New Year’s Eve in Havana. I guess I saw more magicians than I would have in New York. At the Tropical Beer Gardens I was tapped on the shoulder by Francis Finneran, who told me he was cruising incognito on the Manhattan as The Great Carlysle. Arthur Lloyd, the Human Card Index man, was aboard the Rotterdam in the same port. I couldn’t find out the name of the magus on the ship Prince David, as the passenger with whom I talked remembered only an egg trick that went wrong. Then I spent the day with Fu Manchu, who, with grease paint off, is David Bamberg. And to top things off, out at Sans Souci that evening, I looked up and saw Gerald Kaufmann, the New York architect, and best known Sphinx illustrator, passing by with Mrs. Kaufmann.

On the way home, I met Lesta (Cliff Jones) at the Miami dock, and we went out to Miami Beach and lay in the sun with the Gwynne family, who are doing mysterious things at the Roney Plaza. Lesta, with his too comfortable trailer car, is soon embarking for Nassau, Bahamas, to fill in the season at the Jungle Club.

Getting back to Dave Bamberg, I must say I never enjoyed as nice a show before. It’s slow in spots, as are all South American shows, when compared to American speed demon methods, but it’s refreshing and comfortable. Dave is carrying 11 tons of baggage, and has 23 changes of scenery. Practically every one of his illusions, and he has a number of new ones, uses a setting by itself, and is built into a pantomimic sketch to give it reason. At Havana’s largest theatre, the Casino Nacional, he’s worked for seven weeks, to gross over $60,000 in that time. And in Cuba, that’s money. What may or may not be a scoop for this sheet, is the news that Fu Manchu will be in New York City, the latter part of February, at the Teatro Servantes on 116th Street. His Chinese robes and costumes (over 300 of them) will make quite a few of the boys stutter.

Incidentally, we got around to talking about the time when David was with Zancig, and on the receiving end of the articles, questions, and thought of pictures. He came out flat footedly, and said that the Zancig code was inferior to most other codes at its base, but that Zancig made it great only through the way he worked. And he also said that anyone who claims to have the code is wrong, BECAUSE THERE WAS NO CODE THAT EVER COULD BE PUT ON PAPER. Zancig used to sell his code for a hundred or so, but they would get a list of words, and mechanical instructions, and wind up spouting meaningless sentences. Zancig grunted around, as was his nature, sometimes passing a tough one in Danish, and it was necessary (as in all such acts) for the two people to know each other well enough to almost anticipate their actions and mannerisms. That’s one reason why Zancig’s second wife never worked with him for long, and he had to hunt around for someone else, picking Bamberg at first, and later having Paul Rosini on the receiving end. It’s a matter of history, that Zancig’s fame was at its peak when he worked with his first wife, Agnes.

The Genii just came in, and inside the envelope felt like an old Dr Wilson Sphinx in size. The price has been boosted now, but that won’t make a bit of difference in circulation, because the boys are finding out that it contains plenty of what they want.

Mention of The Sphinx reminds that Another Reversal, the card effect in the December issue, is much too much (even the illustrations) like It Goes This Way, which was in the Jinx Summer Extra for 1935, just 18 months ago ! Either somebody doesn’t read, or else somebody doesn’t care.

Paging Guy Jarrett ! We bow low, after having laughed ourselves to sleep while reading your first and last contribution to the magic world. Jarrett is great because you’ve stood on your own feet and given your own opinion of things in magic. You’ve written as you talk, set the type as you thought of things to say, and everytime you turned out a page on your handpress, you were bearing down on the bums of magic. And when you bound the books yourself, you were finishing a one man job that will be poison to many.

This book needs more than a couple lines in any review. It is a nice job of over 100 pages and over 20 pages of drawings and illustrations. It isn’t all nice language, and it’s not for the Y.W.C.A., but Guy has “gone to town” about things he hasn’t liked about magicians, and in most cases he is telling the truth. After reading Jarrett one can’t help but believe in the man’s sincerity, and in his greatness as a builder of illusions, and as a stage mechanic. He has the faculty of “feeling the audience”, and few are smart enough, or sensitive enough, to have both that and the ability to create and then build. The production of the book proves something or other. The price is going up a dollar a month, and then there will be a public bonfire when it reaches $10. If Jarrett gets up tomorrow morning in a bad mood, he’s just as apt to burn them then as not, and anyone who knows him at all can testify to that.

When asked why he would print no more, and would soon stop the sale and burn what’s left, he remarked in that high twang of his “Hell, I’m not going to wait twenty years for my money, and see the book getting dusty on magic shelves. I’m going to get what I can now, and then make it the rarest book in magic.” One magician ordered it and added that he wanted it for the revolving library of the Baptist Church. Jarrett didn’t know him, and his propensity for such remarks, so sent the check back, saying that he didn’t think it was the kind of book for such a place, because of some of the language in it. But I advise all magi to buy, beg, borrow, or steal, for overnight, a copy of Jarrett, and laugh while you learn. You won’t learn many new tricks that you can put to work, but you will get a good idea of some of the things radically wrong with magic and responsible for its decline.

Jerry Kahler is at the Roney Plaza Hotel, on Miami Beach, Florida, and doing nice poker and bridge demonstrations at the tables.

He should be remembered from those beautifully written and illustrated articles in Town and Country, last June, July and August. Incidentally, it slipped by me, when I mentioned the Frank Lane-Mickey MacDougall controversy over a certain bridge cheating method, a month or so ago, that Jerry Kahler had it in Town and Country before Mickey had it in Liberty. And Kahler told me that it was first shown to him by a couple of sharpers who were on the same boat from Panama to Frisco back around 1921.

Is there anybody else who wants to claim it ?

A note from Bob Gysel mentions that, in regards to the statement made last issue that Dunninger possesses a book mentioning the needle trick, and published in 1868, he (Gysel) was told by Houdini that a Mr K.K.Kraus first introduced the needles and thread in an european show as far back as 1816.

And so to press.