IF YOU LOOK AROUND TODAY AT MAGIC that is sold by the ton to the fraternity, there are hundreds of gizmo cards, bits of cardboard, fake coins, routines and things that are cooked up from such sources as stationers, hardware shops and the like. There are few pieces of beautifully handmade magic that are created and built by real magicians who possess the fine skill of the craftsmen of yesteryear. The way it used to be done a hundred or so years ago. I have mentioned Colin Rose before, trained as a designer of silver jewellery and now uniquely crafting the most beautful magic props in fine woods that are only obtainable from his company Five of Hearts Magic Productions.
But there is another long established magician /craftman whose pedigree goes way back to the days of Harry Stanley and Ken Brooke. Bob Swadling. With his lovely Oxfordshire accent and a brain and skilled hands that were trained at top level working in the aero/atomic industry that were turned to the craft of making outstanding magic props where quality and reliability were paramount. He was the man behind the scenes who made superb fake coins and other engineered items of magic for top professionals and the trade and on his retirement he created Swadling Magic, creators and manufacturers of original quality magic. I was reminded of all this at his excellent lecture at The Magic Circle earlier this week when once more I saw his amazing changing cards that literally change in mid air. (This is an outstanding item and he made me a special set some years ago whereby any card could be freely selected from a spread and shown to be the only card with a different coloured back. It’s quite brilliant)
But he showed a whole parade of brilliant thinking and craftsmanship, lovingly put together for those who value quality.From his Power Pack whereby a deck delivers timed coins into a tumbler, to his exquisitely made coin box, the stylish aluminium three shell game, torn andrestored card that becomes whole in mid-are in a flash of fire and his visible coin through handkerchief where you actually see the coin penetrate! Everything he makes looks terrific and works perfectly, the hallmark of Swadling magic. And look out for his shortly to be seen prize winning coin in the bottle whereby the coin is seen to penetrate in the side of the bottle!
And if you want to witness his ingenuity ask to see the Kristal Card Stab, designed by him for his daughter’s cabaret act where a dagger pushed through the side of a deck correctly stabs a selected card, seen on the blade as the deck drops away in a burst of flame. Great theatre and great magic. Bob and his wife Val (herself a magic competition prizewinner) are just off to to the U.S. for Christmas with their daughter but he’ll be at Blackpool so do yourself a favour and check out his outstandingly made magic. Or if you want a quick run down on his items, he produces two DVD’s called “Magical Moments with Bob Swadling” – email:swadlingmagic@btinternet.com
AS THE PENTACLE CLUB OF CAMBRIDGE celebrate their 90th anniversary, I was asked if I would write an appreciation of Alex Elmsley for the occasion. I thought you might like to read the following.
Alex Elmsley – Gentleman genius.
An appreciation by John Derris
I knew him for over fifty years. Intellectually he was light years ahead of me but he was a genuine friend who shared his magic, his time and his thinking with great generosity. He spoke with an upper class accent and was quintessentially English although born in Scotland and bore a strong facial resemblance to the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Around the world he was acknowledged as one of the sharpest and most inventive brains in magic for the past fifty years.
In his retirement years he was seen occasionally at London magic gatherings, recognisable by his bushy eyebrows, check sports coat, carpet slippers and a large glass of whisky in his hand. Prominent magic visitors from overseas would often telephone me hesitatingly asking if there was any way they could privately meet this magic brain of Britain. An appeal that was usually delivered with solemn deference as if asking for an audience with the Pope. He was such a gentleman that he nearly always acceded to such requests.
His writings and his originality of method were quite unique. Widely praised by the great and the good, they filled two hard-backed volumes totalling nearly a thousand pages which are among the definitive works on magic. It would be true to say that every magician who sports a pack of cards has used one of his unique sleights, in particular the cunning ploy he devised for openly counting four cards but only displaying three, a vital card being concealed.
Alex burst onto the magic scene in the 1950’s and dazzled everyone with his inventiveness. Not just devising a few good tricks but scores of them, involving new sleights and new plots that have achieved status as modern classics. Talk to any card aficionado and he will instantly recognise Elmsley gems – Between your Palms, Point of Departure, Diamond cut Diamond, En Voyage, Brainweave, The Four CardTrick and many others that take their place alongside card classics of yesteryear like Everywhere and Nowhere, The Ladies Looking Glass and The Danbury Deviler.
In ten prodigious years between 1949 and 1959 over seventy original Elmsley tricks and sleights appeared in print: few magicians achieve that kind of output in a lifetime. His skill and fame attracted the greats from the USA and many names sought sessions with him in London – Dai Vernon, Paul Le Paul, Slydini, Persi Diconis and many others who openly admitted to having been fooled.
