SOME GREAT ILLUSIONISTS

Evening Post, Issue 52, 2 March 1935, Page 25

SOME GREAT ILLUSIONISTS

Magic—of the conjuror-made variety —has an unfailing fascination, even in these rather cynical times, when illusionists' secrets are so often given away to the public. Here are some interesting facts about the makers of modern magic—many of whom are distin-' guished amateurs in the art.

Why has the world never known a really famous female conjuror? Much has been said of woman's wiles, and many women have a flair for finesse; yet Houdini, Hertz, Dante, the Maskelynes, Devant, and the rest of the illusion rigging cult, have been invariably masculine..

When the London Magicians' Glub three years ago held a competitive display, it was a fourteen-year-old American schoolgirl, Alberta Byron, who most completely baffled those experts by the way in which she conjured billiard balls out of thin air, and changed their colour at will. As mystifying was her next trick of scattering seed in a pot, and making them grow momentarily into a blooming rose bush.

But did young Alberta forthwith yearn to grow up into a great stage trickster? Instead, she calmly told her admiring audience that she intended to be a lawyer! Another young female prodigy was the five-year-old Betty Jane Kolar who, at the Society of American Magicians' annual show some time ago in Chicago, won the world's palm for sleight-of-hand performance.

As remarkable, by the way, as the absence of any female conjurors of world note, is the high place held by the amateurs in the world of magic. Even the professionals admit that some of the best tricks have been invented by amateurs, and they explain this anomaly by the fact that, while the professional is too busy with his routine practice to experiment along new lines, the part-time amateur performer has leisure enough for such research. Whatever the explanation, it is notable that amateurs do shine creatively in this fascinating cult, though they themselves may admit that it still takes the professional to "put a new trick over" in entertaining style.

Naturally, the conjuring cult jealously guards its lucrative,, secrets, yet even magicians seem to have an itch for publishing their trade secrets. The London Magicians' Club was in an uproar in 1931 .over a book written by one of its members, Mr. J. C. Canhell, entitled "The Secrets of Houdini," in. which were given away, not only some of Houdini's minor secrets, but also many of the secrets of the whole fraternity, which had been guarded for years. As the founder of that famous club, Will Goldston strongly objected to such wholesale revelations, and Cannell was threatened with the club's excommunication.

, But the amusingly human part of this little to-do is that Will Goldston himself has just published, through the house of Long, a book entitled "A Magician's Swan Song," in which he, in turn, gives the show away in such cases of magic as the swan horse, the vanishing lady, and many other mys♦iries.

Will Goldston, by the way, is one of a considerable section of magicians who believe that psychic powers occasionally aid conjuring!

In this eerie connection the name of Houdini inevitably crops up. That world wizard, whose real name was Enrich Weiss, was born in the United States, the son of a Jewish rabbi, who had fled from Hungary to America for .romantic reasons. Melbourne rcmem-

bers Houdini's aeroplane pioneering, also his stunt of jumping into the Yarra loaded with handcuffs and leg-irons, and, after a few anxious moments, bobbing up serenely with that ironmong_ery unlocked in his hands. ■ '

A whole library has grown lush around the seeming, miracles of this wizard. Some expositors, such as Mr. W. B. Gibson, declare that Houdini was merely a lithely-elastic wriggler who, with the aid of master keys fitted with extension rods, hidden dropknives, and bars of tubing, could naturally escape from , locked cabinets and prison cells., :

But other experts cling to a psychic theory to account for Houdini's seeming ability to walk through; a, brick Wall. It is rather ironic that the Houdini who spent half his life in waging a bitter war against spiritualism should thus be credited with mediumistic powers. ' ■

That outstanding preacher of the occult, Sir Arthur Corian Doyle—who, by the way, was Houdini's firm and enduring friend—held that the "escapist's" feats were performed by his power to dematerialise either himself of the metal which restrained him.

Sarah Bernhardt is credited with a similar view; for it is related that, after watching one of Houdini's marivels, she said: "You must possess some extraordinary power. Won't you use it to restore my limb for me?"—a request that brought tears to Houdini's eyes. In his book "The Edge of the Unknown," published in 1930, Conan Doyle gives this reason for his psychic theory concerning Houdini's feat of jumping manacled from one aeroplane to another.

"It all comes as easy as stepping off a log," confessed Houdini to Doyle, "but I have to wait for the voice. You stand there before the jump, swallowing the yellow stuff that every man has in him. Then at last you hear the voice and you jump. Once I jumped on my own, and I nearly broke my neck." t .

This, concludes Doyle, was the nearest admission from Houdini that a psychic element entered into his feats. Yet Houdini did admit that his box trick often terrified him, that he could not explain by what power he escaped from it, and that he dreaded his failure to do so.

Over his grave, it may be remembered, the rabbi who conducted the service said of the dead Houdini: "He possessed a wonderful power that he never understood, and which he never revealed to anyone in life."

Whether, therefore, Houdini was mediumistic, or merely a marvel of bodily and mental agility, must-itself remain a mystery-

The most complete library of magic, the National Laboratory of Psychical Kesearch, is housed in a Kensington by-way in England, including thousands of books, pamphlets, and rare manuscripts about the supernatural or its imitations. Thought-reading tricks have puzzled the wise through the ages, but in this library are more than 200 codes employed to simulate telepathy and thought transference. There is also a book on witches by James I, and one of'its latest additions is a treatise on the making of Magic Fire. Incidentally, the visitor to this strange library can read a nineteenthcentury work on' "The Art of Thieving," and another on "How to Pose as a Strong Man."