Dear friend,
“What the eyes see, the heart must believe”
In today’s post, we’re sharing some fascinating insights and stories from the life of one of the great magicians of history—Dai Vernon, aka ‘The Professor!’
Dai Vernon was, without a doubt, the most important magician of the 20th century.
Where do we even begin?
Stories about his life are legendary, and in this post, I want to share a few tales about Vernon that there’s a very good chance you’ve never heard…(I’ll also share a Vernon quote you may not have heard)
To good for his fellows…
Storytime!
Larry Jennings was an old-school card man with some of the finest sleight-of-hand work of the 20th century. One day he had this idea for a plot called ‘The Searchers’.
It’s a sandwich trick, but not your usual sandwich trick. No sir. This is a ‘slow motion’ sandwich routine.
The spectator picks a card, Jennings removes the two kings, and the kings slowly move closer and closer to the chosen card…eventually trapping it between them.
It’s beautiful, elegant…and completely unrealistic.
That’s because the routine relies on an insane combination of switches, culls, passes and even a multiple-side-steal (just to place the proverbial cherry on top.)
You see, Jennings was a master sleight-of-hand artist, so this stuff barely bothered him. But for 90% of magicians, this would have been a nightmare to perform.
So when Jennings showed this effect to Dai Vernon, his close friend and mentor, Vernon points out that fact in no uncertain terms.
Jennings gets pretty offended by this, and storms off.
Eventually, he comes back around and realises Vernon was probably right.
A ‘slow motion’ sandwich routine with that many passes simply couldn’t be constructed easily enough to actually work for most magicians.
Or could it?
You see, that right there would have been the end of the story….if it weren’t for a young up and coming card guy from Baltimore.
Enter Aaron Fisher, a student of Jennings.
Aaron saw the potential of this ‘slow motion’ sandwich effect, and managed to devise a diabolically simple way to perform it where all the ‘dirty work’ happens right in the audiences hands.
This solution is truly ingenious, and it’s a real ‘worker’ that any magician can master in a few simple steps.
You can watch Aaron perform this wonderful effect right here:
https://thedailymagician.com/search-and-destroy
The trick that fooled Houdini – the REAL story
Here’s a fascinating story I first heard from Michael Ammar:
Every magician worth their salt knows about the ‘man who fooled Houdini’, Dai Vernon.
Here’s the ‘tl;dr’ version: Vernon fooled Houdini not once but three times in a row, by placing a signed card second from the top in the deck, then making the card appear at the top of the deck.
Thing is, most magicians (myself included) don’t perform this the same way Vernon actually did it.
Most people replicating this effect start with the chosen card face down on the deck, then they place it second from top, execute a DL (if you know, you know) and smoothly ditch the DB (again…if you know, you know) to show that it really is just one card. They then repeat this process a few times and take their applause.
But in truth, this is NOT how The Professor handled it.
According to Ammar, when he chatted to Vernon (what a badass line) about this effect, Vernon clarified a very important point:
He began the routine with the chosen card FACE UP on the deck—so when he turned it over he could execute the DL, which meant it was actually the DB card that he placed second from the top. As a result, he could very cleanly turn over the top card or even have a spectator themselves turn it over. He repeated it this way a couple of times, and then just as people were getting suspicious of whether the card being placed in the deck was really their card, he switched methods and used the more common variation, meaning he could display the card as it went in.
In effect, by switching between methods like this, he was able to ‘cancel out’ each one in Houdini’s mind.
I don’t know about you, but that was a pretty cool revelation when I heard it.
Thank you for reading Dai Vernon: Stories About ‘The Professor’ You’ve Never Heard.’ We hope you enjoyed it!
Dai Vernon was a master mentor, and a big role model for us, here at The Daily Magician, (heck, we practically worship the guy)!
We’re doing our part to mentor the next generation of magicians by sharing our journey mastering different elements of magic.
Last black friday, we made a project that involved reaching into the past and bringing the best of that era of magic into the modern day…
This project is a VIDEO collection of 138 of the BEST tricks from our library of 368 classic magic books!
First, we spent hours upon hours pouring over these books, sifting through the material, and finding the very best ‘hidden gems’.
And there were a LOT of them.
In fact, while creating this project we quite literally found the method for one the best selling magic tricks of 2023 in a single throwaway paragraph written by Theodore Annemann.
(this is no exaggeration, check out trick 39 of this project upon purchase to see the proof!)
Next, we spent nearly two weeks practically living in our studio, filming high quality videos going over each of these tricks and making them as EASY to understand as possible.
Our goal was to do ALL the hard work for you.
We’ve taken these tricks, added our own modernizations, touches, alternate handlings and most importantly brought them into the modern age in the form of video.
We’ve also made sure the original excerpts are right below the video because reading and watching can create an even better experience!
This was a mammoth task.
This project has taken 2 years to be fully realized.
As Black Friday and ‘crunch time’ approached, we even had to carve out 2 weeks of our schedule to create a ‘magic bootcamp’ where we did nothing but read, film, edit, learn and produce.
(spending regular 12, 13 and even 20 hour days immersed in this stuff)
The result?
Imagine knowing more about magic than you ever have.
Imagine being able to sit down with magicians such as Hugard, Annemann, Vernon, Erdnase, Cardini, Hunter and others, knowing you could have kept up with them.
(and perhaps show them a few things of your own!)
That’s how we felt at the ‘peak’ of this project, while we were so immersed in their work. It’s a feeling we tried to capture in the product.
We’ve talked to magic circle members, top magicians and clients about it for a while now.
But we’re finally sharing it with you…
“Want to be an interesting magician? Become an interesting person!” (Dai Vernon)
Every week at The Daily Magician, we explore a new idea within magic—and our readers come along for the journey.
Whether we’re pulling apart the science of creativity, brainstorming methods with world-class magicians, or discovering what card tricks look like in Vietnam, we’ll take you ‘behind the curtain’ with us!
To sign up, click below and enter your email…
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