The Canadians: Dai Vernon

die burnin is to conjuring as James Joyce to the novel or Einsteins physics it's a person who comes along about once a century and just changes everything because of something that he or she has brought to the table that suddenly just changes the way people approached that field as a father it was a good magician we were dispossessed because he didn't believe in paying bills it was not something he was interested in doing so my mother had this scrimp and try to keep the family together while he back to seconds I don't think there's a performer today - today in Las Vegas or Hong Kong or China who doesn't have a little day Vernon in them his contribution for magic is unparalleled in the last hundred years nobody was able to touch him this is a tale of a magician and his magic his life spanned almost a century and during that time he would transform this ancient art whether he was called David or Dale day or die everywhere he went he was known as the professor [Music] he spent the last years of his life in this magic castle a chateau like private club for magicians here Vernon was the undisputed wizard of Wizards max maven no mean conjurer himself knew the professor during the last decades of his life this is where the professor would sit virtually every night so correctly I should be sitting either over there or over here which is where I would sit and talk to them along with many others this was where he held court he made this the center of the magic universe just as he made everywhere else he went the center of the magic universe but this was not the first Castle to play a role in the professor's life his family lived almost in the shadow of Canada's stately parliament buildings a comfortable middle-class family in a far-flung corner of the Dominion in the twilight of the Victorian era he was going to follow a path that would scandalize the good citizens of that elegant time David Frederick Wingfield burner was born in 1894 the eldest of James and Helen burners three sons David's father would occasionally entertain him with simple magic tricks never dreaming of the destiny that awaited his young son young David loved to watch performances of any kind but nothing was as exciting as the magicians his love of magic was already drawing him into a world remote from respectable Oliver as soon as he could read he devoured all the magic books in Ottawa's Carnegie Library his almost supernatural talent was apparent from his earliest youth in 1901 magician extraordinaire Howard Thurston came to Ottawa although Thurston was the self-proclaimed king of cards the seven-year old David Verner fooled him with a card trick in 1902 eight-year-old David came under the spell of a book that had been published earlier that year the expert at the card table purported to do something that no book had done before it explained in detail the techniques of crooked gamblers as well as magicians people suppose that the book's author SW 'red neighs was using a pseudonym after all he was revealing the closely guarded secrets of the criminal underworld certainly a dangerous practice half a century later a sordid tale would be pieced together that would lead many researchers to conclude that SW herb neighs was an anagram for the name of Milton Franklin Andrews a thief and killer who met his fate in San Francisco were cornered by the law he shot his girlfriend and then killed himself despite it's highly suspect origins bird neighs has never gone out of print but young David knew none of this he only knew that herb neighs held the key to a world of conjuring he had never imagined by 12 he had memorized the entire book and over the next 80 years he would continue to study this Bible and spread its gospel when he began performing for church and school groups there were some who were less than pleased when he started doing magic his mother was upset because he was good at it she said the other children you know they were they couldn't really sing or dance but David you did so well I'm so ashamed I said mother what do you mean she said I was so ashamed of it well I'm sure yes but she said everybody in the audience must have thoughts of you or did not my child yeah I picked up at a circus you're a circus child in those days if you belong to a circus or show business your laws a panel on the other hand David's interest in the fine arts probably received more support from his family his uncle was Frederick Verner a noted Canadian landscape painter Vernon's father always encouraged his interest in the arts but for the moment his parents concern was that he had the best education they could afford and so young David was sent off to Ashbury College even in those days an exclusive Ontario private school he was a well rounded student a fine artist captain of the football team a star hockey player it was here that his chums shortened Dave today the first of many transmutations his name would undergo during a family vacation at Old Orchard Beach in Maine it became clear that David had great artistic talents although these seemed to favor unusual forms of expression one day came across a silhouette cutter plying his trade on the pier it was a popular art form but a difficult skill there were few artists in the