The Vernon Companion by Stephen Minch

The Vernon Companion Stories and Observations on the Life of Dai Vernon and the Magic Castle

Michael A. Perovich

Illustrations by

Colin Fleming

Hermetic Press, Inc. Seattle, Washington

• The Vernon Companion

David Frederick Wingfield Verner, 1908

William James Topley / National Archives of Canada / PA-208681

Charles Napier Verner, 1908

William James Topley / National Archives of Canada / PA-208879

• 205 •

Contents Introduction Acknowledgments

xi xv

Chapter One: INTRODUCING THE PROFESSOR A Tentative First Meeting Laughter in the Library Hadjikhani The Professor Lights a Cigar Day or Die Death and Taxes

1 3 9 15 21 23 27

Chapter Two: THE GRANDFATHER STORIES Perspective from Another Era The Coat in the Window Walking through Georgia A Girl with Personality Stress Reduction

31 33 37 41 45 47

Chapter Three: VERNON AND COMPANY Blackstone and the Chocolate Doughnut Publicity by the Yard Tales of Finneran Slydini Comes to Town Battle of the Bears Germain Sends a Package Heirs Apparent Ron Wilson Canada Jack Charlie Miller Senator Crandall Glenn Falkenstein Jules and the Elephant Tony Giorgio

51 53 55 57 61 65 69 73 79 83 87 89 95 103 107

Chapter Four: COMMENTARY Opening a New Deck Erdnase 101 A Matter of Proportion Listen, I’ll Tell You about Houdini

113 115 117 121 123

Chapter Five: OBSERVATIONS Something Slimy in the Air Vanished into the Ether You Either Have It or You Don’t Motorcar Madness Always Get a Good Sleep Dai, You Look Pale Rapt Attention

127 129 131 133 137 141 145 149

Chapter Six: THE PROFESSOR HIMSELF Vernon Close Up Vernon on Platform and Stage Audio/Visual Vernon Hands Quoting the Quotable

153 155 161 165 171 179

Chapter Seven: STORIES AND OBSERVATIONS BY HIS FRIENDS Recollections (as related by Jeff Altman) Bennie Roth (as related by Brad Berlin) The Inventors (as related by Brad Berlin) The Effect Is the Thing (as related by Marc Caplan) Memories of Faucett Ross (as recalled by John Carney) Split It Down the Middle (as related by Bruce Cervon) Laughter and Applause (as related by Bruce Cervon) The Professor and Me (by Michael Close) How to Pick Up Women (as related by Bill Goodwin) Dry Hands (as related by Ray Grismer) Out of the Night (as related by Larry Jennings) Carom Capers (by Martin Lewis) A Bump in the Night (by Earl Nelson)

183 185 189 193 197 201 215 217 221 225 227 229 233 237

Sporting Skullduggery in Cuba (as related by Gary Plants) Babe Ruth and the Phantom Spade Jack Johnson and the Dented Jockstrap Closing the Iron Door on Houdini (as related by David Roth) Behind the Counter at Gamages (as related by Roy Walton) The Professor and the List (by Max Maven)

239 239 241 243 247 249

Chapter Eight: THE RACONTEUR You Never Met John Barrymore, Did You? Ardo Alfred Benzon The Black Museum The Head in the Trench Pickpocket Potpourri Class Cannon Shakespearean Suspect Whetstone for a Wire Nada Mas Dinner for Pops and A Cure for Insomnia How to Tish a Broad

251 253 255 257 259 261 265 265 266 266 266 267 269

Chapter Nine: THE URBAN LEGENDS The Mischievous Monkey Francis and the Beans (as related by Cervon, Lewis, and Wilson) Vernon and the Long Count Joe and the Robbers A Nose for Erdnase She Only Drove It on Friday Nights

271 273 277 279 285 287 291

Epilogue

297

Appendix A: SETTING THE STAGE

299

Appendix B: DAI VERNON, DECADE BY DECADE The Early Years The Roaring Twenties The Depression Years The War Years

303 303 307 308 310

The Fifties The Sixties The Seventies The Eighties

312 313 315 316

Appendix C: VERNON’S WORLD The Heritage Magicians Dai Vernon’s Magic Mentors Wily Wits Gamblers and Gambling Experts The Gamblers Reformed Gamblers Purveyors of the Gambling Expose Contemporary Magicians with a Personal Connection to Vernon Frances Rockefeller King Magicians from Across the Ponds

