Conventions are pretty well over except for the P.C.A.M. fest at San Jose in July. We are batting 300 this year by missing them all, and for silly reasons too, which doesn’t help our temper. The S.A.M. convened at Cincinnati a few weeks before the I.B.M. closed in on the same city. Both organizations were sponsored by locals groups which isn’t a bad way to get advanced ticket sales. Prize diplomatic boner was the publicity release which said “There was a magician’s convention in Cincinnati only two weeks ago (the Society of American Magicians) but these, it appears, were the more high-hat people of the craft. The International Brotherhood of Magicians is the more democratic and more numerous and just as full of tricks”. I know, don’t tell me – it was the reporter’s fault. But he must have been given that impression, and whether it be true or not, it doesn’t look so hot in print. (Look who’s talking!)
That last issue paragraph re the deLaurence catalogue bore much fruit. You’d better get it quickly before they clamp down. Those who saw it (in somebody else’s hands) have been saying they didn’t realize Jinx tips were worth so much.
Dai Vernon opened at the Rainbow Room Grill, N.Y.C. on June 20 with his new Harlequin act. Four tricks but quite high in value they say. Review next month. Hardeen into the Leon and Eddie spot same date, and Russell Swann still at Savoy-Plaza. Magic picking up in N.Y.C. for summer it seems. Richard Dubois on air over WOR June 2 with Magic on the Air program. We dropped in to watch it. Before program Dubois did Al Baker’s Card and Chewing Gum, a gag with string of attached dollar bills, and rising cigarettes for studio audience. On air explained burning sugar and pencil breaking with bill (still catalogued) among others and wound up with revelation of total of added dates by listeners (also catalogued), solution to be sent to all requests. In betwixt was comedy (the part that got most minus marks from reviews) and a dramatization of the bullet catching trick. Discussion among local magi centered on further programs getting deeper into good material (there won’t be anymore, though) and expose of switch and graphite bullet for the hoodoo trick. As the only one doing the stunt today, I disagree on latter revelation because it doesn’t mean a thing if all of the old ways are told. Modern guns and bullets do away with all of that stuff. And what’s more, the principles used in the bullet trick cannot be applied to any other trick in magic, and exposing it as it used to exist (it couldn’t have been right or so many wouldn’t have been wiped out) doesn’t hurt a single trick of this age. However, the Secretary of National Assembly isn’t in best position to broadcast a series of tricks – unless he wants to be president. On your “must” list put Death From a Top Hat by Clayton Rawson. Release date July 15th. All about murders in sealed rooms and such with daylight vanishes etc., that make for a swell evening or so. Cast is all made up of characters you’ll delight in tying up with present day magi you know they must be taken after. Pay-off is the actual S.A.M. ladies’ night at N.Y. Hotel McAlpin with program and everything climaxed by a delightful shooting affray. If you want a “different” rope idea to let the “cutting” rest, try Melbourne Christopher’s Stretching a Rope, in booklet and plenty illustrated. We highly recommend. Mitchell Kanter publishes and if you haven’t taken last month’s advice, order Tom Osborne’s 3 to 1 Rope Trick at the same time. Both a great relief from the usual. A squeezed in line or so gives thanks to Lloyd Jones for his nice Genii remarks about us not being a crusading knight, but laying facts on line and letting the reader think about it or not. The first Jinx (it seems like years) in Oct. 1934 said in second line of official bow “neither is it (Jinx) a crusading sheet with a chip on each shoulder and a woodpile in reserve”. Editrivia has always been a space filler. We have never mentioned it in ads, or boasted of sagacity. We hate innuendo and believe implicitly as does the typical upperclass Englishman (we have a few unpaid debts, too!) who has a very simplified view of the world. Either a thing is correct and “done” or it is incorrect and “not done”… and no nonsense about it. We sell the Jinx because of its contents magically. The Editrivia is our personal bit of graft. Thinking of Genii reminds that the covers are really superb photographically and several are framing each photograph. Tip to W.L. – keep the white type on black backgrounds so it can be blocked out by those who want to frame without words, and buy extra copy so as not to mess up their file. Charles Larson had an awfully nice party at his Savoy-Plaza apartment in honor of Caryl Fleming’s trip east. 19 sat around the festive board and paraded their pet tricks for the edification of the western wizard who came back at them with a largesse of logical legerdemain that is probably being copied already. Somebody belatedly discovered Four Aces on the Stage in Jinx #12 and now there’s a rush on for copies. Maybe these lines won’t be read for three years either. Associated Press reports that a nudist magician was the hit at a nudist’s indoor party held in London recently. The guests said he made knotted handkerchiefs untie themselves, pushed a metal bar through a sheet of glass without apparently breaking the glass, and even produced card from behind people’s naked shoulders. If Burling Hull weren’t working steadily in this country we’d be very suspicious. A topping bit of skullduggery came about a short time ago when a N.Y. booking agent told a magical manipulator about Mogul answering a question written on paper, torn up and burned (Jinx #6). The effect was then exposed to the agent by Tommy Martin, who, of course, doesn’t use it in his act. Later in the day another performer, who uses the stunt for agents and press, was in the same office looking for a contact. When asked to do something he started to have the agent write on a slip. Came the fast one “You’re not going to tear the center out, are you?” Not to belittle anyone we can’t help but remark about the exchange of low bows as per the ads in current Sphinx and Genii, each laying it on thick for the other. Same is very ridiculous to anyone in magic since Dr Wilson died. The Sphinx is dying an aggravating death. Aggravating because it has a strong constitution but is on the wrong diet. The sooner the stockholders and policy dictators get out from under and let the magazine go into the hands of one person, the less headaches they’ll have, and the better off The Sphinx will be. For no magical paper has ever been worth a pinch of salt that doesn’t pour when not owned and edited by one person. We’re not being critical towards any individual as an individual because we’re very friendly with most of them, but as a group we respectively ask them to check circulation and advertising revenue. That’s been a positive answer to right and wrong policies since Gutenberg. We’ll give the usual life subscription (we’ve only lost once) to the one who first names any other publication which won’t give circulation figures to advertisers. Dr Wilson used to do it. And all of this sniping (and we’re the first to come out with it) is because we hate like hell to see The Sphinx become second rate. We still cherish the first copy we bought in 1922, and it’s worth (to us) as much as the complete file. If there’s anyone who should have inherited The Sphinx it’s William Larsen. He grew up with it back in Wisconsin, and there isn’t another in the country today with the touch that raised the Hilliard-Vernello child into a class by its lonesome through the love for magic by Wilson. However, Bill has put that fervor in Genii, and this paragraph started because he advertised that he should have called his monument Sphinx Jr. It is our opinion that it wasn’t because of the magazine today, but because the name Sphinx is plenty full of sentiment to him (and us too!). John Mulholland corrects us regarding that Gibson tale about the Houdini elephant detailed in the April (#43) issue. It seems as though a few men pushed the empty cabinet on stage, and after the elephant entered a lot of men turned it around. Then, after the vanish, the few men pushed the cabinet off, a concealed cable attached to a winch doing the underhand pull. We want the records as straight as possible. Scooperoo dept. Max Holden opens his second branch in Philadelphia this September. Who said depression? And is it true that his trip to London this summer is to settle details for making Davenport’s empire his fourth spot? We’re just asking. Scooperess dept. Dorothy Wolff and The Sphinx are 3000 miles apart and will stay that way!! We’ll be with you a week from now in the Summer Extra. For the moment, however, we make a curtsey to the Sphinx printer for turning Mulholland’s bunny from the hat cut upside down in the June issue. It’s a subtle way of saying that it’s the only way a lot of magicians can produce a rabbit!!!
