For this post, we travel south to Port Arthur, Texas, prompted by a scaling card for one Alvin Paul Gentil, “That Crazy Magician.” It is a humble scaling card by the usual standards and features his name and some promotional copy on the front and the recently identified “Stanyon back” on the reverse. It is also autographed by Gentil to “DeMello.” There are a number of DeMello’s in magic but the most likely recipient is probably Arthur DeMello from Fall River, Mass, who appears often in 1920’s issues of
The Sphinx.
Gentil was born