319 319 321 322 324 325 329 330 330 333 334

Appendix D: MAGICIANS OF THE MAGIC CASTLE (c. 1970–1980) The Larsens and the California Core The Castle Old-Timers Frequent Visitors All-Knowing Hosts The Sleight-of-Handsters In a Class by Themselves The Young Lions The Gang Patrons, Admirers, and Celebrities Castle Regulars

337 337 340 342 343 343 343 344 345 348 349

Index of Names

355

Laughter in the Library

oung man, you’re making entirely too much noise! You know that, don’t you? You’re much too loud and boisterous. Really, you’ve got to stop raising such a ruckus.” That was how Dai Vernon introduced himself to me in the early spring of 1969, several weeks after I had joined the Academy of Magical Arts. I had moved from Northern California, taking the closest job to 7001 Franklin Avenue I could find. I had an apartment only seven minutes away and I was determined to visit the Castle at every opportunity. The Professor had noticed me lurking in the shadows and was gently poking fun at my quiet habits. As he did with so many others, he began to teach me moves, concepts, and effects, often showing me so many things in an evening that I left reeling from all I had seen. Bruce Cervon later informed me that Vernon sometimes purposefully overloaded people’s circuits with so much information the recipient would end up remembering nothing and leaving a session with no secrets at all. I didn’t think The Professor was doing that with me, but even so, I developed a method of dealing with the situation. I made a mental count of the number of things he’d show me each evening. “Six things,” I would say to myself. “He showed me six things.” When I got home, I’d write down some note about each item until I came up with all six. Later I would write a more complete description. I also loved the stories he would tell and I asked questions about magicians of days gone by, • 9 •

Hadjikhani

ike! Mike! Have you seen him?” called Dai Vernon. “Who? What? What?” I bit, doing my best Phil Silvers impression. “Why, Hadjikhani; didn’t you see him? He was in the other night. Oh! It’s just marvelous. It’s the darnedest thing you’ve ever seen. He does all sorts of things. He regurgitates eggs! He really regurgitates them—all the way up. And he can swallow a whole stack of half dollars. He actually does it. You can see them protruding from his throat. And you can hear them.” Here, The Professor leaned his head to one side, exposing the side of his throat. He balled his hand into a fist and repeatedly struck the side of his neck with his knuckles. “He strikes his neck like this,” said The Professor, “and you can hear the coins jingle in his throat. You’ve never seen anything like it. “Oh, he does all kinds of things. You know, he puts a dime in his nose and takes it out of his mouth.” “Gee,” I replied, “if the guy could inhale a quarter and spit out two dimes and a nickel, he’d really have something. Hey, wait a minute, I saw a guy do that in a movie up in the Library a couple of years ago.” “It’s the same guy,” someone at the table added. “Hadjikhani is the one in the movie.” “Wow,” I said, “this is great! Where is he?” “Oh, he left,” said The Professor. • 15 •

The Professor Lights a Cigar

ave you been smoking?” my wife would often ask me when I returned late at night from the Castle. “No,” I’d reply. “I’ve been talking to Vernon.” Many of Dai Vernon’s legion of admirers paid homage to him by bringing him boxes of select cigars, with which to indulge his habit. Cigar company representative Stanley Blumenthal, among others, brought Vernon many of the cigars he smoked and enjoyed each day. As he did in many things, The Professor had an established pattern to the way he lit a cigar, one that I found both amazing and amusing. First, he removed the cellophane wrapper and tossed it into the ashtray. Next, he retrieved his small Swiss Army knife from his trousers pocket and used the scissors to nip off the end of the cigar. He had a marked ability with this scissors and sometimes even used it to cut silhouettes. As a final step prior to lighting, he would remove the “toothpick” from the Swiss Army knife and use it to enlarge the hole in the cigar through which the air is drawn. Now it got interesting. He would light the cigar by first heating the end with a match, typically one from the Castle bar, and then by puffing on it in the conventional manner. He vigorously, though absent-mindedly, waved the match horizontally in front of himself and tossed it into the ashtray. Amazingly, this rarely extinguished the match and almost always set the contents of the ashtray on fire. Initially I felt obligated • 21 •

Michael A. Perovich • to do something at this point, but soon learned to sit back and enjoy what happened next. What happened next, of course, was that the easily ignited cellophane burst into flame and soon had any napkins or whatever else that was combustible in the ashtray sending flames toward the ceiling. Vernon showed no sign this was happening. In fact, he became quite irritable if anyone pointed it out to him. He would take out his deck and begin practicing the Diagonal Palm Shift or S.W.E. Pass, not bothered one whit that half the table was consumed in flames. Then, by some unknown instinct, he would look up just as the flames burnt out and, holding the deck before him, say, “Now look, this is very interesting.”

