Melinda, The First Lady Of Magic

Our tribute to women in magic would not be complete without a mention of Melinda Saxe, frequently billed as "The First Lady of Magic."   Make no mistake: her showgirl stage persona and synthesis of dance and magic was not to everyone's taste, but there is no arguing with success:  Melinda was the first female magician to headline in Las Vegas,  she became a regular on the now-classic World's Greatest Magicians specials (a holiday tradition for several years produced by Gary Ouellette), and starred in her own network special Disney's Melinda: First Lady of Magic.    

Most of the magic periodical coverage available about Melinda focused on her high-profile if short-lived marriage to magic superstar Lance Burton.

You can see Melinda at the peak of her career, as a featured guest on Oprah.

My job here has been facilitated by the bounty of articles and sites describing Melinda's career.  But nothing, in my estimation, matches this lovely tribute to her posted on The Little Egypt Gazette, one of the pioneer venues for online magic reporting. 

I had occasion to see Melinda perform live just one time - in 1995, at the ill-fated "World's Greatest Magicians Live OnStage" tour.  A press release photo associated with that tour appears here on the left.  I refer to the tour as "ill-fated" because, though billed as a national tour, the show, beset with difficulties,  played only a few performances before closing down.  (A bootleg video of that performance can be found on YouTube with some effort).  The gremlins that besieged that tour were certainly evident at the performance I witnessed: Melinda's motorcycle vanish had a significant performance problem, and her signature piece, the Drill of Death, malfunctioned badly that evening.  On the other hand, she did a quite charming firefly production, similar to one offered by my friend Peter Maloney.

Melinda's card, seen above, features a striking full-color image of the performer.  It is part of a promotional playing card deck -- all the backs of which are as seen here -- which is still widely available.