This is the story of the world and magic shows of Harry Blackstone (1885-1965), who entertained theatre-goers for over 50 seasons. Gifted with an electric presence, a magnificent voice and a master magician's mentality and skills, he played everything from showboats to vaudeville to television. Blackstone's extravagant productions advertised "1001 wonders" and "an enchanting array of beautiful girls." Waldron's vivid and thoroughly researched narrative, enhanced with first-hand accounts by those who worked on the Blackstone show, presents an unforgettable portrait of a unique showman. Illustrated throughout with photographs.

Growing up in the company of floating ladies, vanishing horses, and multiplying rabbits, Harry Blackstone learned to perform the most spectacular illusions from his father, the legendary magician Harry Blackstone, Sr. Aspiring young magicians will be eager to learn the secrets of illusion that have bewildered and delighted audiences of all ages for generations.

The complete Blackstone story and the history of magic from the 1920s to today.

Harry Blackstone presented a full-evening production called the Show of 1001 Wonders. It lived up to that billing, as a stage-filling spectacle combining spectacular illusions, magnificent costumes, gorgeous girls, a corps of assistants, humor, dancing, and intimate conjuring, into a seamless two-hour production. Beginning at the turn of the 20th century, Blackstone toured North America ceaselessly. His matchless personality transcended theater footlights, and his magic set minds agog. By 1947, after over four decades entertaining the public, Harry Blackstone was unquestionably one of America¿s greatest and best-known magicians. It was in that year, at the age of 17, that Adele Friel was swept into Blackstone¿s world of magic. She joined the ranks of his show unexpectedly, making the transition from solo song-and-dance act to one of ¿Mr. B¿s¿ ¿gorgeous girls¿ in the blink of an eye. It was a decision that would change her life. For the next three seasons, she trouped with Blackstone, playing an integral role in his show, both onstage and backstage. Memoirs of an Elusive Moth gives readers a rare and intimate first-person account of one of America¿s greatest touring magic shows. Laid bare in its pages are many of the secrets behind Blackstone¿s magic, as well as details of life in the theater, behind the scenes, on the road, and more ¿ all told here for the first time.

Here is the seminal biography of the magician's magician, Howard Thurston, a man who surpassed Houdini in the eyes of showmen and fans and set the standard fro how stage magic is performed today. Everyone knows Houdini-but who was Thurston? In this rich, vivid biography of the "greatest magician in the world," celebrated historian of stage magic Jim Steinmeyer captures the career and controversies of the wonder-worker extraordinaire, Howard Thurston. The public's fickleness over magicians has left Thurston all but forgotten today. Yet Steinmeyer shows how his story is one of the most remarkable in show business. During his life, from 1869 to 1936, Thurston successfully navigated the most dramatic changes in entertainment-from street performances to sideshows to wagon tours through America's still-wild West to stage magic amid the glitter of grand theaters. Thurston became one of America's most renowned vaudeville stars, boldly performing an act with just a handful of playing cards, and then had the foresight to leave vaudeville, expanding his show into an extravaganza with more than forty tons of apparatusand costumes. His touring production was an American institution for nearly thirty years, and Thurston earned a brand name equal to Ziegfeld or Ringling Brothers. Steinmeyer explores the stage and psychological rivalry between Thurston and Houdini during the first decades of the twentieth century- a contest that Thurston won. He won with a bigger show, a more successful reputation, and the title of America's greatest magician. In The Last Greatest Magician in the World, Thurston's magic show is revealed as the one that animates our collective memories.

Traces the history of magic, describes the acts of prominent magicians, and demonstrates some basic cup, card, and coin tricks.

Stage names: Bouton, Fredrik the Great, then Blackstone from 1918. Perhaps the most innovative magician after Houdini, Harry Blackstone (born Harry Bouton) started doing magic at the age of eight after receiving a magic kit for a birthday present and seeing a performance by the great Harry Kellar. He began his career professionally in 1904, and following Houdini's death, Blackstone would become the most well-known magican in America in the 1930s. His shows mixed small-scale slight of hand and elaborate prop-based illusions. File Contains biographical and bibliographic notes, press cuttings and programs.

This work revisits the golden age of theatrical magic and silent film to reveal how professional magicians shaped the early history of cinema. The author treats cinema and stage magic as overlapping practices that together revise our understanding of the origins of motion pictures and cinematic spectacle.

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? . . . The Shadow knows!" And who knew The Shadow better than his creator, Walter B. Gibson. Relatively few people have heard of Gibson, but many more are familiar with The Shadow having heard the program on the Blue Coal Radio Program in the 1930s and read the Street & Smith Shadow novels. Walter B. Gibson's life and career come out from behind The Shadow in this biography. It covers his youth in Philadelphia, his development as a writer and magician, his wives, including the third, (Litzka, who was a harpist and magician in her own right), his time living in Maine and upstate New York, and his later years and death. In addition to being credited with creating The Shadow (he used the pseudonym Maxwell Grant), Gibson wrote 187 books, contributed 668 articles to periodicals, created 283 stories for The Shadow Magazine, wrote 48 separate syndicated feature columns, reported the adventures of The Shadow and Blackstone the magician in 394 comic books and newspaper strips, and helped develop 147 radio scripts and many other works under numerous pseudonyms. Gibson has invented many widely used magic tricks and traveled with and befriended Harry Houdini, Howard Thurston, Harry Blackstone, Sr., and Joseph Dunninger.

Not all magicians go to schools of magic. Adam Binder has the Sight. It’s a power that runs in his bloodline: the ability to see beyond this world and into another, a realm of magic populated by elves, gnomes, and spirits of every kind. But for much of Adam’s life, that power has been a curse, hindering friendships, worrying his backwoods family, and fueling his abusive father’s rage. Years after his brother, Bobby, had him committed to a psych ward, Adam is ready to come to grips with who he is, to live his life on his terms, to find love, and maybe even use his magic to do some good. Hoping to track down his missing father, Adam follows a trail of cursed artifacts to Denver, only to discover that an ancient and horrifying spirit has taken possession of Bobby’s wife. It isn’t long before Adam becomes the spirit’s next target. To survive the confrontation, save his sister-in-law, and learn the truth about his father, Adam will have to risk bargaining with very dangerous beings ... including his first love.