His first magic lecture was delivered at the I.B.M. British Ring Convention, Scarborough in 1957 under the title “Low Cunning”, the lecture notes of which are now a collector’s item. Later he presented a similar lecture in Chicago followed by other US city lectures where he had further sessions with Dai Vernon, Ed Marlo and Charlie Miller. They were an outstanding success and are still talked about today.
Born in St. Andrews, Scotland, the son of a naval officer, it was during a period of convalescence following an operation for appendicitis that he became interested in – juggling! A search for juggling equipment led him to magic which quickly deposed the art of tossing balls in the air. His father died in 1937 and with little money during the war his mind turned to sleight of hand and manipulations, a skill fostered by his original interest in juggling.
Later he started developing his own tricks and presentations and soon his unique perception and inventiveness became noted by other magi. His intellectual mind and sharp brain eventually led him to be educated at Eton and following a period of two years National Service in the Army, he entered Kings College University, Cambridge, graduating with a BA degree in mathematics and physics. During this time he became a leading light in The Pentacle Club, a magic society within the university. Following his graduation he moved to London and acquired a position with a Patent agency. This location brought him into close involvement with the London magic scene when he started his prodigious period of invention and contributing his ideas to magazines.
Then in the 1960’s – he suddenly disappeared from magic.
Science fiction and the launch of computer technology supplanted his interest in magic and he was hired by a leading British computer company, travelling the world as an international lecturer in computer languages. He still kept brief contact with close magic friends like Jack Avis, Peter Warlock and Francis Haxton and he experienced a fresh interest in magic in 1972 when his work was recognized with a Creative Fellowship from The Academy of Magic Arts in Hollywood. This led to more articles for magic magazines and a new lecture which had its début in London and Monte Carlo and then on to the USA.; it was a brilliant sell-out everywhere he went.
Then in 1975 following his highly successful lecture tour – he disappeared from magic for a second time.
He cited no dramatic reason for this sudden withdrawal but with his constant travels to computer clients all over the world, plus the need to look after his widowed and now blind mother living in London, and his passion for science fiction, he said that his mind was fully occupied. Thankfully, renewed and widespread magic interest was re-awakened in 1991 with the publication of the first volume of of The Collected Worksof Alex Elmsley, a magnificent book written by American author Stephen Minch and published by Louis Falanga of L & L Publishing. Stephen Minch should be thanked by every practising magician for his gargantuan task of tracing and assembling the work of Alex Elmsley, who granted permission to publish but said that he did not wish to be involved in the actual writing but passed on Xerox copies of some of his notes.
Minch went on the international detective trail with the help of many names formerly associated with Alex – Jack Avis, Roy Walton, Gordon Bruce, Milt Kort, Ron Bauer, Dr. Gene Matsuura and many others, who all gave time and contributions in helping to compile one of the greatest books ever published on the unique work of one man. The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley was followed in 1994 with a second 500 page volume containing a further 110 original Elmsley tricks and sleights including his acknowledged card masterpiece The Dazzle Act. The two volumes are rightly deemed to be classics and thousands of copies are to be found on the bookshelves of serious magicians around the world. This was later followed by the highly successful launch of four video tapes, recorded and issued by Louis Falanga and showing Elmsley performing and explaining many of his famed moves and routines. Thankfully, magic now has a permanent, visual record of the work of this outstanding magician.
On retiring he lived a recluse existence in a basement flat in Chelsea affectionately named by his close friends as “Wuthering Depths”. He loved the company of fellow magicians and one could see a visible change in him with his occasional rises to the magic surface prompted by his friends of many years. His mother and brother having passed on his only nearby living relative at that time was a nephew in Shepherds Bush. He spent his time reading detective novels, writing poetry, smoking too many cigarettes and was occasionally given a jump start into magic by friends proving that the dormant but still effective adrenaline was still there The fire was not blazing but the embers were always smouldering.
He was perhaps a too close a companion of the amber nectar of Scotland which he courted for many years, largely to quell his lifelong torment of clinical depression. Like Winston Churchill he too referred to this as his “Black Dog”. He was aware of the situation but strived to achieve a balance between his health and his lifestyle. He was utterly polite, English to the core with all the courtesies and elegance of his middle class upbringing. He was a magic gentleman and it was my privilege to have enjoyed his friendship for over fifty years. Anyone who shuffles a pack of cards should offer grateful thanks to Alex Elmsley for all that he so freely gave to the wide world of magic.
At the time of one of my telephone calls to him to advise of the next meeting of our coterie of conjurers I received no reply. The same happened on the following two days. I telephoned his hospital who contacted the police; they broke into his flat and found him lying dead on the floor. An autopsy revealed that he had died of cancer, a condition about which none of us had any inkling as at no time had he given any verbal or physical indication of his illness. An example surely of the stiff upper lip stoicism inherent in his middle class background.
