The Genii Forum

Richard Hatch

Wow, that Hofzinser painting is spectacular! Thanks for posting the report and image on your blog.

Richard Hatch

Anyone recognize the performer doing card manipulations in the background of this opera aria in Vienna earlier this year?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9eTROY6EsU

Richard Hatch

It appears the quotation is by Vernon, talking about Slydini in an audiotape to Lewis Ganson, as quoted in The Dai Vernon Book of Magic (1957), p. 31: "Did you notice how Tony performed under his own conditions? Quietly and naturally he arranged for everyone to be seated where he wanted them to...

Richard Hatch

A kickstarter campaign for Jerry's Nugget cards seems likely to set a record for magic related crowdfunding campaigns. With a goal of $15,000, it is already more than 16 times past that goal and likely to pass the quarter million $ mark on its first day: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/epcc/jer...

Richard Hatch

https://beta.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/bob-dorian-actor-and-magician-who-introduced-classic-films-on-amc-dies-at-85/2019/06/24/ef88ed3a-9688-11e9-8d0a-5edd7e2025b1_story.html?outputType=amp

Richard Hatch

I believe Dylan references Harry Lorayne in his autobiography (in the context of studying his memory systems). Dylan's son Jesse produced and directed a talk show series called "CONversations with Ricky Jay" that was never broadcast, though I believe episodes were shown at the Ricky Jay &q...

Richard Hatch

The new Netflix documentary on Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder revue apparently opens with a film of Georges Melies performing the vanishing woman at the Theatre Robert-Houdin. You can see it briefly at the end of the teaser clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS4gsWDSn68 Here's the full Melies perfor...

Richard Hatch

Has anyone seen the paperback reprint of the Busby/Whaley/Gardner The Man who was Erdnase, advertised on page 101 of the current issued (June 2019) of Genii? $29.95 postpaid in the US from http://www.houdini.com. I can't find it on the website...

Richard Hatch

This Smithsonian article about Maskelyn's film also credits him with being the first technology hacker, for a prank he played on Marconi in 1903: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/oldest-film-solar-eclipse-restored-and-online-180972325/

Richard Hatch

Hmmm... when I click on that second link, it clearly states dust jacket included. Let me know what the bookseller tells you.

Richard Hatch

Joe Lyons wrote:Thanks Richard!
That’s a great price for the paperback for anyone who doesn’t have it.
I’m inquiring about the hardback now.

Joe, check out my second link for the hardback with dust jacket for just $19.50 postpaid.

Richard Hatch

Great book! A used paperback reprint is available at my old company for just $1.75 currently: https://www.magicbookshop.com/p/used-books/how-to-do-tricks-with-cards Here's a hardback copy with dust jacket for a very reasonable $19.50 postpaid: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=300779...

Richard Hatch

Thanks! Has it been reprinted somewhere since then? I know the article itself has. I don't have it handy, but I'm pretty sure the same headshot of Smith circa 1902 was first reproduced in Gardner's article "The Mystery of Erdnase" in the 1947 SAM Convention program (I think it is in blue ...

Richard Hatch

Charlie Randall and I will be attending and will have a dealer table. Looking forward to it!

Richard Hatch

According to an email just received from Wittus Witt of Germany, Swiss magician and FISM winner Piet Forton (Pieter de Beaufort) passed away a few days ago. He often attended FFFF and was always fun to visit with and watch perform. Another legend passes...

Richard Hatch

At least one lesson involves Johnny Thompson with Penn & Teller coaching a student to do a chop cup routine.

Richard Hatch

Everything still in stock is now at 50% off, less than cost in most cases!
http://www.magicbookshop.com/

Richard Hatch

Wow, looks great!

Richard Hatch

Thanks for all the very kind comments. Truly appreciated! In case you don't get Marshall Petersen's H & R Newsletter (which announced the retail shop closing and associated sale), here are the comments from me in it that he used, which includes a condensed history of our business: When I decided...

Richard Hatch

That's great! Thanks for posting the link.

Richard Hatch

He wrote a book about something called Changin' Glue (not sure if it's in the U.S.), but beyond all that he was a lovely, warm, talented man. I am devastated. I'm guessing that is his "Sticky Blue Book" (https://www.magicbookshop.com/p/books/the-sticky-blue-book). This is really sad news....