country who did it professionally David couldn't wait to try so I went back to the old auction house and I took a pair of scissors and I tried to cut a silhouette like I've saved this Brando and I cut towards three out of this piece of paper and my father came well he looked at it he said you know those pictures you got terrible I'm better proportioned and a man on the pier recognizing his talents in 1913 his parents agreed to his traveling to New York for art lessons it was to be a journey into a very different world New York was a city that had figured large in his dreams for as long as he could remember his plan to live here as an art student changed as soon as he discovered Coney Island unlike today a less seedy Coney Island was a popular playground for a middle class seeking a summer refuge and it was here that he tried his hand at a trade that would prove the economic mainstay of the first half of his life Larry gray the Disney Wizard he had a shop saying learn to entertain he said what do you do down here and I was I just for fun I said I'm a silhouette artist so that night I went home and I made us a display so I put them up in his magic store and I made 17 dollars that was good money in those days and I thought boy I can stay in Coney Island now for the season but with the fading of summer Vernon had to return home to Canada and the RMC the Royal Military College that Coney Island Adventure was to stand in sharp contrast to the life of a cadet at our MC here Vernon would specialized in engineering and once again excel in sports the Great War brought the games to an end in 1914 Vernon enlisted in the newly formed Air Force but the fates intervened he never saw combat as much needed drafting skills left him at home behind a desk dreaming of New York [Music] by war's end he had left Canada and moved to Manhattan then as now the bright lights of Broadway we're an irresistible attraction for those in love with the stage Vernon was no exception but his real love was for one of the theaters less respected branches this time Vernon did not enroll for classes at the Art Students League he had committed himself to another muse and to his mother's chagrin it was this craft that Vernon wanted to see elevated to the level of the hierarchy whenever he could he would make his way to one of the city's magic hangouts sometimes to his friend al flosso shop which Al's son Jackie runs today I'm gonna show you a trick called squeeze play to come over like that hot to tuck it right on top then I'm just gonna show my hands empty and then you just squeeze it right through see if it went through you be the judge any would-be magician could drop in and buy the latest trick but only the inner circle had access to the back room and then only after having proved their worth these back rooms were the meeting places of legendary masters al flosso whose brand of comedy magic gave him the name Laconia and fakir Horace golden the whirlwind wizard who performed illusions of all kinds Max Malini who had performed before the crowned heads of Europe and who liked the dapper Nate Leipzig created magic with only cards coins and the most commonplace objects in the back rooms the inner circle shared their secrets but even the best of these gaped in astonishment when the young Canadian began to work after his very first demonstration he was invited into the inner sanctum when he came to New York he was doing things from urdhva news that the card people in New York who know cards but they didn't know about this he was fooling them with this what were their day's approaches and to this day if you could do what's a nerd news you were top card man Vernon may have been known to the inner circle but in the public imagination Harry Houdini was the embodiment of magic Vernon didn't share the public's enthusiasm while he might be grudgingly given nod to Houdini's public relations abilities or to his skills as an escape artist he did not speak highly of him as a magician Bern had very strong ideas about what counted as magic and what didn't anything mysterious is magic something that people can't explain something weird happened something strange there's nothing strange to seeing a guy get out of a straitjacket he wiggled around tried and gets the thing huh Houdini wasn't didn't do any magic he didn't do he did escapes and then and put his name across he didn't he couldn't do magic Houdini had issued a challenge no one could fool him with a trick if he saw it three times Vernon had Houdini write his name on a card he then proceeded to fool him thought what's not three times seven times that's 1919 even before his career had begun he assumed the mantle of the man who fooled Houdini it wouldn't be long before everyone in the magic scene was calling this young man the professor Coney Island today no longer looms as large as it did for so much of Vernon's early life having first enticed Vernon to stay in New York Coney Island was now about to play the role of matchmaker for the expatriate Canadian the renowned magician Horace golden was performing at Coney Island in theaters around the world he had caused women to float in the air it made them vanish and was one of the first to saw them in half one of his assistants at Coney Island was the