INTRODUCTION
Magic, the mysterious art of the conjuror! How we love to be mystified by a skillful performer who does the impossible right before our eyes. Much has been written on the art. Books abound by the inventful few who reveal their secrets to us. But alas, many books though revealing the secret of the mystification, fail to impart the principles in a manner that allows us to attain the coveted maximum effect before our audience. Rare is the book that teaches, yes teaches, the handling and then builds the effect into the miracle category. The public judges the effect not by sleights performed, or the long hours of practice necessary to achieve the desired result; but only by the entertainment level they derive. If the entertainment value is lacking, so is the magical value. How many are so anointed to teach secrets, principles, sleights, handling and entertainment value? Harry Lorayne is one of those few gifted authors who has the ability to teach through the printed page. Here is one of the world's most skillful card technicians who has developed the expertise to thoroughly teach the effect to his reader. Many of you have seen the advertisements for his books, wherein they state that, 'it is just like having Harry Lorayne in your own living room giving you personal instruction'. It takes the pen of a master to give you clear, concise, well written text that abounds v/ith the personal enthusiasm of the man. Harry has been resoundingly acclaimed the finest magic teacher today. Through his books, he reaches new pinnacles--but in person, that is really something to conjure with! Those of you who had the privilege to learn with Harry at his teach-in/lecture in Chicago on April 7, 1979, know first-hand how you achieved new magical skills. To those of you who are reading this book and were not in attendance; you
still may have brilliant effects taught in a candid and lucid manner by the Master—Harry Lorayne! It is our hope that these best effects of Harry's many books will give you sound advice and new mysteries to amaze your audiences with and be your 'reputation makers'! The elevation of the art of magic is the responsibility of all magicians. May this book be dedicated to a furtherance of that goal. Magically yours,
WARREN M. WEXLER President, Harlan E. Tarbell, Ring 4 3 of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and Chairman of the Harry Lorayne Teach-in/Lecture.
-2-
The NEW TOPS
10 COVER PORTRAIT.
HARRY LORAYNE . . .by Dennis Marks The rules are a little different, but Ve.nnl6 Ma/ikA -ii, cuA/itntty the, pnoof the outcome, I'm as sure as Parker. duceA oh MeJAome.dia' 6 WondeAama -Set up tables in any mock-up cafeteria, a TV A how that hoi, ptieJ>e.nt&d bistro, backroom, barroom, luncheonette, ma.Q-icU.ayUi than any otheA TV He hoi be.e.n -in ihou) buu>-in<Lt>£> aJULchurch, private club, YM or YW, CA or HA, Elks, Masons, or Nudist Camp, fill ku> ti^e.. In addition to innmthe place up with people from everyeAable, TV cAddiXA, hjj> wuJJj\Qh where, put your favorite magician at have. pie.V'iouAi.y appealed -in pubone of the tables and keep adding magi•tic.atU.on6 ^fiom the. Saturday Recians and tables until everyone's favvlem o& LiteAatuAe. to EZZeAy orite is there, each with his own Quze.n'6 \hyi>teAy Magazine.. BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTERTHOUGHTS ON HARRY LORAYNE A wonderfully inventive sports writer named Dan Parker had an amusing solution to the who's-the-number-one-sports figure-of-ali-time question. He proposed that all the entrants, including ghosts from the past, begin walking shoulder to shoulder, from the foot °f Broadway at Manhattan's southermost tip, up the great street to 59th St. and Columbus Circle, a little more than three miles distant. Along the way, people would fall in step behind their favorites. Up Broadway they would stroll, past polyglot neighborhoods, Chinatown, the financial district, past warehouses and small manufacturers, through the garment district, by skyscrapers and seedy Parlors, past the theatres and along the Great White Way, by apartment houses and hotels until, at Columbus Circle, you could tell the winner by the number of people and the length of the line behind him. Parker's entry, by the way, and his unchallenged winner against all comers, was Babe Ruth. In magic, my entry is Harry Lorayne.
crowd; at the end of three hours, or three days, or three weeks, the magician with the largest crowd around his table wins, and I guarantee you it will be Harry Lorayne.
