Clayton Rawson's pictures on the adjoining page illustrate what we call "good" publicity for magic. It's a far cry from "here's how it's done" stuff. A bit of study will show that such a picture strip has just about everything to gain reader interest and leave them wondering how it could be possible. Isn't it better than having one say, after reading a solution, "Isn't that silly?" We were messing around with a cooling welsh rarebit after the last S.A.M. meeting where Rawson presented it, and John Mulholland beat us to the wire by many lengths in securing that and…
My most heartfelt thanks go out to those who thought well enough of us to mail Xmas greetings and the novelties this year were quite up to par. Abril Lamarque went Percy Abbott's levitation one better by releasing a large photo of himself levitating himself and passing the hoop over the horizontal body. Sid Lorraine has a real cute "spy" theme on the hidden message in a cigarette, all in keeping with the times. Tom Worthington, III, as usual must have spent hours preparing his hand made greeting folders. The front design was made up of 5 different color metallic…
The Calypso singers, Trinidad troubadours now quite the Broadway rage have a coffee color complexioned leader actually named Houdini. This form of lyrical singing is as new as the handcuff and lock breaking era started by our own Houdini back in the 1890's. --- Memories : When Bill Larsen wrote Jr. after his name; when Ben Erens was the Mickey MacDougall of his day around NYC; when the address on the ads read Blackstone Magic Co., Percy Abbott, Mgr.; when Edgar Bergen used to be on the SAM shows and the writeups never mentioned the name of his dummy; when…
Every time we've turned around this week someone has told us he was building the cabinet for the SEFALALJIA routine from last issue. Incidentally, and phonetically, the word means a high class headache. And coincidentally (?) when the C was changed to S and the G to J, the letters stood for Stewart James! And Dr. Vosburgh Lyons has revamped FINGER FINGER (#65) into a thing of beauty by having the two spectators stand back to back, sides to the audience. Thus neither can see how many fingers the other holds out and anyone else in the audience steps back…
We, too, like the Mulholland definition of "exposing" as per Larsen's quote in the Dec. Genii, but remind that for years and years the big societies have always had a battle when one of the members slipped a bit. At such a time there has been raised the question "What is an expose ?" and to date, to our knowledge, no society has incorporated in its by-laws a definition of what they mean by saying "No member shall expose, ---." Walter Gibson once wrote "A puzzle is a problem in which the answer must be given in order to make…
For all copies of Jinx # 61-62-63 which are returned we'll be glad to extend subscriptions accordingly. There were a few duplications but the issues are entirely out of print now and we can use whatever we get. --- Incidentally, as can be seen by the front page felines, this week, when they learned that the weekly appearance was no fake they had kittens ! Screen Guide for Dec. and fresh on the stands as you read this, has a nice layout of pics of Bill Neff and James Stewart doing magic with no expose. Neff has scored in two…
We feel somewhat the way a certain foreign infested political faction must have felt when the mother country up and made what newspapers have called an unholy alliance. We admit that we're human enough to gloss, at times, the doings and capers of friends, but in this instance the mail has carried too many letters of complaint to ignore. Strangely, most of the writers have concurred with my original view that Max Holden didn't "expose" anything in the Oct. 6 issue of The Family Circle, a give-away mag that is stuck into grocery bags and stacked before "Free - Take…
We are still trying to dig up #61-62-63 for those subscribers who came in a bit after the curtain went up. For all returned we'll duplicate with any issue or advance subscription lists accordingly. Now that Dante has started westward we got to musing over the meaning of the "Dante" and "Danton" billings, that is, how they directly apply to a magician. Dante is the first name of Dante Aligihiri who wrote Inferno (Hell) and Paradisio (Heaven). Of course, one might use the titles and bill the show "Dante presents 'From Hell to Heaven' with Okra, the Mystery Girl". We…
It made us quite happy to get a year's subscription the other day along with a note that the writer figured that he was buying from two to five books and manuscripts every couple of months at $1 or $2 each and that 8 copies of The Jinx over that period resulted in a $1 buy that, when looked over in entirety, showed up as exceedingly worth while. Another letter said that its writer liked the weekly idea because it kept him continually pepped up on tricks and didn't let his interest flag. Another said the "damn thing comes in…
We think periodically about the science of magical trick and book reviewing. It hit at our front door recently when we were offered a page in a magic mag and might have become looked upon as a savant of high magical order. And so it was turned down, not only because our time seems limited since we got the weekly unleashed, but because we know our limits as well as likes and dislikes. There are seven classes of magic, according to the Robert Houdin school, and each is a branch of the art which justly demands almost complete concentration to…