A New York subscriber had to buy an extra copy of #23 for August when his dog chewed up the original copy. That’s what I call a hound for magic.
Mogul, at the N.Y. Paramount lounge, is pulling ticket buyers who do not bother with the show, according to a trade journal. His question answering, via Jinx #6, seems to have people buffaloed, and no wonder, because it’s really good.
Mickey MacDougal is a card detective according to the August 8th Liberty. He risks his life, exposing cheaters at bridge, as often as does a police detective who is running down other types of criminals. This is an excellently written description with illustrations of the bridge cheating method in one of Frank Lane’s last manuscripts.
When the London stage hit White Horse Inn opens at the Center Theatre in New York sometime in September, fifty waiters will color change their napkins to as many flags of all nations. As Tess Holden sewed them together, she muttered “I never knew there were so many countries.” I wonder if the theatre owners will return the Nazi flag, demand a rebate, and ruin the profits of the deal?
“One of the boys”, whose chatty column in a monthly magic magazine bounded back to him when he entirely wasted it by writing a tirade about me, has stopped the column in a rage and confined his side remarks to the bottom of his advertisement. Now it costs him money to argue!
Brunel White’s columns of real magical news in London’s World Fair (theatrical weekly) is to be admired. There’s much of it, and it is all solid reading matter of interest. We should have something like that over here. Not since back in the early twenties, when Mark Henry (Henry Marcus) used to fill three Billboard pages a week with magical news, articles, and pictures, has there been any weekly news of value for magi.
What allegedly noted mystifier was soundly booted where it counts at Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street, New York City, for starting a certain gimmick on its way to oblivion through popular and muchly misused presentation by the follow-uppers in magic?
Harry Blackstone has finished the Sunday roto exposures with No. 7. The series was beautifully pictured and included Squash, which seems like an under the table shin kick at his old pal Percy Abbott. I’ll still dare or challenge any exposer to expose a trick or illusion he uses in his own performances, and that goes for Blackstone or anybody else. One fellow wrote in “Don’t be too hard on him; vaudeville is dead and after all, he has to eat.”
C. Rosencrance has put out a book on systematic card work called The Red Five of Diamonds and it has fifty tricks with an entirely new arrangement. Four more books are to appear in the series, making a total of 250 tricks. I didn’t know there were that many tricks possible with a stacked deck. It’s a monstrous work.
I’ve got quite a nice bundle of letters here about my suggestion last month for determining what is and what is not an exposure. I think I’ll bind them together and loan them to magical societies to help make up their minds.
Magic, like the song, seems to go ’round and ’round. In May 1935, Max Holden put the shrinking dollar bill in his Linking Ring column. In September 1935 I gave it a more complete going over in Jinx #12 with congressional patter. Now it pops up in the August 1936 Sphinx as a Political Trick! Also poppeth up a mention regarding a nice World-Telegram article about I.I. Altman that was Jinx covered last March! The article appeared last February 20th! Yea, verily, the sun doth move.
From the foregoing lines as I read them back it seems as though I’m being vain. If I am, it’s an attempt to give readers a giggle.
I hope Herman Weber is selling a lot of his Money From Magic books. Magicians, as a rule, want only tricks and pass by advice. For once, however, they have the chance of getting a book which has taken much time and thought, and which contains much valuable advice for the man who has the tricks but needs a way to get them before the public, at a profit.
On August 12th I journeyed to the Rajah Restaurant on West 48th Street in New York at the behest of Dr Daley to watch the Mankari Ponde (Mong-care-ee Pond-ee). Jud Cole and Ted Arnold were there to listen to the marvels of Yoga and see the intrepid Yogi stop an electric fan with his fingers. So what?
At the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village has been a magician named Solitaire. From the size of his audience at each performance thus far recorded, the name is appropriate. Solitaire does stock magic, ventriloquism (with two dummies and at which he is best), and a few ghostly apparitions make their appearance.
Up at the Bronx Opera House for a week was The Great Richiardi with his illusion show. This Spanish magi carried about seven tons of apparatus and practically changed his show every performance. His billing read “You have seen Houdini, Thurston and the Great Hermann. Now see in Person, on the Stage, the King of All Magicians.”
Also, at the Roxy Theatre, appeared Miaco, the deaf mute wonder of New York manipulators. The routine smacks loudly of Cardini, but the execution of his work is quite all that can be desired.