• 22 •

Tales of Finneran

rancis Finneran, known professionally as Francis Carlyle, moved west in the spring of 1970 to join the crowd at the Magic Castle. He had been fighting alcoholism for many years, but had sworn off the bottle and arrived a youngish looking fifty-nine or so. He had but five years to live. Francis was a trouper. The magic-loving crowds at the Castle initially dumbfounded him. He was accustomed to tough audiences and acerbic hecklers in the East. He maintained that the young Castle magicians had no idea what it was like to encounter a hostile crowd that really didn’t want to see a magic act. “These people want to be fooled!” he’d shout. It was true. People came to the Magic Castle fully expecting to be baffled, rarely questioning the magician’s ability to do so. Vernon used to joke about a friend who had once said that no one ever set out to see a magician. People might be sitting around and say, “You know, I really feel like going to a concert,” or “Gee, I’d sure like to go see a ball game.” “But,” said Vernon, “can you imagine anyone ever saying, ‘You know, I really feel like a magic show.’” People might go see a magic performance if it were in the area, but the average person doesn’t sit around longing for one. Francis almost felt that performing at the Castle was too easy, that people reacted positively no matter what they saw. Perhaps this was true to some extent; the Castle was the exception to the rule, where people really did set out to enjoy magic. • 57 •

• The Vernon Companion

A portrait of Larry Gray by Vernon, woodburning on leather, 1917

• 209 •

Charlie Miller

he Castle was home to many of the world’s greatest sleight-of-hand experts but, with the exception of Vernon, none was treated with as much reverence as Charlie Miller. His full name was Charles Earl Miller, and early in his career he had often used this name, or alternately, just Charles Earl. At the Castle, he was most often referred to simply as Charlie. He had known Vernon since at least the early 1930s, and it’s clear Vernon confided in him his most cherished secrets and dearly won conceits of the gambling fraternity. Unlike Vernon, who thrived on camaraderie, or Crandall, who was curmudgeonly but omnipresent, Charlie was reclusive and eccentric. He seemed always in a hurry, and his column in Genii magazine often reflected his concern with the manners of younger magicians. Charlie performed fairly frequently in the Castle, both in the Close-up Gallery and on the little stage downstairs in the Haunted Wine Cellar. In the latter spot, he would perform his famous Rice Bowl routine (which he charmingly accompanied with his own whistling), the Miser’s Dream, a ring and rope routine, and other classics from his repertoire. Charlie typically wore a loud blue coat and an oversized bow tie that seemed initially to bespeak a comic approach. The outfit he wore was, in fact, a tribute to a magician from earlier in the century, Frank Ducrot, whom Charlie greatly admired. Both amusing and captivating, Charlie soon imparted to the audience his dignified manner and respect for his craft. • 87 •

Listen, I’ll Tell You about Houdini

uthor: “I just saw The Man from Beyond at the Silent Movie Theater.” Professor: “Well, not much of an acting job, was it? He wanted to be in the movies, but he certainly was a dismal failure. Terrible; embarrassing.” There were a number of magicians Vernon never had anything bad to say about, such as Nate Leipzig, Faucett Ross, and Channing Pollock. There were others, such as John Scarne, and even T. Nelson Downs, who always drew some kind of tempered remark. But there was only one who consistently, unequivocally, and without exception drew The Professor’s ire. That was Houdini. Vernon thought Houdini was a jerk, although he liked Houdini’s wife and allowed that the Handcuff King was very good to his mother. Vernon had once been demonstrating his artistically evolved card miracles to socialites at a large social gathering, only to have Houdini grab the pack from his hands and begin exhibiting ham-fisted and hackneyed effects to the gathering mob. Vernon considered this typical of the famed escape-artist’s approach to both performing and to other magician’s sensibilities. The Professor mimicked Houdini encountering a fire in progress, grabbing the fire chief by the lapels, and yelling into his face, “I’m Harry Houdini, I’m Harry Houdini.” The next day’s edition would invariably report that magician Harry Houdini had been present at the conflagration. This behavior represented the antithesis of Dai Vernon’s personality, and The Professor was thoroughly revolted by it. • 123 •

