page_title: Señor Wences
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Señor Wences / Career
caption_attribution_description: Publicity photo of Senor Wences and one of his puppets, Cecilia Chicken.
context_page_description: Wenceslao Moreno, better known as Señor Wences, was a Spanish ventriloquist. His popularity grew with his frequent appearances on CBS-TV's The Ed Sullivan Show in the 1950s and 1960s.
context_section_description: Performing under the stage name "Señor Wences", Moreno was known for his speed, skill, and grace as a ventriloquist. His stable of characters included Johnny, a childlike face drawn on his hand, placed atop an otherwise headless doll, with whom the ventriloquist conversed while switching voices between Johnny's falsetto and his own voice with great speed. He opened his act by drawing Johnny's face on his hand, on stage. He would first place his thumb next to, and in front of, his bent first finger; the first finger would be the upper lip, and the thumb the lower lip. He used lipstick to draw the lips onto the respective fingers and then drew eyes onto the upper part of the first finger, finishing the effect with a tiny long-haired wig on top of his hand. Flexing the thumb would move the "lips."  The inspiration for Johnny came from his school days when the teacher punished him for imitating classmates and answering "present" when they were absent.  His punishment was to clean the inkwells and he smeared some of the ink on his hand, then clenched his fist to create the face.
  Another popular Señor Wences character was the gruff-voiced Pedro, a disembodied head in a box. Wences was forced to suddenly invent the character when his regular, full-sized dummy was destroyed during a 1936 train accident en route to Chicago. Pedro would either "speak" from within the closed box, or speak with moving lips – simply growling, "s'awright" ("it's all right") – when the performer opened the box's front panel with his free hand. A large part of the entertainer's comedy lay in the well-timed, high-speed exchange of words between himself and his creations, and in the difference in their voice pitches.
  Part of his act involved throwing his voice while his mouth was otherwise engaged (i.e. smoking or drinking.) Another favorite prop was a telephone, with the ventriloquist playing both sides of a telephone conversation. For the "caller" he simulated a "filtered" voice, as it would sound over a telephone wire. This voice always began a conversation with a shouted "Moreno?" – using Señor Wences' true surname. He would respond "No, Moreno is not here."
  He usually built to a big finish that combined ventriloquism with juggling and plate-spinning. As he performed his routines, Pedro and Johnny heckled him.
  Although he was an international favorite for decades, his main career was made in the United States, where he arrived in 1934 or 1935. In addition to live performances at nightclubs, he appeared regularly on TV variety shows, including frequent appearances on CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show, where he was a guest 48 times, on Broadway, in Las Vegas casino theaters and in feature films. Much later in his career he was introduced to a new generation of fans on The Muppet Show. His last TV appearance was on The Very Best of the Ed Sullivan Show #2, a retrospective in which the nonagenarian talked about "Suliban" and performed a brief spot of ventriloquism.
  He pronounced his name the traditional Castilian way, which in English sounds like "WEN-thess". After Sullivan would announce him saying his name as "Señor Wen-sess", the ventriloquist would subtly correct Sullivan's pronunciation by announcing himself to the audience: "Hello, I am Señor Wen-thess".
  In the early 1980s, a Tri-State Honda dealer's commercial featured Señor Wences with Johnny. Pedro's "s'awright" was a voice from the elaborate glovebox. Señor Wences would point out all of the car's features to which Johnny would reply, "Nice!" This may have been Wences final commercial appearance. It was shot in Puerto Rico because its star declined to travel to New York. Tony Belmont, at the time the President of Alan Freed Productions, was his agent and manager throughout the 1980's, and he secured Wences a spot performing at Ruth Eckerd Hall, among many others. In 1986, he made a guest appearance on The Garry Shandling Show.
  In 2009 Señor Wences was featured in the ventriloquist comedy documentary I'm No Dummy, directed by Bryan W. Simon.
caption: Wences with another of his puppet characters, Cecilia Chicken, in 1962
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