comely Jean haze soon to be mrs. David Byrne [Music] the March the fifth 1924 they were married at Manhattan's Church of the Transfiguration known to the New York art scene as the little church around the corner gene and David seemed to have a lot in common but their life together was not to prove harmonious I think she was kind of the black sheep of her family she ran away from home she was fairly gifted as an artist she was a sculptress and she didn't think she was a painter but I thought she did pretty well as a painter like her husband genes talents expressed themselves in unusual ways among other things she made masks some were used in performances by Vernon and other magicians not her favorite group of people she didn't care much for magic or magic she liked a number of people but magicians in general she had absolutely no use for she says they're all up to full people that's all I went was poor people of it Sophia could be hell on wheels sometimes in 1926 their first son Edward was born six years later he'd have a younger brother Derek this time of familial bliss was heralded by a measure of financial success that in 1924 was almost magically thrust upon him while casually performing card tricks for some friends Vernon was approached by the well-known theatrical agent Francis Rockefeller King she said I'll give you $5,000 she said for that that's what she told me $5,000 for lunch work and then anyway I worked for for 10 or 12 years after that all the magician in New York were very jealous because they were getting 25 my minimum salary was $100 and sometimes I've got as much as 300 for a single performance but I only went for the Astor's the Vanderbilts from the Schwab's and multimillionaires because she had that kind of a clientele but even that privileged realm would be rocked when in 1929 the stock market crashed and the world was swallowed by the Great Depression throughout those lean years of soup lines and work projects Burton found he could still make a living with his shears and a sheet of black paper his clients have included the writer F scott Fitzgerald the actor ray Bolger and even a president but it was the art and craft of deception that was his passion everything else just got in the way I remember him coming home with something new and then sitting there and practicing it's a completely day after day then sometimes completely through the night I came home one day from school and because I was so young it didn't make any difference to me I thought it was grateful on all our furniture was on the street because when the landlord would come my father would say don't go to hell he wasn't a very good tenant and perhaps an even less accomplished father I father was very unusual as a parent he wasn't a typical parent if I were doing a magic trick or watching a magic trick I don't think he was aware that I existed I remember we had a big swimming meet in New York through the Madison Square boys club and I was only a little guy and I came out third in the city and I was proud of myself and my father said don't you ever have me come down and watch you do anything if you don't come in first he may have seemed insensitive to domestic responsibilities but there was one thing guaranteed to get his attention word of a gambler with a new technique in the early 30s Vernon and Charlie Miller who I believe with the two greatest line of hand artists in America at that time received phone calls from a mutual friend and this fellow said there's a man in Wichita Kansas who can deal from the center of the deck in the old books anybody who's read magical literature there's no reference to a senator deal there's no such thing as somebody says it's hard enough to deal a second card I wouldn't know were they gonna deal a card from the center of the deck and these two men hung up the phones and packed their bags and left for Wichita question is why did two grown men travel so fast and so far to understand why you have to consider that the talented sheet might be able to control the position of the cards after a shuffle but in most games another player will then cut the deck and somehow the cheat has to regain control of the cards after the cut Vernon and Miller searched everywhere for Alan Kennedy of Kansas City who rumor had it could accomplish this impossible sleight they went to gambling joints to poker rooms to pool parlors even bowling alleys they were unable to find Alan Kennedy they just couldn't find him and in frustration they were packing up their bags to go home and Vernon noticed a little girl eating an ice cream cone in front of his store and I said you know mr. Kennedy in town and she said mr. Kennedy lives in that white house is a top of the hill and that's how they found Kennedy and actually saw the center deal and Vernon used to love to tell the story when he was in his eighties he'd always kind of lean back and say I'm not a Bible student but I thought have a little child shall lead them I thought here I've been looking all around Charlie Meyer and iron banks and filling station and here's our child and so in 1931 they discovered this holy grail of card cheats they found it on the outskirts of Kansas City in the hands of a farmer who could absolutely imperceptibly deal the cards