THE CELEBRITY TRICK

There has been some discussion among magicians recently about the similarities in performance between the new winner of Britain’s Got Talent, Richard Jones, and previous contestants in America’s Got Talent. One of the effects in question concerns the cutting of a celebrity silhouette from a piece of paper.

The trick was marketed by Oz Pearlman, one of the AGT contestants, as 21^st Century Phantom in 2008. Credit was given to Annemann and Percy Naldrett for the original effect. A review by W. S. Duncan in M-U-M magazine said, ‘While it would be easy to accuse Mr Pearlman of grave robbing in his production of this effect, I think a more honest assessment would call it resurrecting.’ The trick was a close-up version of The Phantom Artist published by Annemann in The Jinx (Summer 1937 Extra) and later in Annemann’s Practical Mental Effects  (1944). And in fact it was Annemann who was doing the resurrecting, pointing out that the trick had previously been published by Percy Naldrett as The Celebrity Trick. Which actually wasn't quite true.

The trick was the work of H C Mole, a magician from Aintree in Liverpool with several books to his name. Like Richard Jones he also had a connection to the military in that he organised hundreds of shows for troops in the Boehr War (Mole was born in the 1870s) as well as the first and second World Wars. He wrote about this aspect of his work in magic articles and pamphlets. But he also had another skill and one that might show why he came up with an effect in which a portrait was cut into a sheet of paper. He was a pioneer in the performance of rag pictures.

In this curious art the performer would create a picture from bits of cloth on an easel. Patter, rhyme and music were added to make it entertaining but perhaps what made it interesting to audiences is that the pictures were astonishingly good. You can get an glimpse of the kind of pictures H C Mole made in Abracadabra magazine (28^th February 1948). In an article he wrote entitled Rag Picture Wrinkles there is a photograph of a tourist postcard set alongside a photograph of his wife putting the finishing touches to their rag rendition of the postcard. The similarity is amazing.

H C Mole didn’t read The Jinx. And it wasn’t until he read the Potter’s Bar series in The Budget, in which Jack Potter listed published tricks, that Mole realised his trick had been reprinted by Annemann. Mole wrote an article for Abracadabra magazine (24^th June, 1950) entitled Piracy. He complained that Annemann had lifted his copyrighted material, saying, Is it not time, though, that such bare-faced robbery should be stopped, for I am not the only sufferer in this respect?’

H C Mole died in 1952 leaving a legacy of interesting books and articles including Those Entertaining Years (1950, a reminiscence of his magical life. The profits went to Benevolent Funds of the IBM. In one story he recalls his wife’s reaction to the Biblical tale in which Aaron cast down his rod and it became a serpent. This prompted the Egyptian magicians to do the same. ‘It’s funny,’ said Mrs Mole, that they all knew the same conjuring trick!’

There is one more thing to mention about H C Mole and The Celebrity Trick. It was published in 1919 by Percy Naldrett in a book called The Magic of To-Morrow. Meaning that the trick that helped Richard Jones win Britain’s Got Talent was almost 100 years old. How very prescient of Mr Mole.

THE WHISPERING QUEEN

Michael Vine told me about a very interesting trick performed by Ron Wilson, ‘The Uncanny Scot.’ Ron asked Michael to take a deck of cards, hold it under the table and give it a shuffle. With the cards still under the table, Michael then looked at the top card, remembered it, and placed it anywhere in the middle of the deck. Satisfied that there was no way Ron Wilson could know anything about his selection, Michael brought the deck back into view. Ron asked him to take out one of the Queens from the deck and hand it to him. Ron put the Queen to his ear as if the card was whispering to him. He listened. And then announced the name of Michael’s card. Ron had never touched the deck. It was completely baffling.

Michael thought about the trick and did a little research. When he next saw Ron he said, ‘Annemann’s $1,000 Test Card Location.’ And Ron smiled. 

Annemann published the $1,000 Test Card Location in his booklet SH-H-H—It’s a Secret in early 1934. It was a good enough trick to headline the advert for the book. He said it was based on a principle he read ‘in one of Ellis Stanyon’s magazines back around 1907.’ I can’t find anything for that date but did find mention of the principle in the July 1913 issue of Stanyon’s Magic magazine. Stanyon was writing about stacked decks and how they could be given an Overhand Shuffle by the spectator and yet still be useful to the magician:

It amounts to this: As a last resource you allow the pack to be shuffled and take the chance of having a card selected from a portion of the pack where the shuffle has not separated it from its adjoining cue card.