For a number of reasons, some of which have to do with magic. First of all, of course, he'd be the only one still talking. And be happy too. And he'd still have good tricks left to do. And he'd do them entertainingly, and well, and FOOL people with them (including magicians, which really ticks a lot of them off)I. Talking is Harry's hallmark. It sure isn't his little finger break or his pass. If you've never seen Harry work (and I'm not referring to his memory act, which in my personal and professional opinion, along with countless others, is one of the great specialty acts in the whole history of modern show business) and you want to get an excellent feel for his performance, patter, and approach, read one of his card books. Any one. They're all absolutely marvelous, and the first
MAY 1976 one, Clo4&-Up Cand Magic is surely the best single book on cards since ExpeAX. Cand TzchnLque.. Harry writes the way he speaks: informally, direct, and very precisely. The precision is a fooler. He's so offhanded, so apparently ad Lib that you think he's making everything up as he goes along. But, oh dear readers, ewery word is chosen with extreme care based upon 35 years of knowing people, of playing audiences. -- And many of the audiences he played for didn't want to be entertained -- by anybody. At 18 he was a pitchman who had to get a crowd and then convince them they wanted to see him work. Try that with your vanishing cane! From there he owned magic and novelty stores and then he began working table magic at first-rate boitu like Billy Reed's "Little Club." His stories of those days are hilarious and display an incisive knowledge of the psychology of entertainment and salesmanship. Hemingway never fought any fish tougher than the loxes a table magician has to hook every night just to make his rent. If Harry ever offers a manuscript on how to get tips from nightclub drunks, buy it, even if you're a priest. Then he latched on to the study of memory and within a few years became the number one memory expert in the country. The principles had been around before but nobody could sell it like Harry, not only as a performer, but more importantly, as a writer. As readers of his magic books know, he is a consummate teacher. He does it with that precision of language we mentioned earlier, and by an unbounded enthusiasm for what he is teaching. Whether it's the newest Four Ace Trick or a method for remembering your social security number, he gets you excited about wanting to do it. That's a very special kind of magic, and, in my opinion, one of the major keys to his success. His first book, written in 1956, HO\JO TO Develop A SupeA-PoweA.
sold close to 1,000,000 copies. His biggest hit, of course, Tke. Mmofiy Book was on the New York Times Best-Seller List for 40 weeks and was the number one non-fiction book in much of the nation for some of those weeks. All this success hasn't changed Harry, it's only made the people who dislike him, dislike him more. If it hasn't been mentioned before, now's the time to bring up the fact that he IS controversial. Some of his critics feel his earliest idol was the celebrated Chinese magician On Too Long. Others claim his research resembles the Russian history which credits Karl Mar-k with inventing the Big Mac. Still others resent that Harry doesn't sit still and take all this criticism kindly. He doesn't, of course. He rebels.
HARRY LORAYNE
magician-ol-fhe-month by John U. Zweers, Associate Editor This month we present one of the most important names in magic today. His name is so well-known all over the world of magic, and so few, comparatively, have ever had the pleasure of meeting him in person, that there are those who wonder if he really exists — is he just a legend? The answer is " n o " , there really is a Harry Lorayne, and this short biography, based largely on an interview conducted by our Editor David Goodsell, will introduce him to our readers! Harry Lorayne was born 4 May 1926, in New York City, New York, and is a product of the Lower East Side. He tells us, "I used to hang around in a park. That's where the nice kids hung around. The others hung around on street corners. . . . I must have been six or seven years old one rainy day and there was a counselor going nuts with a bunch of boys and girls, trying to entertain them. He did one card trick — I assume it was the only trick he knew, and that did it for me! My attitude was, if I could only do that! I was very shy as a child, and perhaps — I don't know — I saw magic as an escape out of my prison of shyness." Harry went into action: " I ran home and stole milk bottles — in those days you used to get two pennies deposit for milk bottles (they were made of glass, not cardboard!) — to buy the cheapest deck of cards so I could figure out this trick." In a week he had found eight ways to do it, but more important he had stopped thinking about himself, and he was saying those three little magic words: "pick a card"! Soon people were tired of that one Lorayne trick, and young Harry was off to the public library, and devouring the books on magic. The world had a new professional magician. As so many other famous boys from the Lower East Side had to do, Harry set to work to make something of himself. "I never finished school — never finished — I hardly went!" Nevertheless he overcame this, and finally turned a liability >»»•« •»» ' — todav he is an
outstanding writer. "I was born on the Lower East Side and now I live on the West Side. It took me forty years to move into a townhouse twenty blocks away. I came from the "ghetto" but we didn't know it, we thought the whole world was like that, so it was fine. I was just a bit older when I realized that there was something better. And magic helped me find it." He worked in every branch of magic. A living had to be earned, and hard work and practice, and performances developed his ability. He was a carnival pitchman, sold Svengali decks, worked at auctions, carnivals, fairs, where he had to learn to handle any kind of audience. On 31 January 1948 he and his wife Renee were married in New York, where they still live with their eleven year old son, Robert. Harry began to work clubs as a close-up magician, starting in Miami. These supper clubs demanded a special skill since much of the income was in the form of tips. He played the Blair House, the Harwood Club, and the Little Club, all in New York, the latter famous and lucrative. During these years he had little chance to meet with other magicians, until joining the Parent Assembly, about
The early years