he wanted from the center of a shuffled deck this is an effect that we call a 10-count which I had learned from a day and I'll show it to you let me show you look one two three four five six seven eight nine ten burnin created magic of all kinds but it was miracles with cards which more than anything else made Vernon's reputation and by the early 1930s he was known throughout the magical underground his first serious publication was this manuscript a few scant pages only ten effects with cards and yet during the Depression it was offered for sale at the extraordinary price of $20 the equivalent of about a thousand dollars today even more extraordinary at that price it quickly sold out the second world war found him too old for active service but it was to bring him closer to the battlefield that he'd come during World War one Vernon joined the American service wing an entertainment organization like the USO he was made a captain and put in charge of a group performed for troops stationed in the Philippines [Music] [Applause] back in civilian life Vernon continued developing a number of Acts combining sophisticated magic with costumes makeup and masks in 1943 his wife Jean was busy making sketches for his newest and most ambitious act yet he would be the Harlequin Jean would play the assistant even there he didn't do illusions he still did sleight of hand to produce a coconut and throw it up in the air and would tend to a monkey and take off his gloves and throw them up and it would be a dove it was all done the classical music it was a of a different approach to magic in those days and actually the magician's went crazy when they saw it it was and he got a tremendous standing ovation and he immediately got booked at Radio City Music Hall unfortunately they tried in the first show they tried in two so now you got to remember the Radio City Music about 6,200 seats that's a big theater isn't it for magic well they tried their best to lighten they went up to the mezzanine the producers they went up to the balcony they're altered they couldn't the people couldn't see many of the props and I don't think he just about finished the next day and they closed them out and he was very hot sick about that although the act played well in the smaller yet elegant Rainbow Room Vernon was deeply disappointed while he continued to be in demand for society parties and his love of magic never diminished it was becoming clear that he really didn't like performing for the first time Vernon harbored doubts about his destiny the consequences were disastrous things come in threes I got a chance to play book builder page play several weeks in series I got a chance to go to Norfolk Virginia to cut silhouettes for the Junior League and I also got a chance to use my engineering job that I done took it anywhere on MC so I asked my wife I said what should i do Jing when I cut the silhouettes or take the theater job or yours the engineering job they're built in East River Parkway and I can get a job there pretty good job my wife says you've never worked in your life why don't you take a man's job and go to work like him like a man you know and he was supposed to sit on a barge in the East River and do nothing but he wanted to help and he was carrying buckets of mercury from the barge to the the dock and a plank broke and he fell down between the barge and I think broke both his arms red badly and they wanted to cut his arm off and he wouldn't let him and they said well it's damaged beyond repair it was his elbow just smashed all the hell well I said we can't fix it he said well you're not cutting it off he says my life to his doctor surprise Vernon recovered but he would never again be able to fully straighten his arms some of his friends said it was a lesson not to be forgotten John scar knee he was a very good card man he came into the hospital they said just goes to show you in the guys like you and me shouldn't work that's what he said it wasn't long before he was performing again during the next few years he would work the cruise ships of the Caribbean a performing venue that like upscale Manhattan Society suited his aristocratic tastes and personal style given a choice though he would still rather hang out with magicians and gamblers and by the mid 1940s there was no shortage of men who would drive across the state to have a chance to listen to Vernon the 46th lecture was the start of what we gotten to know as magic lectures but to me when they did those lectures I was there with my friend and we were just astounded by what we saw I mean our mouths were open or you know just amazing and these were things we had never seen before and the approach and I will tell you honestly and very honestly that changed my whole thinking and approach to magic his his Drive was for naturalness and magic no no no fancy moves put every move had a reason and one of the things that was so good about his magic was that it didn't look like magic it's just magical things happen but he wasn't he wasn't making passes or doing any of any any weird things the professor was an aristocrat and aristocrats do not show off he taught the magician John Carney but magic meant naturalness and naturalness meant disguising not exhibiting your skill if I were