Editor’s note : Mr Proskauer kindly presented this effect to Jinx readers and I have not taken the liberty of changing the wording of his instructions.

Modern ownership of magical effects is always in doubt unless its creator really does invent something new, novel and different. Whenever a magician announces “This is an original effect,” in keeping with other magicians who have a fairly large magical library, I smile skeptically. One magician may make the pass; another magician with a clever shuffle achieves the same effect of bringing a card to the top or bottom of a pack. It doesn’t make any difference what method is used – it’s the effect on the audience that counts. With which little lecture, we will proceed to the cause of this article :

More years ago than I like to remember, I “invented” an “original” method of Sawing a Deck in Half. It was at the time that Sawing a Woman in Half was in vogue. Here it is :

EFFECT

An unopened pack of cards is handed to someone in the audience. The seal is broken and cards are shuffled. Magician takes the pack back, and has a card freely selected by anyone in the audience. The card is replaced in the pack. The magician goes back to the stage. The magician then takes a saw and cuts the pack in half. The magician takes one half of the cut pack in hand, and asks someone in the audience to cry “stop” at any desired place. The magician pulls the cards out of the pack, throwing them on the floor until someone cries “stop”. The card on which he stops is placed on the table. HE now takes the other half of the deck and repeats the “cry stop” effect. He then shows the two pieces and holds them together. The fit ! It is the previously selected card !

METHOD

As the selected card is returned to the pack, pass it to the top. That’s all there is to the trick – nothing more. The rest is simply showmanship and presentation. As the “half-cards” are being thrown to the floor, obviously you are “second dealing, ” always retaining the top half card.

We now skip a few years. Sawing a Woman in Half is not so prominent now in the minds of non-magical people. But the above described effect is just as good as it was many years ago. Torn and Restored Cards, Card in a Box, Card in an Egg, Card in a Cigarette, and other effects are in vogue.

So let’s bring our trick up to 1929 :

METHOD

After a card is selected by someone in the audience, with a flourish a pencil is handed to an unknown assistant with instructions to “Write your name on this card. That’s to identify it later.” The magician now goes through the same type of presentation as above, but instead of using a saw (it always was difficult to saw a pack of cards in half – the pasteboards slipped) he states that he has been reading Physical Culture magazine lately, and by eating the raw meat and vegetables prescribed therein can easily tear a pack in half. The balance of the effect is the same.

Still another method, and one I used Jan. 20, 1936 at an entertainment where Al Baker and I were the only magicians, is this. After the card has been selected, returned to the deck and passed to the top, I cut the deck in half. Placing the halves at opposite ends of the table, I offer the spectator his choice of either pack. Of course, this is the magician’s choice and the correct half is forced. I give the assistant one half and retain the half with the selected card on top. I now say to the assistant “Do as I do.” With that, I tear up my part of the pack ! This brings a good laugh for usually the assistant “stalls”. If he does tear his half in half, it’s still a good thing for I pick up all his pieces, and the pieces from my half and “mix them”. This confuses the issue. Go back to the original cry stop idea and you have performed a ‘miracle’. Incidentally, for you weaker magicians (like me) to whom tearing an entire deck is hard work (or an almost impossible task) this method where you tear only half the deck is a swell idea.

About three or four years ago at an S.A.M. show a magician did a Tearing a Pack effect something like the one described herein. Quite honestly he thought it was original – his method probably is. I don’t know to this day the method by which he achieves his effect – but I do know the effect on the audience is the same as the above described effect which I first did about eighteen years ago – and to which I lay no claim for originality except for the patter and presentation. This trick was first described, to my knowledge, about seventy-five years ago, but it might have been used long before that.

This is a good effect, and I am glad that the Editor of The Jinx (who had heard that it was my “original creation”) asked me to describe it in print for the readers of The Jinx. I disclaim any originality of the exact effect, but I do claim full credit for having been the first to bring it to light in the last several years.