SOME years ago when I was in Philadelphia I visited my friend Kellar, then the leading
American magician, who was filling the biggest theatres with a two hours’ show of magic. He had just added a trick to his repertoire which consisted of a large ball which ran up and down a board without any apparent motive power.
The effect was very striking, and although the board was suspicious-looking, owing to its thickness and the way it was supported by a very plump demon at one end, Kellar com- plained that it had cost him a great deal of money and was a great nuisance to carry. The trick was accomplished by a series of magnets controlled by electricity, but I came to my own conclusions as to how it could be done by much simpler means.
When I had thought it out, I asked Kellar if he would give me permission to use the trick, provided I could show him it working within a week. Kellar said he was sure it was impos- sible. He was convinced of this by the number of experiments he had made. Anyway, he ac-
cepted my challenge, and well within the week I showed it to him working merrily, in Martinkas’ back shop in New York City. Martinka’s, a well-known meeting place of conjur- ers, were also manufacturers of tricks and to them I had entrusted the making of the sim- ple apparatus I required.
My board was resting on the back of an ordinary chair and was freely handled and shown to be free of any connection with the chair. Then a large gilt ball was thrown to me by one of the assistants. I threw this on the plank and it naturally rolled down. I ordered it to stop, which it instantly did. Then it obeyed a series of orders, such as: “Go Up,” “Come Down,” “Go Slowly,” “Come Up Quickly,” “Come Through This Ring,” “Now Back Again,” “Now Go Down Very Slowly.” Finally it was stopped at the lower end of the board and I asked the audience to watch while I explained:
“You will see it disappear,” I said. There was an expectant pause during which an assistant came on, picked the ball up and walked off with it.
An excellent opening trick, and all done by a little thing—a piece of thread, in fact.
I had the ball made in two hemispheres, threeply wood on a framework of steel bands. There were a lot of decorative lines incised on the ball—latitude and longitude, you might say. One of these latitude lines came on the exact equator of the ball and was really where the two hemispheres were joined together, but it looked like one of the other lines which were all painted black. The two halves of the ball were joined together by a core in the cen- tre, something like the wheel in a pulley block, made of hard wood, and closely fitted so that the thread could not jam. The thread was put round this and led up to the back of the stage, went over the back edge of the board down to
the floor, through a screw-eye and along to another screweye behind the back cloth. Now an assistant held the two ends and when the ball was required to go down, he simply let it roll down by its own weight and he could stop it at any moment and pull it up again by pull- ing on one end of the cord. To facilitate the passage of the ball up and down, there was a groove cut in the board, and the board was covered with a greyish-black cloth arranged in a pattern of lines so that the thread could not be detected by the keenest eye.
Kellar was very annoyed with me when he saw the simplicity of my dodge, but he at once gave me permission to use the trick freely, and immediately discarded his own trick in fa- vour of my method.
The first ball I had made was of solid wood, but it was too heavy, and about the seventh performance I gave, in rolling down the plank, the thread broke, and the ball’s own impe- tus took it over the footlights where it landed in the conductor’s lap, to his great astonish- ment.
For a moment I did not know what to do. However, the conductor handed the ball back to me, and I said: “I didn’t mean you to go down there.” I then thought of the joke, described above, for its disappearance.
Another example of the importance of detail is in the popular “Milk Effect.” This is usually done with a tube which bears no relation at all to a glass of milk. In my version of the trick I had the tube transformed into a travelling case for a tumbler by the simple process of cov- ering the tube with imitation leather and adding a couple of lids, which fitted on either end. My tube is made to contain a bottomless fake glass of milk between the tube and inner lin- ing, and has room within the lining for a real tumbler. Having marked the end which I shall take off first, I put this tube on a small table, together with a jug of milk, and I enter with an opera hat, holding it folded up, showing all sides of it. I spring it out and stand it on the ta- ble mouth upwards. Then I call attention to the travelling case, take the lid off and pull out the real tumbler. Then with my wand passing through the tube, I push off the other lid into the hat beneath and leave it there. I look through the tube from the small end, thus proving indirectly that the tube is empty. I now place the tube on the table, and taking up the tum- bler, fill it nearly to the brim from the jug.
I take a sip from the glass of milk to correspond with a stain that has been made already on the fake, just round the brim. I now lower the tumbler of milk into the travelling case and
put the lid on. I now lift the case up slowly, discovering the fake glass of milk. This fake glass of milk I proceed to put into the hat, explaining that my trick is to make the glass of milk come back to the case by itself. I then take the lid off the case, and lifting it up, push
the glass of milk from the end and take it out at the top. I now undertake to pass the glass of milk from the case to the hat.
First, I explain that I want the other lid, which I find on looking around to be in the hat. I then turn the hat over and drop the lid on the table taking care that the fake glass of milk is held securely with my fingers and is not seen. I now ask if they would like the glass passed visibly or invisibly into the hat. Whatever their answer, I lower the glass of milk into the hat. If the answer is “Visibly,” I say: “Oh, that is easy, I do it like this”; if someone says “In- visibly” I do the same thing and say: “This is
how I do it visibly, anyone can do that.” I then apparently take the glass of milk out of the hat. I really take the fake and, taking care to spread my fingers round the brim and handling it as if it were really full of milk, I now place this fake tumbler on the lid, which I have just rescued from the hat, and lower the case over it. I then wave the wand between the case and the hat, take the glass of milk out of the hat and pour the milk back into the jug, shut up the opera hat, and finally take both lids off the case and look through it again.
I do not put this forward as an improve- ment on any particular version of the trick, but my sole object is to make it appear more or less natural.
The moves are such as to allow scope for good patter and good patter is the flesh and blood of any trick. This is simply the skele- ton.
It may be mentioned here for the sake of the uninitiated that the ugly word “fake” is one used by conjurers to denote any trick appa- ratus. Frequently the article is an imitation of an everyday one. In this case, the glass of milk is made of a piece of celluloid, the milk is paint inside the supposed tum- bler—which is left without any bottom, for the purpose outlined above.
In my early days on the music halls, when I used to appear at the London Pavilion between Albert Chevalier and Dan Leno, I had very little money for apparatus and had to content myself with a simple opening trick.
There was a lighted candle on the table and I entered with three small sheets of tissue in my hand—red, white and blue. After showing these I screwed them up and lit them at the candle-flame. I then showed both my hands to be otherwise empty, pulled my sleeves out of the way, squashed the burning papers between my two hands, and suddenly threw out three pieces of silk ribbon about 12 feet long. These I pulled back into my hand, rubbed them together a bit and they seemed to blend and become a large Union Jack, which I spread out for display to the tune of “Rule Britannia.” This was
accomplished by having a roll of ribbons joined together at the ends, placed under the left armpit, and a Union Jack tucked up into a ball shape and kept under the waistcoat on the left-hand side.
First I showed the papers with an awful pun about sneezing pa- per and tissue paper and showing my hands empty. I did it one at a time. Then I said: “There’s nothing up my sleeves,” and pulled first the right, then the left-hand sleeve up. Here my hand came under the armpit. I let the concealed ribbons drop into it, and bending the fingers a little, retained it, concealed in the hand. When I had squashed the flames out, I drew the rib- bons out. The inner end of the roll was, of course, left loose, and whilst waving the ribbons about in a serpentine fashion, I turned a little to my left and quickly pulled the Union Jack down from under my waistcoat, just as quickly brought my hands together, and holding the flag in the right hand, pulled
the ribbons in over it, finally twisting them about so that the flag was made to conceal the gathered ribbons in my right hand.