to take a card like the ace of clubs and cut it into the pack like that you might be impressed if I shake the cards and it came to the top you'd go wow that's really fast it's really clever that's really skillful but that's not the impression that the professor was going for he would much rather have an impression like this where I bent the card and I show you that the card bent and it's going into the pack you can see it bent there it's much more impressive as if it looks like you do nothing at all and the card still comes up to the top that's different that's magic Vernon's genius was sometimes he in creating something from whole cloth from scratch but but sometimes frequently his genius was knowing what to put in and what to take out and how to put it together as an example of this when Die Vernon published his cap and ball routine it became the coven ball routine so much so that if you see a magician perform the cups and balls anywhere in the world the odds of it being essentially the Vernon routine are 90 plus percent that's an amazing thing to have that strong an influence to create the template the Vernon touch was to spread far beyond North America in the mid-1950s he was invited to lecture in England as in New York the lectures were enthusiastically received but more than that they were occasions when the best and brightest gathered around Vernon to create a whirlwind of magical activity it was a time that culminated in his being recognized by England's prestigious magic circle and in the publication of a much-anticipated book the professor's magical star had risen but in his personal life all was not well unfortunately living with my father as a wife would have been impossible for almost anybody I mean he was very much a gentleman he was kind but he was just totally unconcerned with anything that didn't deal with his specific little world she you know got to drink a little too much and it was all because he was so removed from it all I mean he would never worry about things the rents due or something when he he wouldn't even think about it and course it drove her crazy and one night my mother was drinking and had cooked some exotic dish and I went turned up my nose at it and being tiny she would pick up whatever she could pick up and and the whack the kids with and she happened to pick up this Japanese bainite and proceeded to whack me up pretty good where I had hundreds of stitches and slashed and I remember we had a railroad flat which is row of rooms in a row and my brother and my father were in the front room playing chess and I ran screaming from the back bedroom where she was hacking me up into the front room and said stop for some opera she's killing me and my father turned like this they went back and said check throughout the 1950s the tensions in the Vernon household would only get worse Jean and David would eventually go their separate ways they would never divorce but he would never see her again if you want to be in PI you have to have done something your first time this lecture by dr. persi diaconis at the university of california deals with an unusual subject a subject most would not imagine part of the university's curriculum the mathematics of cards and shuffling okay well he cuts the top half that's a 1 up to 26 if he happened to cut exactly a half it's whatever is in the top half right in the late 1950s dr. diaconis was a young boy studying violin at New York's famed Julliard School of Music but he lived for the time he would spend at the shops and restaurants where the magicians meant to exchange the latest tricks and gossip he was one of the young kids hanging around with the big guys Vernon was the Sun around which the others revolved you sat at Vernon's table by invitation only I was practicing dealing the second card instead of the top one and somebody said behind me oh that's very good and I know who your teacher was and I looked up and it was Vernon oh my god you know what but I sort of hung tough and I said well what do you mean and he said no no you you've learned from Francis Carlyle that's that's very good you do do that again you do that very well and it was just the two of us and and he was sincere I mean and and then later when the place filled up he called me over to the big guys table and so now do that what I saw you do before and I did my little number and and he said now you know this young man has only been doing this for a few years and he can do that better than any of you guys real really is something to learn about that why do you think that is you know and and I was burning red and said from now on you can sit with us perhaps Vernon recognized something of himself in Percy at an early age they had both devoted themselves to earn nays the expert at the card table it had a fascination for me no way to explain it and I thought I knew it pretty well and Vernon knew it line by line like the Bible and he would sort of quiz me and endlessly how many one-handed moves are there a nerd neighs or you know where desert neighs talk about overcoming friction with the nail and etc and one day he called me up and said I'm going to Delaware tomorrow you want to go and I said tomorrow I was 14 and he said yeah I said I'd love to go persi diaconis and