Richard Hatch

This catalog is listed on the H & R site as the first sale from the Jay Marshall collection, but it is from May 2007 and I believe pre-dates the Potter sales, though Gabe Fajuri helped produce this:
https://www.magicbookshop.com/p/sale/jay-marshall-auction-catalog-i

Richard Hatch

This is more than a month old but I didn't see it till now, so suspect it went under the radar for others as well. FWIW:
https://www.reviewjournal.com/crime/sex ... e-1607699/

Richard Hatch

John A. ("Andy") Greget is in Arizona. Scottsdale, I think. I don't have an address handy and he doesn't have a website or do email, but I'll PM you his phone numbers. Earl Nelson is in Arizona, but in the north part of the state, I think.

Richard Hatch

Kent, I also remember when Earl Nelson worked the counter at Loftus! I bought the red and green Frank Garcia books from him, based on his demo of items from them. Great memories! This would have been in the early '70s.

Richard Hatch

His comedy partner, Stephen Fry, is a member of the Magic Circle.

Richard Hatch

Panamanian magician and magic scholar Marko (Jose Gonzalez Campos) has decided to produce an English language version of his Spanish magazine, El Puerco Sabio. The first issue of The Learned Pig, dated April 2019, is now available and is filled with practical tricks and historical information. The f...

Richard Hatch

As a measure of how messed up things were during the minstrel era, many African-American entertainers performed in blackface. Perhaps the most famous and successful was comedian and singer Bert Williams, whom W. C. Fields described as "the funniest man I ever saw -- and the saddest man I ever k...

Richard Hatch

I believe Andrew MacAllister began his career as a blackface assistant to Phillippe Talon, before achieving success in his own right.

Richard Hatch

Have a look at this short presentation called “Magicians of India “ it’s truly fascinating and amusing when one hears the clipped tones of the English narrator .....From Archieve .org ..... https://archive.org/details/MagiciansOfIndia The narrator sounds American to me. Strangely, the initial and f...

Richard Hatch

PS: If the winning bidder is going to MagiFest in Columbus next week and wants to save the shipping charges by taking delivery there, I'm happy to hand deliver it.

Richard Hatch

Still a couple hours before the bidding ends... https://tinyurl.com/yb7udf6f Happy to see that with a few hours left, this has already passed the threshold for donations in Bob Einstein's honor the memorial fund at the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Thanks to all who have (and still will!) bid on...

Richard Hatch

I ran across these to clips of Ricky Jay today while looking for something else. I wasn't familiar with either and suspect others might not be as well. Here's Ricky on German Television in 1989 promoting the German edition of his book, Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women https://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Richard Hatch

Is that presidential candidate Pat Paulsen who is sweeping up? The same! He and Bob Einstein worked together on the Smothers Brothers Show just prior to this book. Paulsen is featured "sweeping up" on the last 5 pages of the book, and quoted on page 92, staring at the camera saying "...

Richard Hatch

Bob Einstein, who passed away yesterday (January 2, 2019), wrote a book in 1970, shortly after losing his job as a comedy writer for the cancelled (but Emmy winning!) Smothers Brothers Show, in which he supposedly is shown performing magic with a coin, an egg, a deck of cards and a rabbit production...

Richard Hatch

All I know is this. Erdnase sounds so much like Mark twain, it's crazy. Martin Gardner apparently thought so, too, and explored the possibility that Twain might have helped edit or ghost the book for Milton Franklin Andrews, since both were residents of Hartford, Connecticut and billiard players. B...

Richard Hatch

The upcoming Palm Springs International Film Festival has announced a new award named after the late Ricky Jay: This year, the festival will also have a new honor, the Ricky Jay Magic of Cinema Award, named for actor and magician Ricky Jay and in honor of a film made by a master filmmaker that exemp...

Richard Hatch

Here's some very good footage, posted recently, that probably shows his act at its prime in 1977:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAZCBFJcM9o

Richard Hatch

Congressman Pocan has attended the last few MagiFests. A very nice guy and serious about his magic.

Richard Hatch

I got John Olsson's More Wordcrime book just now, with its final chapter on Erdnase (thanks for the reference to it, Richard Stokes!). At a glance, it appears to cover the same ground as in Wasshuber's original release: Olsson still says that there are "362,880 permutations of the letters that ...

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