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Jay Marshall's Glove Puppet, Lefty.

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Marshall, Jay (James Ward Marshall). Jay Marshall's Glove Puppet, Lefty. Glove puppet rabbit crafted from two white dress gloves by Jay Marshall himself, with black buttons sewn in place for eyes, black lips drawn in by hand, and a stiff cardboard form in a second glove to simulate the look of the rabbit's ears. Inscribed twice and signed once on the reverse of the main glove by Jay Marshall. Accompanied by a copy the sheet music for "If I Had My Way," the music to which Marshall performed his routine with Lefty, inscribed and signed to Hank and Jackie Moorehouse by Jay Marshall.

To recount the artistic and show business triumphs of Jay Marshall to a group of magicians is to tell them a story heard thousands of times. Marshall, a New Englander, began practicing magic and ventriloquism as a boy. By the time he entered college, he was performing professionally; by the age of 21, he was an accomplished full-time entertainer. His first forays into the field of ventriloquism were with a traditional "dummy" named Henry. He later honed his craft by studying the routine of his father-in-law, the great magician Al Baker. Eventually, Marshall developed a routine based on Baker's which involved a spirited if not smarmy interplay between the entertainer and the dummy. It centered on an often-interrupted rendition of the James Kendis/Lou Klein song, "If I Had My Way."

During World War II, Marshall entered the special services, entertaining troops in the Pacific Theater. As he was wont to say, he quickly realized that a full-size dummy "wouldn't carry a suitcase" for him, so replaced the cumbersome puppet with a khaki army glove decorated to with eyes and lips. After the war, a fellow entertainer, Paul Garrets, suggested Marshall change the single glove into one that approximated the look of a rabbit, by adding a pair of ears with a second glove. Marshall did so, and with Lefty, traveled the world playing nearly every major theater on nearly every continent, from New York's Palace to the Palladium in London. He starred on almost every major variety program in America (performing with the rabbit puppet on Ed Sullivan's show some 14 times), and too many conventions, private functions, and tradeshows to count. At the time of his death in 2005, he had been the Dean of American Magicians for years, and was known and loved by audiences worldwide. While a magician first and foremost, it was, ultimately, the lively, barbed banter he traded and the song he sang with Lefty – really a seamless feat of acting, talking to his own left hand – that put Marshall in the spotlight over, and over, and over again.

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