Vernon would spend almost the next two years traveling around the country attending magic conventions and chasing down rumors of gamblers with new techniques if we heard that an Eskimo had some way of dealing the second card we would be off to Alaska to go see if we could track them down he just followed the wind it was a boy's dream come true certainly I guess some eyebrows were raised it's hard for people to understand the attraction of a great magic drink Percy like others who had lived with Vernon found it almost as difficult as gene had we were visiting some magician and they had creme de cocoa and would I like some creme de cocoa and I said I didn't like alkaloids no no try that you'll like it it's like chocolate milk it's it's just it's terrific and and I said I know thank you and and he snow come on whatever happens you try it and you know I'll show you that double lift or whatever it was some slight that that that he'd been torturing me with and so okay so I tasted this stuff and and my reaction is it was awful it tastes like liqueur and I put it down he said I knew you'd done that if you just hadn't done that I would have showed you now I'll never show that to you and well so I mean that that went on so I think at the end of the period when I was living with Vernon we were screaming at each other a fair man at the time sort of like an old married couple and yet they would remain friends for the rest of Vernon's life but after two years together they'd had enough of each other for the moment Percy headed back east to practice his craft and eventually to Harvard Vernon went west to Hollywood in the Magic Castle Vernon had come for a visit to check out this private club for magicians and then decided to stay anytime you walked into the Magic Castle in the first half of a given night you were almost certain to see him sometimes if Elodie never allowed his presence made this place important and it made it come alive magicians made their way here from all over to spend time with Vernon some of them would become stars in their own right including another Canadian Doug Henning but all of them came to pay homage to the professor Vernon made pilgrims happy pilgrims of us all that he literally had the power to make people get up and move that's amazingly powerful we must have all felt that at some particular point there was no choice this is what we must do and this is what we did this is one of those trick points is split in two you're probably familiar with those young right so that's John Carney came from the Midwest to hone his craft under the eye of the Masters three coins and that one mint oh that's not a coin ah there it is right there that's four coins so that's one two three four I would show him things well at the Magic Castle over a drink or something and he would nitpick and he would criticize things and tear it apart and you would think that would be a bad thing but you take it home and come back the next day with some changes and he still tear it apart take it home and eventually he'd run out of things to criticize Steve Freeman came from Oklahoma and Tyla public may not know his name in magics inner circle he is spoken of as one of the finest card men in the world and he made you work for the information it didn't it didn't come easily the interesting thing is you could show him something that you really thought you knew well and thought you did well and he would ask you several questions about it that pretty much made you realize you didn't understand the move at all he certainly could tease but he also had a real sense of humor and love poking fun of himself and his own no doubt well-earned reputation for being cantankerous someone showed him a trick that he'd been working on for many many years and had perfected and asked him what he thought and he said is the worst trip ever it is absolutely terrible you're the worst no no wait a minute the second worst magician I ever met in my entire life get out of magic go sell shoes go do something and the guy is all upset and he grabs the paraphernalia and he goes running up the stairs to the dining room and and Vernon turns to people the table says you know the trouble that guy can't take criticism with Fernan enthroned at the castle California became as New York had been the axis of the magical universe many of the New York friends were not pleased to see him go and this added to the east/west rivalry and one of the ways this rivalry expressed itself had to do with the pronunciation of his name because all during the years that he was based in New York his friends and and people around him pronounced his first name day and when he moved to California the pronunciation shifted to die and there were sometimes moments of almost friction on the issue of pronunciation so not surprisingly many people would ask him what's the correct pronunciation day or die and he would smile and say either or either okay you say you're interested in the mind-reading trick is that it you want to read someone's mind that's what you like to do Oh Vernon invented the modern notion of of what I call think a card so card tricks are often somebody says we'll take a card or something like that Vernon had had a different tack he would he would say think of a card