Hardeen, Gordon, Alexander and Jim Collins have returned from the wars and strife of the Fort Worth Centennial. From all reports, business wasn’t so forte or worth the journey.
Verrall Wass, of London, is publishing a Mystery Monthly with a few tricks and advice. The dissertation on colour schemes in the current issue is of value to magi when making up their drapes and settings.
On the west coast is plotted a new magic monthly called The Genii and it will be piloted by that prolific writer on things magical, William Larsen. Those acquainted with Larsen’s reputation as a writer of good tricks won’t miss a copy.
I’ve had a nice response to the article about Bert Reese in the Summer Extra. One said, “Incidentally, the Reese article was one of the best yet. Where in h** did you get the information — psychic connection with Bert? I had read accounts of his work (in an article, ‘The Man Who Fooled Edison’) and could find no explanation of his method. Must reread the item in the light of your disclosures.” I’m glad to know when the customers are satisfied.
One of the great reasons why magicians slump is because they take themselves too seriously, especially with modern audiences who want to be entertained first and mystified second. For example, in a circular at hand: “Abe Lincoln said ‘You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.’ Mr xxxx fools all of the people all of the time with his ‘Klever Konjuring.'” It’s too bad Abe isn’t around to correct the quotation and call the wizard on his statement. No doubt others will.
Why do many magicians get mad and peeved when a spectator (this is very common for table workers) catches them? Don’t they know this is bound to happen often with exposures and the dissemination of magical knowledge so prevalent? If you, you or you get your ire up when somebody cracks wise with the explanation, stop it. It only helps antagonize the rest of your watchers. If you kid the chump by saying something like “That was only to find out what trick books you’ve read; here’s one that hasn’t been printed yet” or any other remark that serves to show you aren’t upset by the disclosure, you’ll be tops with every spectator even if it burns the wise fellow. But don’t leave him; if you do you’re licked. Stick with him and do every trick you know until you fool him, and then, when you have done that just once, leave him. And that’s a secret the top notch professionals have had to learn through experience. You’re getting it for a quarter — if you take it.
That bit of psychology reminds me of an angle told to me a long time ago by a half legitimate and half ‘con’ man. Many (too many) fourflushers will make up a roll of bills with the large one on the outside. Then, to get a lone dollar out, they have to dig deep, and the ruse is apparent to any dumb onlooker. The cute angle is to put the big bill second and the single on top. Now take out the roll and take off the single. The big bill flashes, and is so unexpected that it registers for evermore. If you saw a fair size roll of bills with a lone one on top, would you think of bigger money underneath? And that little bit of skullduggery subconsciously impresses them that you aren’t merely flashing.
That paragraph wasn’t so magical, but it’s good psychology, and if more magicians would play to their audience’s reaction they would be better off.
Frank Lane’s new Ideas manuscript is to hand with compliments. His introduction reads in part, “These booklets will come out periodically. No special month or time. I am taking the best of the ideas that come along. There are too many monthly papers where it is impossible for the editor, or putter-out-er of the paper, to give good stuff ALL THE TIME, and thus, before long, they peter out.” Outside of the first handcuff escape trick, which has been sold as a secret in a dollar set of escapes for years by Lyle Douglas and Blair Gilbert; and a new (?) method for doing the popular lock and key trick by switching the key as given in Jinx #12 for September 1935, the manuscript is up to Lane’s standard and good. The Poker Demonstration is especially workable and different.
Bob Nelson, from Columbus, Ohio, was in New York on a pleasure trip this month. His conversation around magic emporiums veered to the combine of dealers who will organize shortly to the advantage of all magic buyers. Fly-by-nights and unreliable depots are thus to be smoked out for all to know. What magician-buyers need today is a magazine to guarantee its advertisers and see that its readers get satisfaction when they spend their money. Every magus would welcome it. Dr Gordon Peck, of Glen Falls, N.Y., has been nominated to run for the State Assembly this fall on the Democratic Ticket.
The August Sphinx carried quite an article about Effective Control which had to do with the way exposing via the films has been curtailed through the power of the S.A.M. At the same time, N.Y. theatres were playing a ‘short’ produced by Van Buren and distributed by R-K-O featuring the radio team ‘Easy Aces’ and Dave Allison as the magician. Titled Fool Your Friends, the exposures included the birdcage vanish, Squash, the coin between two playing cards with the French Drop vanish (one N.Y. nightclub artist uses this steadily at tables) and a four-ace bit. Control? Phooey!