Magic books on the Kindle!

I've started a new blog to discuss Kindle offerings, and to my embarrassment I discovered that I'd actually made *this* post there, when I'd intended to make it here.

So, a duplicate post. No biggie.

Quite a few books are on Kindle in the Magic and Conjuring Fields. Some are priced inexpensively, some are priced higher than one would have thought. Nevertheless, I share them below:

Hiding the Elephant


The Secret Life of Houdini: America's first superhero



Houdini:
Miracle Mongers and Their Methods


The Mathematics of Juggling (for $31. Are you kidding me???) [Also, it's not actually a book on juggling, but on math, but the price is so outrageous that I thought I'd share it here anyway!)




Art and Artifice


The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson as Chung Ling Soo, the Chinese Conjurer


Blackstone's Tricks Anyone Can Do

Chung Ling Soo

Chung Ling Soo was a conjurer in the early 1900s, who died attempting to do the Bullet Catching Trick that he had performed successfully for 20 years prior to the tragedy that took his life, in 1918.

Soo was actually Caaucasian, but dressed in yellow face, as many conjurers did during that time, to bring the "mysteries of the Orient" to the public. He never spoke in public, having a Chinese interpreter who did all that for him.

These are really gorgeously designed posters, so much so that I'm actually thinking of starting a collection of such things.

Magicians in Short Stories

In an anthology of mysteries called The Mammoth Book of Historical Detectives, edited by Mike Ashley, there's a story called The Phantom Pistol, by Jack Adrian. The anthology was published in 1995, the short story was first published in a different anthology, Felonious Assaults, edited by Bill Pronzini and Martin H. Greenberg in 1989.

This short story, The Phantom Pistol, features the detective "Mr. H," - in other words, a slightly disguised version of Sherlock Holmes.

Mr. H and his sidekick visit the Empire Palace of Varieties, a theatre that featured the Great Golconda. - "illusionist extraordinaire." The Great Golconda performs his act with his brother, Mephisto. Golconda performs the Catch A Bullet in your Teeth trick...only he is really killed in the process.

Mr. H must discover who killed The Great Golconda, and how the gun that killed him disappeared in thin-air.

Hear Harry Houdini speak

Master escape artist Harry Houdini died before sound films came into general use. He made a couple of movies - silent films.

Here is the only film extant in which one can hear his voice. He's using his "stage voice" - it's not his normal every day conversational voice.



And some other Houdini stuff



There's other material of Houdini available on YouTube.

Conjuring, by James Randi

I'm reading a history of magicians and conjurers, written by a real professional magician, the Amazing Randi, and published in 1992.

I don't actually care much for his writing style - I prefer both a more chronological and a more in-depth approach, but it's a good introduction.

He lists a few of the early female magicians, and I'll be writing articles on each of them in future.

Cleopatra - the wife of a Greek magician, Anastasius Kasfikis. He was killed when a crated illusion fell on him, and his wife, Valeria (professional name Cleopatra) took over the show. She performed internationally for several decades.

Dell O'Dell was a nightclub performer who ran a large and very successful fan club.

Adelaide Hermann, Okia (Julia Ferret or De Vere), Lady Frances (Frances E. Hess), Ionia (Elsie Williams), Mercedes Talma, Diana Zimmerman, Tina Lenert, Paula Paul and Celeste Evans.

________
There are a lot of videos of James Randi at YouTube, but they are all of him debunking psychics, only one - that I could find - of him actually performing magic.

It's with Penn & Teller.

First magician in a movie? Thomas Edison films

Thomas Edison - or at least, his movie company -made the first Frankenstein film.

Did they make the first film about a magician appearing on stage as well?

A one minute clip, this was filmed in 1900.

Orson Welles does magic, assisted by Marlene Dietrich

Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich appear as themselves in a 5 minute cameo in the movie Follow the Boys, (1944) a World War II morale booster.



http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036832/

Description from IMDB:

During World War II, all the studios put out "all-star" vehicles which featured virtually every star on the lot--often playing themselves--in musical numbers and comedy skits, and were meant as morale-boosters to both the troops overseas and the civilians at home. This was Universal Pictures' effort. It features everyone from Donald O'Connor to the Andrews Sisters to Orson Welles to W.C. Fields to George Raft to Marlene Dietrich, and dozens of other Universal players