Mickey MacDougall 1951 News Clip

[Brad Jeffers]

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67 ... 707650/m1/

[Dave Le Fevre]

Thanks, I enjoyed watching that

[Dustin Stinett]

Along with the video provided by the University of North Texas Digital Library, which was apparently part of a newscast (WBAP-TV, Fort Worth, Tex.), is a link to a PDF of its one-page script—which misspells MacDougall’s name.

[Tarotist]

Mickey MacDougall was a svengali pitchman nearly as illustrious as myself. Here is a little story about him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUGkf25DOk0

[Bob Coyne]

Mark, thanks for posting that clip of S David Walker talking about MacDougall. A very interesting and heartwarming story!

[Ian Kendall]

I heard a story about a street performer who was doing the cups somewhere, and noticed an old man watching him. After the show, the man came up and introduced himself as Michael MacDougall, and the magician immediately said 'Micky MacDougall the Card Detective?'

Apparently MacDougall was made up that someone knew his tag line, many years after his heyday.

[Tarotist]

Mark, thanks for posting that clip of S David Walker talking about MacDougall. A very interesting and heartwarming story!

I actually met David in Colon. He was a wonderful man. Interestingly enough in their younger days he travelled around with Harry Lorayne selling svengali decks. He had also worked with Dunninger. As for Mickey MacDougall I vaguely remember there was some information about him in the Joe Berg book. I think there may be a story in there about him presenting the Buddha papers as part of his night club act. I read it somewhere or other and I think it was probably the Berg book.

[Tarotist]

I heard a story about a street performer who was doing the cups somewhere, and noticed an old man watching him. After the show, the man came up and introduced himself as Michael MacDougall, and the magician immediately said 'Micky MacDougall the Card Detective?'

Apparently MacDougall was made up that someone knew his tag line, many years after his heyday.

I also saw an old man watching me once when I was selling svengali decks in Cardiff, Wales. He told me he had been Dante's stage manager. He then told me all sorts of stories about Dante. The one I remember best was when he asked me, "Do you know why Dante's hair went white overnight?" Since I had no idea what colour his hair was in the first place and neither did I know that his hair had changed colour anyway I answered in the negative. I was then informed that his son had died in a motor bike accident and when he heard it his hair went white overnight! I have no reason to disbelieve this but I have never seen any mention of this in the various biographies I have seen of Dante. In fact I don't remember reading anywhere that he had a son in the first place but I still assume the story is true.

He also told me that Murray the famed escapologist used to annoy Dante by coming in to see his show every night to see what material he could copy and steal! That does sound a bit like old Murray come to think of it! It was many, many years after this that I met Murray myself and I knew him quite well. He certainly knew Dante well and once mentioned to me that he had a dream about Dante and him together. He did tell me he missed Dante a lot so there was certainly a connection there. I never told him what the stage manager said though!

[Brad Jeffers]

I think there may be a story in there about him presenting the Buddha papers as part of his night club act. I read it somewhere or other ...

With regard to MacDougall and the Buddha Papers, here's something Theo Annemann wrote in 1941 in The Jinx ...

"And then came the Hindu Paper Mystery. Don't sneer, just read on and get educated. Nothing but the old pitchman's gag - the same old paper folding hoax that you have seen at any carnival or on any street corner, but it was dressed up into a masterpiece. First Mickey demonstrated it from the platform with a few coins. Then papers were passed among the audience, and under the master's instructions, they did it in their own laps and fooled themselves - and don't think that they weren't fooled. Of course they took the papers home to fool their friends, and it did no harm to have Mickey's name printed at the top."