He went on to say:

In support of all this I have shuffled the pack no less than six times, purposely dropping half the cards on one occasion, and even then failed once only (in six times) to name the card. Even after more and repeated shuffles, I find that I can, as often as not, name the drawn card. This fact in respect to the genuine shuffle of an arranged pack, is one of the prettiest things in conjuring I have ever discovered - it’s the hitherto considered impossible achieved absolutely.

Annemann used this principle in his $1,000 Test Card Location. The deck is stacked in Eight Kings or Si Stebbins order. He handed the deck to the spectator and asked him to shuffle them. He hurried the spectator along by saying, ‘Ready?’ and then asked them to cut the deck once and complete the cut. Then look at and remember the top card and then bury it in the centre of the deck. 

The shuffle doesn’t entirely mix the cards. It breaks the deck up into chunks. The final cut is likely to be in the middle of one of those chunks. Annemann took the deck back, glimpsed the face card and used it to deduce the name of the card that was once on top of the deck.

Annemannn didn’t say much about the presentation of the trick. He just took the deck back and named the card. That’s where Ron Wilson comes in. Ron had been performing The Whispering Queen routine since at least 1956 because there’s a reference in the May 1956 issue of The Linking Ring to him performing it at Ring 116 in Windsor Canada. It was a favourite trick and he explained it in full in the January 1971 issue of Genii magazine. The effect is as follows:

Spectator is asked to take a deck of cards into the next room out of sight of the performer. He is told to shuffle and cut the deck, place a card in one of his pockets without looking at it, and return to the performer who simply asks the spectator to give him one of the ‘Queens’ from the deck. Putting the queen to his ear, performer then tells the spectator the name of the card in his pocket.

Of course to take a Queen from the deck the spectator needs to turn the cards face-up. That’s when you glimpse the face card of the deck and use it to deduce the identity of the selection. Ron Wilson said the trick was ‘an adaptation of an Annemann idea.’ He also mentions that it’s a good idea to perform the trick at the table and have a spectator shuffle the deck beneath the table. The reason being that he’s unlikely to use a riffle shuffle in these circumstances. And shuffling under a table helps ensure that the shuffle won’t be a thorough one. This is the version that Michael Vine saw Ron Wilson perform. 

Annemann and Frank Lane had a bit of a spat over the principle used in the $1,000 Test Card Location mainly because Frank not only used the principle himself but because he alleged Annemann hadn't given proper credit to Stanyon. The dispute seemed to arise because after Annemann's publication Frank Lane published his own trick using the Stanyon idea. See his Three Pellet Card Trick described in A Real Magic Show (1935). Frank Lane said Stanyon had published the principle in 1901. But I haven't found that reference either.

In the Genii magazine Ron Wilson said he'd been performing The Whispering Queen for 25 years which takes it back to the middle of the 1940s. But there’s a curious addition to this story and I found it in the March 1976 issue of The Magigram. There Harry Carnegie described two Billy O’Connor effects and one of them is The Whispering Queen where he wrote, ‘This is really Annemann’s $1,000 Test Card Location, but with the Billy O’Connor touch.’

The presentation and method is similar to Ron Wilson’s.  Someone is sent into a corner of the room with a deck of cards. They shuffle it, cut it and look at the top card. This is placed in the middle of the deck as per the original Annemann trick. They return, give the performer one of the Queens and the Queen whispers into the ear of the performer and reveals the name of the selection. Billy O’Connor showed it to Harry Carnegie in 1938, which is four years after Annemann published SH-H-H—It’s a Secret.

NOTES: I wonder whether there is any advantage is glimpsing the top card of the deck rather than the bottom card. I’m envisaging a situation where the cut isn’t just made in the middle of a chunk of cards but at some natural break. If so, then maybe it’s even better to check the top card. Of course, you could check both.

The inefficiency of a short Overhand Shuffle is very useful when performing Out of this World. The deck is stacked with the two colours separated. The spectator can give the cards an Overhand Shuffle. You take the deck back and pull out two Indicator Cards, one red, one black, which you set on the table. This gives you an opportunity to check the arrangement of the deck. More often than not only the centre cards are mixed. As you pull out two Indicator Cards (which might well be the only two cards out of sequence) you’ll find it a very easy matter to get the deck back into red and black order. Give it a try. As Stanyon pointed out, you’ll be surprised how much shuffling the deck will withstand. In fact even if you, the performer, Overhand Shuffles the deck, there’s no need for a special False Shuffle, the spectators will be convinced the deck has been thoroughly mixed.

