Frank Lane took exception to my remarks in the Winter Extra, for which I can’t blame him if he actually thinks he originated the effect in question. He favored me with a delightful letter, though, and said with rare wit, “‘You’re a cockeyed liar if you say that routine is yours and it isn’t Al Baker’s either.” Other quaint bits of Lane humor consist of, “Don’t get fat-headed because you’ve got a quarter magazine.” – “Don’t think that the boys imagine you as any big-minded chap who has no faults.” – “So wake up… before it’s too late.”
All right, Frank, I’ll try my best to wake up. I’ll present you with a dozen life subscriptions if you can show where you ever did the three billet card effect before I made my pleasant stay in Boston. And by the way—now that you are wearing a ‘solid gold black onyx ring with a great big question mark on it’ and admit that you saw it on me first—I hope it brings you lots of luck. However, rather than a question mark, I think you should have had a dollar sign.
At this writing, I’ve completed nine weeks with the Green River Revue, and the end hasn’t popped into view as yet. From Pittsburgh to New York for the annual Liquor Show, we have covered 117 nightclubs and dinner spots. The week at New York’s Grand Central Palace was historical to me because the show was recorded on transcription records, and spacing on the record was timed to the split second for my announcements and the incidental magic. Audience reaction (applause!) was timed into these space waits, and the fun started when, at various shows, they didn’t react according to our predetermined opinion. The record just went ’round and ’round, waiting, like the tides, for no man—especially Annemann.
All of which eases me into a tip for those who like new effects from old apparatus. Martin Sunshine originated the idea several years ago of using the candle tube for pouring a drink instead of the stock gag of producing a handkerchief. I’ve been able to use this idea successfully in our presentation as it fits with our advertising. One of the little ladies holds out a candle, another lights it, and one from the other side pushes the tube over it and follows with the cover. The entire line makes a pass (I hope you realize that all of this is timed with our music), and another steps forward with a whiskey glass into which is poured the ‘demon rum.’
That serves as a good excuse for my presence, and my bit starts with the vanish of the drink rather than let the lassie lap it up. My tip, to get back on earth, is to those who are using the vanish. The candle tube makes a neat build-up to it.
Rumor has it around various and sundry magic counters that Bernard Ernst has turned in his resignation as president of the Parent Assembly S.A.M. I can’t resist hoping it isn’t true and that, if contemplated, forces will be brought to bear against it. No one could have been as sincere in his efforts as Mr. Ernst, and we’ll all lose a champion for the right kind of magical relations if he decides not to continue. We’ve all known that his health has not been the best and that he has carried on at times when the rest of us would have taken it easy. The boys around New York appreciate this loyalty, and I only hope that those outside of meeting distance can visualize a trouper at heart. And in show business, that’s tops.
Lowering myself to write about others, I take issue against magazines for magicians that think only of making ends meet through advertising while the content flounders, whereas ends would meet automatically through adherence to an ethical policy. Magic is a small field when compared to any other line of endeavor supporting (?) trade publications. Nobody gets away with anything. I have no argument with the so-called (by the larger dealers) ‘bedroom dealers’ who fulfill their promises and live up to their ads. I was one myself, and the Lord knows I’ve never tried to pretend I was anything else than a sporadic and moody writer along magical lines.
I have no warehouses and I have no staff. I’m strictly a magically inclined rugged individualist, and one either likes me or they don’t. I’ll live or die by the percentage. But, by the Gods in the Heavens of all people, I can’t recognize the policy of a magazine for magicians (and which exists by the voluntary will of magicians) when it accepts the advertisements of irresponsible persons who deliberately copy, re-issue, and reproduce the exact tricks and effects of others; take benignly ads from those known not to fill more than six orders out of ten; and continue to accept ads from people against whom complaints have piled up because of misrepresentation and apparatus or supplies of a pediculous nature—and the definition of that word is ‘lousy.’
There used to be a magazine for magi that was solely owned and put together by an individual who had magic and magic alone at heart. He lost money, he had dozens of enemies, but I’ll gently push in the face any man who’ll tell me he ever lost a penny on a bad or worthless trick which he bought because of an ad in that magazine and which wasn’t returned after a just complaint. And such a policy, my reader, is worth a lot to YOU.
In the New York World-Telegram of February 20th, a nice feature article appeared regarding “Al” Altman, talent scout for MGM Pictures. Mr. Altman is chairman of the S.A.M. Expose Committee (I quoted him in the January issue), and outside of discovering Joan Crawford and Franchot Tone, the outcome of which is no imaginary problem now, he has been instrumental in stopping a number of planned exposures of magic via the screen. I’d reproduce the article, but I fear those letters saying that it’s not concerned with magic.
On the deck is a nice ad sheet about Psy-Key-Lock by John Snyder Jr. His letter to me says that he first read of the effect in my book The Book Without a Name. He didn’t quite care for the method, so he started to develop something different. He finishes, “and I really believe I have it.” All well and good. Way back in September of 1935, I printed the new presentation of this trick in The Jinx and described the buttonhole angle, which was mine. (I sat by an outside pool next to the house and mentioned it to Bob Trasher from Elmira, N.Y.)
Now—Mr. Snyder has said that he has a new method—and he has. It has developed from the new presentation, but it is an admirable method that supersedes my original subtlety by far. If you want to spend the money, here is the chance for a complete and much different effect. You’ll get it complete and ready to work. I know. I’ve worked it a lot—all different ways, too. This is an excellent way.
Harking back to a passed-over subject, I wonder if there isn’t some way the dealers of the land can get together and associate against the continuance of outlaw dealers who pay their fee and do their worst. I realize that such a combine might result in a monopoly, which, for one, I wouldn’t favor, but there must be a way to prevent the misfortune of those who buy through ads appearing in supposedly responsible journals and are ‘hung’ with absolutely no redress. I will welcome any suggestions for a betterment of these conditions. Write them—I’ll print them. When we say we are independent—we mean it.
Flash! A letter just at hand includes a copy of a letter sent by a dealer who didn’t like a certain paragraph in a recent Jinx issue. This dealer went so far as to write alongside the editorial in this copy (for which the purchaser paid a dollar) a protest. The purchaser was quite right in objecting to the dealer’s comment on his copy and also to the condition in which the copy was received. If you object to anything like this, send your subscriptions to a dealer who does right by you—or direct to the publisher.
You can now obtain copies of The Jinx No. 1. Due to the consistent demand for it, I’ve had it reprinted so that those who wish may complete their files. I’ve also been asked why I don’t include all of my old effects which were sold for years in order to make a more complete collection. I’ll think about it.