We contacted his nieces and nephews living in Ireland and invited them as special guests to a tribute evening to Alex at The Magic Circle at which we showed film clips of him together with some of the country’s leading magicians performing his outstanding magic. With tears in their eyes they revealed that he had never told them of his world status and achievements in magic; they said he occasionally did a couple of simple tricks with cards and coins for their children. A revelation to the world of the true measure of one of magic’s greatest and most modest of people. Finally they told that as a youngster he was nicknamed “Bonzo” a name that stayed with him in his family circle throughout his life.
But in magic, somehow The Bonzo Count doesn’t sound quite the same
MANY YEARS AGO I WAS WORKING IN SPAIN and one evening my wife telephoned to say that my friend John Styles, possibly Britain’s leading Punch and Judy worker, had called. It seems he had been booked to present the ages-old entertainment by a local council but that an objection had been raised by a ladies guild stating that the entertainment should not be shown as it included wife-beating and violence and was not suitable for children. A well-aired complaint. John had called me to see if I could help him with a reply which had been requested by the council.
I am not a Punch and Judy man and was in the middle of Spain but I sat down and composed the following essay based on my inherent knowledge and common sense. Several workers have subsequently asked to have this as a reply to similar complaints which in many cases has resulted in the objection being withdrawn. For the common good I am happy to publish the essay again.
Punch and Judy are no Bonnie and Clyde
Punch and Judy is a 300 year-old theatrical, Italian fairy tale that depicts the light and shade of life that has entertained millions of children for three centuries without psychological harm or terror. In concert with all classic stories for the young it concludes with the triumph of good over evil when Punch is apprehended by the law.
That said, there is scant difference between the scenario of this quaint piece of children’s theatre, with its garish, colourful, wooden characters and squawking voices to the range of experiences described in classic, traditional tales for children like Grimm’s fairy tales, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, Rumpelstiltskin, The Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and many other stories All contain elements of villainy and heroism but children remain impervious to alleged psychological damage for such stories seek to show the highs and lows of life and all pointing the way to a moral conclusion.
If you compare these time-tested tales to the highly visual and audible children’s video games sold in millions as entertainment, that portray high speed violence against property and persons, it is not difficult to consider that acts of vandalism and crime by young people are more inspired by these contemporary blueprints than by the portrayal of a wooden figure, knocking his partner on the head with a stick, in the way that circus clowns right down to Laurel and Hardy have done for years.
Punch and Judy is pure, simple theatre based on a formula that is the basic ingredient of Opera or Shakespeare where the vagaries of life are presented in a way that entertains as well as moralises. Punch and Judy are no Bonnie and Clyde and in the current climate of gratuitous violence for the old and the young, they depict nothing more than an individuals misfortune – the man slipping on a banana skin, that has been the basis of comedy since Roman times.
A FEW GAPS IN THIS BLOG but we are now back on stream and able to announce that shortly we shall be releasing two new routines. One is just about the best Mix and Mingle trick I have ever found in many years – I use it all the time. Very visual and it looks impossible I promise you. And the second is a card routine from Jack Avis; something offbeat as you would expect from Jack that he gave to me many years ago. Both are guaranteed workers so watch this space for details.
I SAW A CRACKING SHOW LAST WEEK - for the second time in a month it was that good. La Cage aux Folles, a musical about a gay nightclub on the Riviera and the family problems of two gay parents and a straight son wishing to marry the daughter of an anti-gay goverment official! Great fun and outstanding music by Jerry Herman who wrote, Hello Dolly, Mame, Mack and Mabel and other wonderful Broadway musicals. An excellent production that could win awards - at The Playhouse Theatre.
But in this new production there is an excellent vanish of the lead singer covered by an umbrella of boa fans of the chorus line with only her hand projecting through the feathers Excellent and caught everybody including me off guard. And another instantaneous change of a male dancer for a girl covered by a swirl of smoke as he rotated in a dance routine. Beautifully done with real artistry. I don’t know if there was a magic consultant behind these incidental effects but the whole production has some excellent and imaginative presentation ideas that make this a top show that’s playing until 10th January.
YOU DON’T GET MANY ONE MAN SHOWS IN MAGIC these days so it’s interesting to hear that Circle magician Ivor Cole is presenting his “Mirrored Images” a programme of baffling mind illusions on Sunday 23rd November at 7.30pm. Not the first time he has presented this show having appeared previously at The King’s Head and again at The Hampstead Theatre to enthusiastic press coverage – “The mind boggles and then gives up”
Former legal director of the Daily Express, the newspaper has challenged him to predict the headlines of a forthcoming news item which will ensure the presence of one of Britain’s leading broadsheets. This show is the first night of a London tour and all proceeds go to the Head & Neck Cancer Trust. For tickets call 020 7226 1916. The King’s Head,115 Upper Street, Islington, N1 1QN.