There are several papers that analyse the shuffling of playing cards. For example, this one by David Aldous and Persi Diaconis. I haven’t yet found a paper referencing Ellis Stanyon’s discovery so if you do, please let me know.

Finally, you might have noticed that there is a bit of a difference between Annemann's advert describing his $1,000 Test Card Location and the description in SH-H-H—It’s a Secret. I guess that's called dealer hyperbole.

Annemann's Nightmares

I was curious about the origin of the gimmicked card used in Paul Curry’s The Joker Knows. (See the November 15th 2009 entry on this blog). With the help of Ask Alexander I found Charles Jordan’s Spook Card (1916). Jordan credited the gimmicked card to Ford Rogers who used it in his 'Ever Ready' Forcing Pack. Jordan used the gimmick in a version of Hardin’s Prince’s Card Trick in which a thought of card vanished from a packet. All the cards in the packet were double cards prepared as in the Ever Ready Forcing Pack (see Greater Magic or Donald Holmes' manuscript Tricks With Prepared Cards.

Annemann acknowledged the Jordan idea in an advert for his Annemann’s Nightmare effect which he advertised in The Sphinx in 1928. Here is the advert. The method is the same as that used in The Problem with Premonition:

NOW BORROW THEIR OWN DECK AFTER THEY SHUFFLE. Have them remove a card which they place in their pocket without glimpsing. Now riffle deck, face up, and stop at their command. TELL THEM TO LOOK AT THE CARD IN SIGHT AND TO REMEMBER. IMMEDIATELY HAND THEM THE DECK WITHOUT A MOVE OR SLEIGHT. They deal the pack through a card at a time and THE CARD THEY SAW IS GONE! AND THIS WITH THEIR OWN DECK IN THEIR OWN HANDS! Ask them what it was. They tell you. Then you prove THEY WERE DREAMING, because UPON LOOKING THEMSELVES THEY FIND THAT VERY CARD WAS THE ONE THEY PLACED IN THEIR POCKET!

There are two key points. One is that the force is made with the deck face-up because the rear card of the pair is the shorter of the two. And the second is that Annemann adds the gimmicked card to a borrowed deck. Since the cards are only handled face up, the different back is never noticed. Oh, and at the beginning of the routine he forces the regular card on the spectator, of course.

Annemann returned to the effect in The Jinx (Issue 7, April 1935). It has a great presentation idea which I think is worth knowing about. Here is Annemann’s description of his New Nightmare:

Writing something on the face of a card from the deck in place of paper, the performer hands it to someone to hold for a few minutes without looking at it. Riffling through the face up pack, another person says, ‘stop’ at any time and looks at the card staring them in the face. They are asked to remember it well.

The deck is closed and without a move placed on the table. Turning, the performer asks the first person to read the writing on the card. ‘The card chosen will be the Three of Clubs.’ The prophecy is correct! Now the performer says he has gone further. The deck is dealt through a card at a time face up and the Three of Clubs is gone. ‘And where is it?’ queries the mystic. ‘I made it change places with the card I originally wrote upon!’ And the first spectator shows the card he has been holding from the start and from which he read the writing AND IT IS THE THREE OF CLUBS!

I’m not keen on the face-up riffle force but Annemann uses it so that the force card of the pair is the shorter of the two and better hidden. I think that the second card is very easy to hide in The Problem with Premonition even though it is the longer card of the gimmicked pair. However, I love the idea of giving the spectator a card at the beginning of the trick on which you’ve written a prediction. And having him first read out prediction but only later revealing that it is actually the card.

It might be better to force a red spot card so that the writing can read more easily. You need to control the assisting spectator so that they don’t reveal the card until you are ready. And I think it would be a good idea to have the spectator who selected the card to try to guess the position of the card in the deck as a reason for dealing through it and delaying the surprise. But other than that, Annemann is a genius!

NOTES: Just found Annemann's A Day-Time Nightmare described in Annemann's Card Miracles (1930) as published by Burling Hull. Also there is The Eye-Popper Card Feat which uses the Rogers' gimmick in an Ambitious Card trick.