Billy Russell, Magical Inventor and his Vanishing Manuscript

Elsewhere, I mentioned that many of my most prized pieces came from the collection of George Hawley, a long time resident of Batavia, New York.  It is unsurprising, then, that one of those pieces was this fine card promoting Billy Russell, perhaps the most famous magical figure to hail from Batavia.  During the time I operated throwingcard.com (meaning, before the advent of AskAlexander), information about Mr. Russell was quite hard to come by. Indeed, the sum total of the information uncovered at that time consisted of the following from George Hawley:

"William 'Billy' Russell, based in Batavia, New York, was a popular society magician at the turn of the century. The Thurston-Dante letter set reproduced by Phil Temple contains an interesting letter from Russell in which he protests what he perceived to be an exposure of magic secrets by Thurston in a mass market book."

But now we have access to so much more.   As it turns out, Mr. Russell was a formidable figure in the world of magic according to many sources, including a fine piece authored by Gene Gordon for the Linking Ring in May 1947.  Gordon credits Russell with construction of several iconic magic effects, including Houdini's Milk Can Escape and his Paper Bag Escape.  Apparently, Howard Thurston challenged Russell to design and build a table for production of a fish bowl, with a caveat (which Thurston believed rendered the challenge impossible) that the bowl had to be larger than the table top.  Not only did Russell succeed, but the resulting prop became a standard in the field.



Russell launched his own road show, which later became a vaudeville act and school show, and featured several signature effects, including a floating ball, spirit slates and a crystal clock.  One of his ongoing challenges by the diminutive Russell was an offer to pay $125 (one dollar per pound of his weight) to anyone who could lift him off the ground; he never had to pay the sum to anyone.   As reflected on his card, he became a member of the IBM and helped found the Western New York Association of Magicians (MAWNY).   George Hawley served as an apprentice for Russell, which further explains his possession of this wonderful card.

Tantalizingly, in his 1947 profile, Gordon noted that  a book that Russell had authored, “Tricks of the Magic Trade, on which he has been working for years, will be published soon, and all professionals who have looked over the manuscript pronounce it the 20th century bible of stage magic.”  But no such book followed.  In 1964, Dr. Grossman, writing for M*U*M , conducted an extensive search for Tricks of the Magic Trade and proclaimed that the book never saw print.  What could have happened to this fine work described by Gordon?

Well, here's the good news:  As part of my research, I learned that all of the material described by Gordon saw publication, just not as a book.  In two issues of The Linking Ring -- April and October 1958 -- the magazine offered readers a "Parade" of magic by Mr. Russell.  As the editor properly crowed, taken together, the two issues  "will give you a whole book of the best you will find in the whole realm of magic!"  Even a quick perusal reveals this to be the case -- the material, clearly the same magic described by Gordon in his profile of the planned book -- is excellent.   Any stage performer interested in developing something so old that it would be new again would be well served to get access to these issues.

Russell continued as an active magician and inventor until his death in 1967 at age 86.

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