Let’s start off with a not so bad idea for figure magi, and which was forwarded by William Rueskamp. You have 1000 one dollar bills. Put in ten bags so that no matter how much is asked for, from $1 to one thousand, it can be handed over immediately without opening any bag. Most people say it can’t be done. Put one dollar in the first bag, then 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256. The ninth bag filled total 511. Subtract this from one thousand and you have 489 in the tenth bag. Now any amount can be passed out without opening a bag. a figure wizard could work this up by calling the proper bags as the audience names the amount — That brings to mind a really new slant on figure magic in the form of a neat blackboard or publicity trick which Wallace Lee will have on the market shortly. It’s called Fakerithmetic and is effective enough to use before club audiences and subtle enough to upset fast figure men. You actually seem to add any (and I mean ANY) column of five figure numbers instantly, and CORRECTLY.
Correction; In Eddie Clever’s effect in the last issue, mention was made of the publication Take A Card and the authors given as Larsen and Wright. It should have been McMillen and Brown. Incidentally, Jean Hugard has written and also told me regarding the “under the handkerchief cutting” business as used in The Guidance of Fate (first part) last month. This principle was originated and sold privately by him for many years before being marketed in conjunction with another effect several years ago. The Meyer effect made a new use for the principle, and I’m only too glad to see that Jean gets credit for the original thought and use of it.
It’s a known and recognized fact that the entertainers along mystical lines who have had the most success in making money, have stayed away from association with others in the same line. Granted that such association can do a lot in the development of effects, it also spreads a trick across the country and makes it passé through being overworked. A certain few, especially among private entertainers, have sat back, said nothing and done nothing before other magicians, yet have watched things closely and developed their own programs jealously to a point of distinction, not to mention difference. They’ve realized that too many are always ready to find out what they are doing and then immediately copy, invariably in a much inferior presentation. When one reads history and sees how the old timers guarded their secrets, to the extent that only through apprenticeship could a person learn magic and start out for himself, then it becomes easy to see why the magic of today is not looked upon as being mysterious, but rather as a form of entertainment. That’s why some poor magi are successful as entertainers, while really expert conjurors (who rely solely on perfect technique rather than amusing and distinctly different portrayals) are sitting on their reputations of skill.
Appropriate spot for New York magi on their night out : Presto’s Garden 139 East 45th St. — The new book I mentioned last month has stirred up some comment and is by Guy Jarrett.
The author, who has done the whole job except to cut down some trees and make his own paper, has more actual stage illusions and mechanical effects to his credit than anyone you can mention. He’s been behind the scenes of all big magic shows during the past thirty years and his inside stories of the “greats” are truly revealing. As he says himself “This book is not for reading or distribution in a Y.W.C.A.” The title is merely Jarrett. There are over 120 pages, 20 of which are sketches and drawings. I hope all buyers will appreciate the caustic and subtle (not so subtle in spots) wit and get as many belly laughs as have I. Any man who can compose a book as he sets the type, is worth, at least, serious consideration.
Times have changed : In Stanyon’s Magic for January 1904 he remarks that customers have been unable to obtain Gasolene for various fire effects because it possesses no commercial value ! He announces that arrangements have been made to have gasolene specially distilled for their conveniance. — Wisdom : The Knight’s of Magic, in New York, have arranged with Jean Hugard for him to give five lectures on the theory and practice of magic at their meetings in the Central Opera House on the second Sunday of each month. — Paul Duke, at the Hotel Adelphia in Phil–ditto, found himself between two alert gendarmes late one night and with a suspicious bulge in his hip pocket. The street corner frisking revealed an extra large size pull he had just purchased at Kanter’s (free ad). — I recently saw Prince Mendes at the Royal Palms Club in Miami, and he does a strictly Cardini act even to the mannerisms. The crowd seems to like him a lot, and I suppose that counts for much. At any rate, he’s working. — Two blocks away, Professor Seward stood on the platform of his two thousand dollar set-up, beside his eighteen thousand dollar mahogany inlaid private bus, all located on his own fourteen thousand dollar Flagler street corner lot about four miles from his twenty-two thousand dollar home on Miami Beach, and sold dollar horoscopes to the Florida crackers who have listened to his astronomical advice (and tireless gifted gab) for many consecutive seasons. Why learn sleight-of-hand ? Sleight-of-tongue pays much better.
In the November Genii is A Simplified Five Card problem. I liked it muchly and use with five of those very swell Davenport card silks. The spectator stays behind me for the selection and mixing of the deck. With him still behind, I take out the correct handkerchief (folded) and hand it to him to wrap the deck in while I concentrate (as if I could !) and correctly name the card. Now I step aside, take the deck and remove the handkerchief, remarking that too much concentration always ruins the silk with an impression, and the moral is “Don’t think too hard.” It’s good for a laugh and people don’t realize afterwards they didn’t see the silk first.
That Hall of Shame department in the current Linking Ring is a nice idea, and was just as nice ten years ago when the title was thought of by Kolar. Then, however, it was to be used against snake-in-the-grass advertisers as well as exposers. Kolar gave it to me, and I well remember the symbolic drawing that Nelson Hahne made for the column. I wrote it for two months, but Dr Wilson kayoed it in its entirety because I was getting too rabid over his advertisers.
I’m glad it’s being made use of now anyway, but I’m a little sorry I didn’t think before now to use it in this sheet.
Galli-Galli is leaving us all for a while, and taking his chickens with him back across the sea until the government says he can come back again and make another robe full of lucre by his incomparable switching of tens to ones. — Keith Clark has broken down after these several years and is publishing a treatise of cigarette magic that looks like the last word. With 300 pages and over 300 actual photographs of himself in action, he’s covered a field that has needed real practical covering. His dope on talking with tongued cigarettes alone is a valuable bit of knowledge. — That idea of Howard Albright’s is a practical thing. I mean his Safety System for filing secrets, magazines, ideas and general magicata. It’s a nice cabinet and too many magi need something to keep their loose papers and manuscripts in a businesslike arrangement. — What well-known recently played a private job, was requested to do the card and cigarette, fixed it up hastily in the you-know-what, and then when presenting it forgot what card he had put in the cigarette ? — That sketch of me in Max Holden’s new book of magi programs flatters the condition I was in at the time the original photo was taken. If I remember correctly, I was far from being full cheeked – what with all the meals I was missing at that time — The California air and life must be all to the merry, judging by the current appearance of Bessie Houdini. She’s looking much better than she did when I saw her last three years ago. Also had the pleasure of meeting Dr Edward Saint, that new personality in the magic world. Well, I thinkg he’s worth knowing. — Beaten at my own game : John Mulholland told me at the S.A.M. Ladies night that he recently played a date and did only four tricks in a little over an hour. I thought I was doing something when I got away with five, dammit.