SORRY FOR THE LONG GAP SINCE MY LAST BLOG. Been on a big promotion for Christmas for a leading Jeweller and Silversmith and only just finished. Normal service will be resumed forthwith.
I HAVE LONG BEEN AN ADVOCATE of the philosophy that magic is not about secrets – it’s about performances. Not just my belief but that also of such giants of magic and theatre presentation as John Fisher, Pat Page, Jeff Hobson, Richard McDougall and Bobby Bernard. It’s the basis of the KISS lecture that I have given to magic clubs in Britain and overseas and many magicians have achieved real success using these principles. So here are four proven, common-sense steps that can be taken on board by anyone with immediate results.
1.What do you look like on stage?
Before you can sell your magic you have to get people to like you. What is the impression they get when you step on stage or at their table? Do you look friendly? Do you make them feel they could welcome you into their home? Step outside of yourself and take a look at the person on stage from their viewpoint. Be bold and make improvements
2. Strike an attitude.
Do your clothes fit with your audience and performing environment? Do you smell nice?(Important!) Do they like your personality and feel they’d like to know you better? Act your age. Do you connect with the audience? Once you do, you’re more than halfway to success.
3. Make eye to eye contact and smile.
Many very skilled magicians never look at their audience but focus on their hands. That’s nerves or ego. Both on and off stage always look directly at people and smile. You’ll get an immediate response Defensive barriers are immediately lowered. Try it next time you show a trick or talk to a waiter. Don’t gush, be yourself
3. Make an initial, friendly remark.
The audience want you to be successful. But they seek a signal that confirms that you are friendly. Make the opening, positive remark that bridges the gap immediately. It can be slightly humorous or formal. Michael Bailey used to open with “Hello. My name is Michael Bailey – I expect you know yours” The ice was broken. Mac King says “Howdy – I’m Mac King” affirming his friendly, country-style persona.
YOU’LL FIND MANY, MANY MORE VALUABLE, PROFESSIONAL PERFORMANCE- PROVEN POINTS THAT CAN ADVANCE YOUR MAGIC INSTANTLY IN JOHN DERRIS’S ACCLAIMED 50 PAGE “KISS” LECTURE. AVAILABLE TO YOU NOW TO DOWNLOAD IN PDF AT THE TOUCH OF A BUTTON! CHECK THE DETAILS
THIS TIME NEXT WEEK YOUR ACT COULD IMPROVE BY AT LEAST 50% AND ATTRACT MORE BOOKERS, MORE INCOME! DON’T BUY ANOTHER CARD TRICK. INVEST IN YOUR CAREER
IN GOING THROUGH SOME OF THE PERSONAL EFFECTS JACK AVIS left me, I have found a whole mass of new notebooks in which are recorded many of his original thoughts on card and close-up effects with many routines, ideas and exchanges with some of the world’s greats. Give me a little time but what I propose is to sort through the best of his notes and put say half a dozen into a new pdf manuscript which I will publish on this website. Bear with me but I’ll keep you advise on this blog.
WE SENT A COPY OF THE NEW edited online KISS lecture to Richard McDougall, brilliant mime magician, FISM prizewinner and leading lecturer on motivational behaviour and in constant demand by corporate organisations all over the world.
He said “Sorry about contacting you but I have hit a putple patch of work and have only been home for very short periods. I was very excited to see what you have included in your lecture and I am so glad that someone is putting this down on paper. It was such a refreshing approach to the whole subject and after reading it I wanted there to be even more about how you won over business and magic audiences as I thnk this is a fascinating insight that we would all do well to learn from.”
“I congratulate you on focussing on the right path to success and thank you for sharing such valuable thoughts. I do hope we can meet up soon and hear more about the whole KISS project!”
Richard McDougall
From one of the top motivators in the business. Why not check out the details above and put your magic on a higher road to success.
JOHN DERRIS has been performing magic since he won several talent shows as a young boy. During his National Service with the R.A.F. he toured with a service revue "Revel And Fun" and appeared in a number of shows and stage plays.
On returning to civilian life he decided to continue his career in advertising. For many years he ran his own international advertising agency and on retirement returned to magic and performed for many of his clients in all parts of the world - and has even performed in a TV celebration with Whitney Houston in Istanbul!
Today he is a full time professional magician and has performed at St. James's Palace, The House of Lords, Castle Howard, Wardour Castle, Claridges, The Dorchester and many other international and prestigious venues.
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