okay let's try it with this I want you to look at any one of these cards and thinking I got it are you thinking I'm kind of okay when you think of one and then somehow a cards laid down on your hand you haven't said a word and then what was the card you're thinking of Jack of Hearts and you turn it over and it's the Jack of Hearts it's just eerie I want to see if I can get you and I think I got you I think I got you what was the name of the card that you looked at the Jack of Hearts the Jack of Hearts and I get you because here is the Jaca Hadj burdens importance for magic because as much for his connection to the past as for his creative contribution his books and lectures made him an important bridge to times gone by into the great magicians he so admired that did not necessarily mean that the old masters felt the same way about him they really were furious at Vernon he took their best material and some of it's woven into his own always worth stuff added or with just some kernel taken out I met Lila Leipzig it was Leipzig Widow and when she knew that I was Vernon's student or acolyte or whatever I was she refused to talk to me for quite a while and she said that Vernon is up to no good you know he just wants my Nate's secrets and Leipzig was dead 20 years but on the other hand looking at it in retrospect you know much of that beautiful magic only lives today because Vernon saw it and appreciated it Leipzig Lee me again annoyed as they would be they come to life today because of Vernon [Music] for the next two decades dai continued holding court at the castle during that time he toured the world from Detroit to Japan till well into his 90s Vernon was chatting and lecturing demonstrating and joking the crowned king of magic at the age of 96 he broke his hip his eldest son Edward took him home to care for him he didn't do much I mean he would look at a nerd neighs booking for a half hour and then just doze off he would brighten up when the magician's would come though he would sit up in bed they'd show him things and you know the latest thing they're working on and everything and he'd comment on everything that he would brighten up a little bit then two years after his death in 1992 his friends in New York held a hundredth birthday for this man who had meant so much to them he was the most dedicated or monomaniacal person I ever knew he was brilliant he was an intelligent man he was a gifted artist he did lettering graphics all kinds of thing but he devoted himself to one thing and one thing only I'll tell you and I think the single most important thing about divergents influence on Magic is it was an attitude to me the great tragedy of 20th century magic in the larger picture is that magicians have taken an art form that is inherently profound and rendered it trivial and I Vernon it was never trivial with him and I think that allowed at least a core part of the magic community to understand that and to approach magic with a sense of profundity a sense of reverence a sense of respect and this spread so much so that I feel that there is Vernon present in the performance of every good magician on the face of this earth it has just filtered out that universally no one you gave magic that much thought he gave it the concentration of thought what he did was improve upon the classics and made them brilliant in the last hundred years nobody was able to touch them not only for slider Payne but for presentation for the Soul trick for the linking range for the cups and balls it that was the best to make sure they're covered I'm gonna explain how this is done but I'm gonna simplify it so you can understand it I'll put one of these back in my pocket and I'll put this one back in my pocket so if I put these two away that leaves one under the center cuff doesn't there's one there but you see this one is returned again now the reason for that is this you were probably watching the wrong hand when I told you I'd put it out in my pocket I have nothing here I keep the ball here only pretend to put it in my pocket now I bring it down at my little finger and I choke the cup and put it underneath the cup but if I actually put it in my pocket how many are there under the center cover you haven't been watching there's three days if I put all three away put all three away now how many under the center probably 20 no no they go [Laughter] he was somebody who couldn't have cared less where you came from what you looked like what your religion was if you were seriously interested in magic and he made one of those judgments that you were that was it he just gave you this remarkable gift of his company and his presence and his friendship and what's equally remarkable and profoundly sad is that no people coming up again will ever be able to know him Larry gray who lived with Vernon for a couple of years and somebody asked him what was it like to know Vernon what was it like to live with them and and he said well let me tell you you know I wouldn't take a million dollars not to have known them but give a million not to know another like them [Music] you you

Channel: Historica Canada

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Length: 45min 39sec (2739 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 23 2017