Something Slimy in the Air

ne night I arrived at the Castle to find Dai Vernon toying with a magician’s fake. This one was a piece of crude apparatus more commonly used in the nineteenth century. I assumed he had confiscated it from some hapless rustic who was annoying the magic gods with its presence. When I made a comment that betrayed that opinion, The Professor was shocked. “What! You don’t use one of these? Why, it’s one of the greatest things in magic. I use it all the time. I can’t believe you don’t use it. Used it for years!” At this point I felt so much like Mortimer Snerd, I looked over my shoulder to see if Edgar Bergen had his hand in my shirt. During this period, the Castle often suffered from gridlock, because there were no controls established on the number of guests that might enter on any given night. There were, however, times when the scheduling of the shows drew off most of the crowds, and the area in front of the main bar would clear, if only for a few minutes. This was just such a time. The Professor seized the opportunity to demonstrate the usefulness of this implement of bygone days by bounding from his seat, removing a bill from his money clip, and standing “center stage” in the open area. He had my rapt attention, as this was one of the few times I ever saw him stand up and perform in the Castle. I knew more or less what was coming, but using this ancient method, how good could it be? • 129 •

Vanished into the Ether

agic author Henry Hay noted that Color Changes should more properly be called Transformations. Magicians most often cause one card to change into another rather than, for instance, changing the Four of Hearts into the Four of Spades, which would more nearly approximate an actual change in color. Vernon said that Bautier de Kolta used a series of changes to perform true Color Changes. He had special cards printed in a variety of colors and changed them in accordance with the fabrics they touched. Thus, the Nine of Diamonds would turn black after having touched his sleeve, and then green when rubbed briefly on a lady’s dress of that color. This continued until several changes had taken place. The exchange was made with the open side of the deck-holding hand toward the audience, in contrast to the manner usually adopted. This little routine is described on page 450 of Hugard and Braue’s Expert Card Technique. Vernon took the psychology of the Color Change one step further with his “Picking Off the Pip,” which appears on page 47 of Dai Vernon’s Inner Secrets of Card Magic by Lewis Ganson. In this little gem, the Three of Clubs is changed into the Two of Clubs, but the illusion suggests that the middle pip has been removed from the card. This creates a more subtle, but stronger illusion. Lewis Ganson’s description ends with “as the tips of the right forefinger and thumb reach the centre spot, which they seem to pick off and drop daintily to the floor.” This description implies that the performer is • 131 •

• The Vernon Companion But what of Vernon? He spent virtually no time trying to impress people, and he certainly didn’t perform magic in a manner suggesting an eye-of-newt-tongue-of-frog approach. Yet there were certain things he did that made one wonder. We’ve spoken of his “luck.” It was omnipresent and mysterious. And there were certain tricks he performed, particularly those where he was silent, which were genuinely unnerving. When The Professor performed magic silently, he immediately became focused, serious, and totally absorbed. This had an almost hypnotizing effect on the viewer. You sensed this when Vernon performed the Linking Rings on stage. It was especially evident when he performed the Three Ball Transposition. In this effect, three small balls (often roulette balls) mysteriously travel from hand to hand, and as they arrive are dropped dramatically onto a net held by two spectators. I was so struck by his manner when I first saw him do this that the trick itself seemed almost secondary. Roy Walton recalls a time in a flat Dai had rented in Mayfair. On this occasion, all those present were film stars, except for Dai, Faucett Ross, Alex Elmsley, and Roy. Each magician performed a trick for the celebrities. When Dai’s turn came, he took three olives from the relish tray and performed this Mora-based Three Ball Transposition. Mr. Walton still remembers how beautifully the effect flowed, how baffled the film stars were, and how impressed the magicians were that Vernon had found his apparatus on a relish tray. Perhaps the finest example of The Professor’s mysterious side was the “Slow-Motion Card Vanish” described in The Twenty Dollar Manuscript. I’d never seen anyone perform this prior to Dai Vernon. In the intervening years, I have seen a film of a relatively young Vernon performing the effect, and a separate film of another magician—Fred Braue, I think— doing it almost as well. But at that time, I’d only read about it and wasn’t quite sure if the method was truly workable. I found out. Dai Vernon performed this effect in just as serious a manner as can be imagined. I don’t know whether he was trying to be mysterious, but I found the performance chilling and mesmerizing. You absolutely had to pay attention. And when the card melted away at his fingertips, it truly seemed to be “spiritualized into the ether,” as The Professor was wont to say. • 135 •

