Ropes in the air, especially with hindu boys aclimbing, are anathema to magicians.

It is with gusto that we reproduce from LIFE magazine the true explanation, or, at least, one of them. — For nearly forty years The Sphinx has been a lodestone for magicians. It has seen them come and go, especially those aspirants to the throne (?) of president in one society or another. We are in that era again, and I don’t mean the S.A.M. — There’s no late news on Chester Morris’ mishap. In his latest pic a machine gun went off a bit too close and the ears didn’t stand up so well.

Now Tallulah Bankhead wants to know how the selected card gets to the top. She’s taking lessons from Charles Blake, whose program we itemed in issue #32. — Mickey MacDougall has made the grade. From pitching Svengali decks at every open street corner he’s now in a spot to threaten all the lecturer-magicians. Through astuteness or gambler’s luck Mickey has tied into the right places for publicity. LOOK magazine just carried a (to we boys) bawdy gaming expose while at the same time ESQUIRE was on the stands with a co-authored article naming him as Michael. We begrudge him nothing at all, for he’s won his spurs through his own aggressiveness, but we do think that from Mickey to Michael presages a slippage. We all do or do not click on our inherent mannerisms. Why change ?

Mrs. Nate Leipzig had a pretty valuable clientele of patrons susceptible to magic. Just as Beatrice Houdini was beset with the opportunists when Harry passed away, Mrs. L., in the days adjoining Nate’s death, made moves on the board of life that she could advantageously take back now. All who knew Nate well were acquainted with the fact that Mrs. L. did all of the business. She was in a spot where she could have taken a young and good magician under her wing to their mutual advantage. The only previous successor to Leipzig was Freddy Keating, but he sold his birthright down the river six years ago. I hope those who beswoggled the mailing list can do as well as Nate did, for his patrons don’t deserve a “drop”. What I said of him in #63 still holds good, and there isn’t a magician around today who can match what he had — let alone what he did.

We hate like hell to attack a women’s page in any magazine, especially the one in The Genii, but when someone says that a CAZAN, known as “The Girl Houdini” challenges Joan Brandon to duplicate any standard escape stunt performed by Harry Houdini, we fall off our broken down chair in delight. There’s $1000 in cold cash in the Greenwich Savings Bank at 1356 Broadway, New York City, earmarked for a like amount to be put up, and the gals can jump off the dock in irons or hang themselves in competition whenever they get in the mood or groove. I can vouch that Joan is ready.

“Mike” Kanter has just issued a new catalogue of mammoth proportions. The covers are novel for they picture part of his vast collection of magician’s portraits. I’m sentimental and I got a break. My pic made the top row with Eugene Laurant’s and Gene was the very, very first professional magician I ever saw (balcony) back in 1922.

Those last two figures were hard to put down. I’m getting old, but not old enough to find a laugh in the Kanter catalogue emblem for magician’s autos (can a magus afford a car ?). Imagine a traffic cop pulling up to a wizard high-balling his way towards a Piff-Paff-Poof Convention. The “rabbit from a hat” emblem is referred to. The man in the uniform says “A magician, huh ? Here’s a ticket. Tear it up in little bits of pieces, BUT DON’T FORGET TO RESTORE IT !”

In the Mail : “Please rush one extra special magical drill for drilling a 1/4″ hole in a 1/8th wooden ball as per Jinx #58. Hopefully but doubtful. C.F. Carry.” O.K. we submerge. The trick will suffer, no doubt, until aspirants to magical fame reverse the figures and make the trick up correctly. O.K. again. And, even if Frank Lane thinks and says we can’t, we CAN take it. — Did you ever hear of the Tablets of Osiris ? The mimeo publication of that Society in Baltimore has completed ten years of unceasing effort for better magic. Tom Worthington, III, is a crusader if ever there was one and NOT to be mentioned in his paper is a complement. The Index for the second five years is before us now. Our name rates 3 pages. The S.A.M. rates 74 !

The Devil Is An Empress. It’s the name of a movie. They smuggle the hero inside the historic (to those magi who read back on their magic) automaton chess player. Baron Kemplen built the first, many moons ago. Recently Dr. Henry Ridgely Evans, whose priceless research articles make the Linking Ring a monthly blessing, did a book about “Edgar Allen Poe and The Chess Player”. See the picture if you can for it’s a graphic portrayal of an illusion that once knocked the brain trusts of that era for a loop.

Please don’t bind your Jinx issues from 1 to 60 just because the monthly stopped there and the weekly started. The Index went only to 50. There will be another Index when we hit 100, if as and when we hope so help us. Keep all bound volumes in 50’s.

Would you like to buy some kid a magical Xmas present ? Maybe your own ? Pick up a copy of 400 Tricks You Can Do, by Thurston. Don’t get him anything more expensive or complicated. The book has plenty of stuff that needs only the gadgets around a house. If the boy likes magic he’ll find enough to keep him busy and you annoyed while he develops his presentation. There are things in that one book that make up 90% of Malini’s act, and Malini has made a good living from his act for years.

It may be considered beside the point, but Horace Goldin once wrote Brunel White that of all those who presented his Sawing a Woman in Half illusion for him in this country (and they numbered some famous magicians) the most successful was a man who knew nothing about magic but was a good actor. And the late Horace was figuring box office receipts. We merely ask if magi shouldn’t worry more about their presentation.