naturally, and respond to the slightest cable movement without sticking or dragging. Getting that balance right takes time, patience, and a lot of small adjustments.

The upper lip sneer is another favorite of mine. When it works correctly — smooth, consistent, with just the right travel — it transforms the figure's expressiveness completely. A figure with a working sneer can look amused, suspicious, contemptuous, or smug, all from the same movement depending on context.

This is what Glenn McElroy understood better than anyone: that expression is mechanical before it is artistic.

I'm rebuilding from the ground up on this new replica. More updates soon.

Alessio