Vernon Close Up

n the early 1970s, Dai Vernon still performed private dates. The Professor had some excellent publicity stills taken around this time, by Steve Young, I believe. They showed a smiling gentleman at the top of his game, with dice, coins, and other objects held jauntily in his hands. Although well into his seventies, he still looked cool and had more energy than anyone around him. He dressed with a stylish flair and trimmed his mustache at a jaunty angle. When he performed away from the Magic Castle, he often darkened his mustache, presumably with mustache wax, to project a more dapper appearance. We assumed, therefore, that if Vernon appeared with his mustache darkened, he had been performing at a private engagement. The Professor seemed often to be in the mood to present certain tricks when he had returned from one of these shows, so one might conclude that the following two tricks were featured in his repertoire away from the Castle. One was his dice routine, which began with the spots on the dice changing and ended with the tiniest of dice appearing in his hand. The second trick involved a silver dollar and a piece of photography paper. Vernon asked a woman to cut to a card, and then to initial a tiny square of blank paper set on a silver dollar. It was soon revealed that the once blank piece of photographic paper now had the woman’s initial on one side and a photograph of the chosen card on the other. (Vernon’s handling of this old trick, based on Al Baker’s method, was included in the Tarbell Course in Magic, Vol. 7, on page 257.) These tricks were • 155 •

Michael A. Perovich • particularly well suited for sophisticated women, who always seemed to have an affinity for The Professor. Vernon’s 1931 close-up act, which included the Sponge Balls, is documented in Holden’s Programs of Famous Magicians, but we’ll primarily concern ourselves with his act circa 1970. Vernon performed fairly frequently in the Castle’s Close-up Gallery during this period. It’s interesting to see what tricks magicians actually perform before the general public, versus what they discuss and perform among themselves. Here’s a partial list of effects Vernon performed in set acts in the Castle’s Close-up Gallery on the occasions I saw him: The Cups and Balls (Dai Vernon Book of Magic, but with the added touch of having three balls accumulate on top of one of the cups. This was a favorite sequence of his friend, Sam Horowitz, and appears to have been his idea.) The Linking Rings (Symphony of the Rings and The Dai Vernon Book of Magic), in which six steel rings link and unlink. Vernon’s routine revamped and revitalized this classic. It’s interesting to note that Wallace Galvin, a vaudeville magician much admired by Vernon, performed a six-ring routine—as opposed to the standard routines, which use eight rings or more—in the early part of the century. Three-Card Monte (Dai Vernon’s Further Inner Secrets of Card Magic, Revelations), in which Vernon repeatedly leads the audience astray as they try to follow the elusive Queen. Matching the Cards (Dai Vernon’s More Inner Secrets of Card Magic, going into it with the Rakinakis Cut on page 38 of Volume One of The Vernon Chronicles). In this effect, the magician mysteriously cuts three cards that match the value of a fourth card chosen by a spectator. The audience believes the magician has erred, but in the end it all works out. The Ambitious Card (Stars of Magic, Elliott’s Classic Secrets of Magic). Perhaps Vernon’s finest creation, in which a chosen card repeatedly and inexplicably returns to the top of the pack. As Vernon performed it, there were several feints, causing the audience to think he had been found out. The Psychic Stop (Expert Card Technique, Encyclopedia of Card Tricks), in which a spectator hands cards to the performer, stopping of her own free will at her own chosen card. • 156 •

Michael A. Perovich • been destroyed by the constant grind of show business, a fate he was determined to avoid. We can gain more insight into Dai Vernon’s shipboard act by examining tricks listed in Vernon’s address book, which was auctioned off in January 2010. It appears the following were among the tricks he featured when standing before a medium-sized audience. Dying Silks $$ Six-Card Repeat $$ The Cards Across $$ (Pad) Mental Effect, perhaps his version of the Center Tear $$ Paper Balls over Head $$ Coins in Glass $$ The Travelers $$ My Lady’s Looking Glass $$ Sympathetic Silks $$ Cards up the Sleeve $$ Al Baker’s Cut and Restored Ribbon $$ Mora’s Balls in Net $$ Thumb Tie $$ Poker Demonstration $$ I recall him saying that one entire shipboard act consisted of gambling-related demonstrations. Vernon’s Harlequin Act of the mid-1930s is described in The Dai Vernon Book of Magic. The Harlequin Act included his famous Ball and Cone routine, a Linking Rings routine, and the Salt Pour, in which salt poured into one hand vanishes, and then begins streaming from the other. When asked about the angles for the basic sleight of the Ball and Cone, The Professor told me that the large sleeves of the harlequin costume greatly helped to protect this move. He also loved to relate how he had been able to obtain diamond dust through a friend, to use in the Salt Pour when he performed it at Radio City Music Hall. He said that without it there was no perceived effect, as the salt couldn’t be seen in the huge hall. Vernon’s Ball and Cone routine was originally developed to integrate the Trylon and Perisphere, the iconic symbols of the 1939 • 162 •

