One day Lou took me in the back where he kept all the damaged books-ever a wondrous experience to be permitted to step behind the counter!-and offered me a misprinted copy of Close-up Card Magic.Ĭlose Up Card Magic Lorayne at Tannen's Jubilee 1985 (Courtesy Steve Cohen Collection) My first five volumes of The Tarbell Course In Magic are all somehow damaged, misprinted, or missing pages-and I’m grateful for getting to study that material when I was so young. Back then, Tannen’s was also a publisher, and rather than pulping damaged and misprinted books, Lou would offer them at a discount price to kids like me. I was also doing general sleight-of-hand close-up magic and had a steady interest in coin magic. I actually got Royal Road in my early adolescence and learned the fundamental techniques and several of the basic tricks. I hope my non-magician readers will indulge me as I, in this particular Take Two, step a little further into detail that may be of greater familiarity to the magicians among us. Ask any one of us: that is our holy trinity that is our collective origin story. And thus was spawned a generation, or two, of close-up and card magicians. This was also the period when I made the three discoveries that every close-up magician of my era names when asked about origins: The Royal Road to Card Magic by Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue Close-up Card Magic by Harry Lorayne and seeing Don Alan on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson and on The Ed Sullivan Show. I was still very much an introvert, and was never really an insider there-but I got to see a lot of great magic. It wasn’t until I was 17 that I developed a serious interest in card magic, and that’s when I began to hang around the cafeteria. In those early years I wasn’t a part of that I was neither bold enough, nor really old enough, to be allowed to stay behind. The group would take over a bunch of tables in the back in order to session well into the afternoon until dinnertime, or beyond. It was said that Lou could demonstrate every trick in the store, and I don’t think there was much hyperbole in that claim.Īt three o’clock, when the store closed on Saturdays, most of the crowd would head over to the nearby Governor’s Cafeteria. And of course, I could also return to the counter, over and over again, to watch the endless demonstrations of tricks from the bursting showcases. But still I was compelled to stick around, for hours at a time, to try and see as much as I could, when I was permitted (and often I wasn’t), to see something marvelous in the hands of a noteworthy bystander. The rest of the time, I was far too shy to make friends, or to ask questions of the experts gathered there, who so intimidated me. But then came the profound moment when Lou would take me aside, away from the crowd, and bestow the secret upon me-the highlight, and privilege, of the venture. As an inordinately shy and only child, it took all my courage to step up to the counter and ask a question of Lou, or one of the demonstrators, before deciding on my excruciatingly-deliberated purchase, which typically only totalled a few dollars.
HARRY LORAYNE MEMORY TRICK FULL
On many a Saturday, beginning when I was about 11, I would make the long subway trek from Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn to Times Square, head to the Wurlitzer Building on 42 nd Street across from Bryant Park, and take the little weekend freight elevator up to the 12 th floor where, finally, the door would open and take me into another world-a world full of color and wonder beyond imagination and compare. And in a quick search here in the Lyons Den, there are no less than twenty-five pieces-mostly from Take Two-that come up wherein I’ve mentioned Tannen’s Magic, most of which reference my attendance at the annual Tannen’s Jubilee convention, where I saw countless great acts perform and lecture, both in close-up and on the stage.
I’ve often written about Lou Tannen, my first sleight-of-hand mentor-and I have done so at length in a memoir piece entitled “Real Secrets” in my book Shattering Illusions. But today I see ever more clearly the fact that Tannen’s is a constant presence in my memory-the very foundation of my learning and growing throughout a lifetime in this art. Tannen’s would, it turns out, play an overwhelmingly powerful role in my development in magic, and my eventual pursuit of magic as a career-an influence and opportunity that, as a boy, I could not fully recognize at the time. Looking back, I realize more and more these days that growing up in magic at the original Tannen’s Magic shop in Manhattan was a rare gift and opportunity.
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