The magician and the cardsharp : the search for America’s greatest sleight-of-hand artist [1st ed.] 9780805074062, 0805074066

Table of contents :
Perfect --
Cards on the Tracks --
Pleasant Hill --
With It --
Midnight --
Single-o --
The Best I've Met in Years --
Dice Man --
And a Little Child Shall Lead Them --
The Gambler's Rose --
One Card.

Citation preview

$26.00 $36.95/Canada

'S S L " * * ) .

■ sa p a :'

n the 1920s, during an era when Americans were crazy for magic, Dai Vernon earned a reputation as a genius of the magical arts. Vernon (known by peers as “the man who fooled Houdini”) and a select group of magicians known as the Inner Circle rose to fame in a realm of stars and sleight of hand where dreams could be realized-or stolen away. Then hard times descended after the crash of ’29. The lights of New York faded, audiences dwindled, and Vernon headed west. Little did he realize that his life was about to change. In Wichita, Kansas, while swapping secrets with a Mexican gambler, Vernon was told a story he didn’t quite believe, the tale of a legendary cardsharp who could deal perfectly from the cen­ ter of the deck. This was a feat Vernon-and every other living magician-considered unachievable. Anyone who could actually pull it off was assured of finding wealth and fame. Determined to find the reclusive cardsharp, Vernon set out on an odyssey through America’s shady, slick, and sinful side, discovering a fascinating and dangerous kingdom of games and tricksters-a colorful world that few Americans knew even existed. After an exciting series of bum leads and fortuitous twists, Vernon finally received a tip on the whereabouts of the elusive man behind the z

-H

o

o

I

1 N lI E 0

0

----------1— N E A C K

r l a

> 8

0

P )

5

AND THE

crp

(Ul AND THE

(Ul

LnJ

The Search for America's Greatest Sleight-of-Hand A rtist

KARL JOHNSON HENRY HOLT A ND COM PANY

NEW YORK

Henry Holt and Company, LLC Publishers since 1866 175 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10010 www.henryholt.com Henry Holt® and ® ® are registered trademarks of Henry Holt and Company, LLC. Copyright © 2005 by Karl Johnson All rights reserved. Distributed in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Johnson, Karl, 1959The magician and the cardsharp : the search for America’s greatest sleight-of-hand artist / Karl Johnson, p. cm. Includes index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-7406-2 ISBN-10: 0-8050-7406-6 1. Vernon, Dai, 1894- 2. Magicians—United States—Biography. 3. Villasenor, Amador. I. Title. GV1545.V47J64 2005 793.8'092—dc22 [B] 2005040447 Henry Holt books are available for special promotions and premiums. For details contact: Director, Special Markets. First Edition 2005 Frontispiece by William Woodfield, courtesy of Genii magazine Designed by Paula Russell Szafranski Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

T H I S BOO K IS D E D I C A T E D , W I T H MY LOVE AND MY LI FE , T O MI RA

His magic is performed with complete naturalness, its artistry that of the art that conceals art. The consummate skill and technique is there but it is never displayed; it is, on the contrary, so carefully hidden that the performer is applauded not for his nimble-fingered dexterity but because he has, with the effortless ease of a real magi­ cian, exhibited a feat of what must be real magic. —Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue, Expert Card Technique, Third Edition

CONTENTS

1

1 Perfect

9

2

Cards on the Tracks

3

Pleasant Hill

37

4

With It

61

5

Midnight

91

6

Single-o

115

7

The Best I’ve Met in Years

151

8

Dice Man

173

9

And a Little Child Shall Lead Them

197

IO The Gambler’s Rose 11

225 253

One Card

XI

C o n ten ts

Notes

283

Bibliography

323

Acknowledgments

331

Index

339

XII

1 PERFECT

To Dai Vernon, Amador Villasenor was a lucky draw, like turning up three aces in the last hand on a losing night. To the cops in Wichita, who had searched for him for three long years, Vil­ lasenor was a gambler, a cardsharp, a thief, and a killer. Though perhaps not a first-degree murderer. Villasenor swore he had acted in self-defense, and the police and his jailers believed what he had to say. The distinction was a technicality, maybe, but his freedom depended on it. Villasenor had, after all, taken a man’s life. He had confessed to shooting one Benito Leija and leaving him to meet his maker in the grit of a Wichita alleyway back in the red-hot summer of 1929. He said he had even watched as Leija—like himself, a young Mexican in his twenties, a gambler well accustomed to the feel of cards and dice—had staggered off the sidewalk outside Manuel Garcia’s poolroom in Wichita’s North End, contemplating his speedily approaching end. Villasenor had jumped in his car on that July evening and bolted out of the city as Leija pitched forward from his knees into a pool of his own blood. 1

T h e M a g ic ia n a n d th e C a r d s h a r p

Vernon, who had just come to Wichita, knew little of what had landed Villasenor in the city’s Sedgwick County Jail, where he was meeting him on a wet winter night during the first gloomy week of February 1932. The crime had happened long before Vernon arrived in Wichita and it didn’t really interest him. To Vernon, Villasenor’s predicament was a scrape like a million others, a “gambling mix-up,” he called it. Vernon certainly wasn’t one to make a hobby of murder. That was not his line. What roused Vernon on this chilly evening was the possibility he might learn something from Villasenor he could use in his magic. Vernon was a magician, an artist. Magic was his obses­ sion. It was what he cared about more than anything else. For three decades, Vernon, now thirty-seven, had been consumed by magic. At times, it possessed him. It was what he puzzled over, theorized about, dreamed of. Magic would keep Vernon up for days at a time with no thought of food or rest. Magic softened these hard times of the Depression. Magic made his dull days cutting silhouettes in a department store in this wheat-and-oil town passable. He was a world away from the ritzy Park Avenue soirees where he had once been the featured attraction, but magic made even that bearable. It was what allowed Vernon to walk blithely into a jail to shake hands with a killer. Vernon would smile and follow the devil himself if it meant he could bring back something, a sleight, a ruse, a line of patter, that he could use in his art. In the Twenties magic had offered audiences a cocktail of glamour and glitz, elegance and escape, to chase away the humdrum workaday world. To most of the great illusionists of that golden era, bigger was bet­ ter. Magic, to those veterans of the slam-bang vaudeville tours, meant stage spectacles on a grand scale. The tuxedoed, ministerial Howard Thurston, then considered the most popular magician in the world, of­ fered up his portentous Wonder Show of the Universe with ever-moreelaborate levitations and disappearances, including the “Vanishing 2

P erfect

Whippet Automobile," packed with seven gorgeous young beauties. Horace Goldin, known as the Whirlwind Illusionist, jammed so many ef­ fects into his dizzying act that he had stopped speaking on stage alto­ gether lest he slow down the pace.