Closing the Iron Door on Houdini (as related by David Roth)

ew young magicians ever received as much praise from Dai Vernon as did David Roth. Vernon frequently mentioned how he found David’s huge body of original coin magic not only superlative but superior to that of the famous King of Coins, T. Nelson Downs, who had performed on vaudeville stages in the years before and after 1900. There could be no finer compliment than this. It was well known among magicians that The Professor took an extremely dim view of Houdini. He didn’t like his acting; he found him pushy and egocentric; he thought Houdini’s magic, particularly with cards, was terrible. David was to learn in a conversation with Dai Vernon that this all went deeper than Houdini’s once grabbing the cards from Vernon’s hands to make himself the focus of attention. The event that irrevocably sealed Vernon’s opinion of Houdini involved The Professor’s dear friend, Sam Margules. Margules was a big husky guy with a heart of gold. Sam had helped Vernon out on numerous occasions when he was a young man in New York. Sam was also a friend and associate of the famous illusionist, Horace Goldin, at the time when Vernon met his future wife, Jeanne. She had been involved in magic herself, playing the feet in Goldin’s Sawing a Lady in Two. The Professor spoke of one occasion when a magician’s clothes were in such a sad state that he approached Margules for assistance. He had • 243 •

Ardo

e’s Coming,” said the billboard standing alongside a road in a large Eastern city. People puzzled over the meaning of the sign. Had it to do with some religious movement? No one knew. The sign stayed there for a week or two, and then it changed. That billboard and another like it now said, “He’s getting closer.” Again a buzz went through the town, and people in coffee shops and on street corners commented on the new signs and what they meant. But no one knew. Again a week or two passed, and the signs changed. The letters were larger this time: “It won’t be long now.” Whatever it meant, people were intrigued and interest was building. “He’s almost here,” the billboard stated in large bold letters. This time people were actually gathered around the signs as the new paper was pasted over the old, waiting to see exactly what it said. There were large crowds standing by when the final billboards were posted. The crowds were staring at the signs, arguing about what they meant right up to the final denouement: “He’s Here! Ardo, the Human Frog, now appearing at the Palace Theater.” Ardo was an Australian contortionist who appeared in the United States in 1916. This was perhaps when Dai Vernon saw the billboards leading to his arrival. As did many other “frog man” contortionists, Ardo dressed in a green frog costume and twisted his body into a variety of pretzel-like poses atop a giant lily pad sitting center stage. The • 255 •

She Only Drove It on Friday Nights

ay Ose was a wonderful magician and an instrumental player in the early days of the Magic Castle. Certainly John Shrum designed it, Milt Larsen built it, and Bill Larsen led it. They were able to bring in important members of the entertainment industry with whom they worked. But it was Jay Ose they saw when they got there. It was Jay who knew all the members’ names and their guests’ names and their children’s names and their dogs’ names. It was Jay who entertained everyone, made them comfortable, made them love both him and the Castle. Arriving a year or so after Jay died, I never met him, but everyone I spoke to had a soft spot in their hearts for Jay Ose. Many still do. Jay Ose helped convince Vernon to come west for a visit, to lecture and to stay. The Professor, in turn, expressed his admiration for Jay in many ways. He often talked about Jay’s photographic memory. This faculty not only endeared Jay to Castle patrons, but also impressed the actors with whom Jay worked in films. After one reading of the script, he not only knew his own lines but their lines as well. When he and The Professor roomed together, Vernon marveled at how Jay could read an entire page of poetry, and then recite it verbatim. When it came to quoting the Bible, The Professor claimed Jay had no equal. Jay had been an alcoholic and knew life from top to bottom. Vernon passed along advice Jay had once given him: “Listen, if a guy ever comes up to you and says, ‘Can you give me a dollar? I need a drink real bad,’ • 291 •

Michael A. Perovich •

Courtesy of Marc Caplan

The Professor at the Castle, 1981

• 212 •