Harry was the first to do a live television magic show in New York City, called "Professor Magic". He points out that at age twenty he was trying to be a gray-haired, retired vaudevillian, who operated a candy store! (The s p o n s o r manufactured candy!) He s a y s , "Well, I didn't look like a retired anything! Even with my jet black hair grayed and wearing glasses with no lenses. Now I don't have to dye my hair, and I do wear glasses to read!" Despite all of this it was a good show, and he made the cover of TV Guide. In his live shows Harry included a memory stunt, and suddenly realized that it impressed spectators even more than the superb sleight-ofhand he had been using for fifteen years. Soon he was segueing into memory work. The next twenty years or so found this his main activity, aided in the act by his lovely Renee. The show lasted an hour, and commanded top money, but it also included carrying one's own blackboards and other equipment that was bulky compared to the gear of a manipulator
Harry Lorayne—TV show
Lorayne was much in demand for television, and has on his credit list all of the big shows, such as Ed Sullivan, Jack Parr, Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, Dinah Shore, Mike Douglas, David Susskind, most of them many times. He also has been on countless local radio and TV shows throughout the country and the world. As a leading expert in the field it became evident that Lorayne should write a book, the result was How to Develop a Super Power Memory. It has now appeared in fourteen languages, sold four million hard back copies, and went into paperback about two years ago. It took him four years to write, from 1952 to 1956. Then came eight more books on learning, and then the blockbuster, The Memory Book.. This book made him more famous. It made the top of the best seller list and stayed there for a year. His next book, Remembering People was sold before it was written! For the magic trade he was also producing books on card work. The first of these appeared in 1962, entitled Close-Up Card Magic. It is recognized as a classic. Lorayne modestly says, "They tell me it has become a classic; I didn't know I was writing one at the time, but I guess that started to give me my reputation in magic." Anyone who has learned from that book enthusiastically agrees. As Editor Goodsell pointed out, several times Harry has said "this is my last book," JANUARY 1979
and sincerely meant it at the time. Then, said Harry, "Something comes up." One result was Afterthoughts. One book took Lorayne four years, this took four days. He started with the idea of the Ultra Move, and soon the idea was a phamphlet and before he was through there was another book. "I don't put anything in my books that are not things that I, personally, use; and if I couldn't get away with them, I wouldn't use them." An introductory book for the public also flowed from the prolific Mr. Lorayne. Titled The Magic Book, it surprised many laymen, who asked: "You are the famous memory expert, so how come magic all of a sudden?" Harry was always careful not to mix magic with his memory career, continuing his card manipulations for himself and friends. But he answers the above question this way: "Magic is my first love, but memory is my career, that is where the money is." On his nation-wide promotional tour for The Magic Book he had to resume conjuring, and found that equal skill in these two areas did not really disturb anyone at all! Harry is still a busy man. Although Renee has now retired, he does some shows — and he can now choose which ones. "They used to interview me, now I interview them. First I find out if they have enough money to pay me, which is nice. Then I say, 'Is there going to be an open bar?' If they say 'yes', then I'm not interested. I don't want to
work for people who can drink for nothing, because they are going to be stoned." Harry is not bragging; it has taken thirty years plus to get to this enviable point, and a lot of hard work and dedication to his art. There also is another book in the works (Quantum Leaps). "I honestly feel that this will be my last o n e , ' says he. Also there is his new monthly magic magazine, the Apocalypse. Among his other books are, The Card Classics of Ken Krenzel, and Reputation Makers, along with magazine articles for everything from Reader's Digest to Fortune. Harry and Renee recently returned from a trip to Europe, a vacation which included — what else — many visits with magical friends. They were wined and dined by magic friends everywhere. In tribute to Renee, Harry says: "She's what we all call a magic widow. She is still my best critic! She knows what I am going to do before I do it, if I'm going to do a double lift a half-hour from now she knows it, she knows me that well." Based on his own highly successful career, Harry has two good pieces of advice to those starting out with magic. It "unfortunately is not the way to look to make a living. I can count on the fingers of maybe one or two hands the people who really do well in magic. So, to most young people, I say no. To use it as a way to get through college or as a backup thing, fine; but go to school, get a career, I know the importance of it." He also recalls the time he saved his nickels and even pennies to take his future wife to the Waldorf. He wanted to copy the style and attitude of a famous close-up worker, not the tricks or technique. He had heard much of the outstanding performer. When the magician came to their table Harry was very impressed but also saw in a flash, "You've got to be yourself. If I am unique it is because we are all unique." All would-be performers should memorize these two rules, offered by one of the greats. So it is that this month we salute a leader in our art, a man who by his own efforts in the greatest of American traditions has risen to the top, overcoming handicaps and hardships on the way. Performer, author, businessman, memory expert, magician, family man, here are many facets of the successful" life story of our cover subject, the legend that is a man — Mr. Harry Lorayne.
Harry lectures at the 1978 S.A.M. Convention. BOOKS BY HARRY LORAYNE Close-up Card Magic Personal Secrets My Fafbrite Card Tricks Deck-Sterity Dingle's Deceptions Reputation-Makers The Great Divide Tarbell #7 Rim Shots Afterthoughts
HARRY LORAYNE
The Epitome Location The Magic Book The Card Classics of Ken Krenzel Quantum Leaps (in press) How to Develop a Super Power Memory Secrets of Mind Power Instant Mind Power Miracle Math Memory Isometrics Course Memory Magnetism Course Good Memory — Good Student Good Memory — Successful Student The Memory Book Remembering People