Willard the Magician

In my forthcoming book on Herman Weber (Namreh), I discuss some of his major influences and fellow magicians in the Allentown, Pennsylvania area. Willard Warmkessel was certainly one, if not the, most important contact for Weber. And, of course, he had scaling cards with his own unique designs. 

 Besides Weber, Warmkessel is the second most well-known magician coming from Allentown. Using his first name, he toured professionally under the name “Willard the Magician.” This title was already taken, of course, by various members of the actual Willard family of conjurors in Texas. And, while the Texas Willard’s performed entirely under canvas, Allentown’s Willard mostly appeared on the stages of county fairs in Pennsylvania, New York, California and throughout the south.

This scaling card back came from an era when the swastika
was still a sign of good luck, not evil. 

Willard offered spook show effects as well
as illusions. 

Warmkessel was born June 2, 1900 and became interested in magic as a 14-year-old usher at the Lyric Theater in Allentown and gave his first magic performance at 16. The show was a benefit for the other ushers at the theater. After touring with his full-evening illusion show, Warmkessel operated the American Letterhead & Envelope Company for 38 years. In 1948, he retired from that business and devoted all of his time to magic. He passed away January 9, 1936.

It is interesting to note that Willard’s equipment and major illusions were especially well-built, most likely in cooperation with, or entirely by, Weber. Many years after Warmkessel’s death, George Goebel, Baltimore magician and owner of the A.T. Jones & Sons Costumers, heard that his widow might have blueprints of her late husband’s illusions. She owned and operated a printing shop and Goebel travelled to Allentown to meet her. 

Entering the shop he introduced himself and inquired about the blueprints. She confirmed she had them but suggested he might be more interested in the actual illusions. Taking him to a rear storage area Goebel found it packed with illusions. There was Warmkessel’s Water Tank Escape, Modern Cabinet, a Throne Chair, a Giant Cone for producing an assistant, a small production chariot, and a remarkably inconspicuous set of stairs that could be used to introduce a hidden assistant or take her away, as the case warranted. Goebel bought all of the illusions and incorporated many of them into his large illusion show.

Warmkessel was instrumental in helping form the first local magic club in the city, the Allentown Magicians’ Association. It was organized in 1917 with William Whitenight being the driver behind its creation. Willard Warmkessel was its first president. 

A card from one of Willard's frequent appearances
at the Lyric Theater

 

On January 31, 1947, Warmkessel appeared at the Lyric Theater in Allentown presenting his full-evening illusion show. It was the same one he’d performed across the United States for the previous 16 years and which he transported in a large trailer. 

Warmkessel died in January 1966 at the age of 65. He is not often remembered by the public today but he lives on in his promotional material including the cards featured here on Propelled Pasteboards.

Tom Ewing

The Eng Sung Enigma: Resolving a Riddle for the Chinese New Year!

 Last year, in celebration of the Chinese New Year, we were proud and pleased to bring you a post about Chen Ting Soo, showcasing a vintage throwing card and featuring a genuine Chinese-American magician.  This year, with the same holiday approaching, I turned to a card recently added to my collection featuring "Eng Sung - Chinese Magician."  The piece is a keepsake, featuring a handsome portrait of the performer and an absolutely wonderful graphic of a levitation illusion.  I started to wonder -- Who was Eng Sung?  Little did I know that my curiosity would ignite a fast and furious debate among significant members of the throwing card blogosphere, that quickly and conclusively resolved a mystery.

Deploying the powerful "Ask Alexander" tool, I could only find three articles containing a reference  to Eng Sung, all three of which described the very same performance at a 1934 convention of the Keystone State Federation of IBM Rings. So, whomever Eng Sung was, he didn't perform for very long.  Or, I posited, at least it was an assumed name that some magician only used for a short time.   The reporting contained little detail about his performance, other than to place him on a bill with a number of better-known performers, including Burling Hull, Max Holden and LuBrent.  And then there was the emcee....more on him in a moment.

Could this be the same fellow pictured
on the Eng Sung card?

In studying the card, I noticed was that "Eng Sung" did not appear to be Asian, but, more likely, was part of the then-popular, insensitive tradition of a Western magician playing the role of a Chinese magician.  (On these pages, you'll find references to several such performers, including Chung Ling Soo, Chang,and  Okito.)  This led to the suspicion that he likely performed under one or more other names.

Because the card provides no other information about him -- other than the photograph -- there wasn't much to work with.  But that picture, it seemed to me, was familiar.  It reminded me of a photo of another performer on a card for Namreh the magician, seen here.  Namreh was one stage name for Herman Weber (1900-1953).  "Namreh" is Herman spelled backwards.  And then I looked back at the performance reports .... Herman Weber was the emcee for the only show at which Eng Sung had been recorded as appearing.

"Rice, Rice, Rice" -just one of many Asian-themed
effects that Herman Weber published.  

Could the two be one and the same?  I was quickly able to convince myself of the viability of this theory.  Weber had written quite a bit about performing "Oriental" magic, and included some in certain of his programs.

He had assumed other characters -- like Namreh -- who performed in devils robes.   And the more I looked at the pictures of Namreh and Eng Sung, the more I grew convinced that they looked the same.

So I did what I often do when I need more material for magic research: I turned to our friend Jay Hunter.  I was hoping, most of all, that Jay could come up with another throw-out card featuring the same "Levitation" back, which, if it was for Herman Weber, could close the deal.

Jay dug into his extensive collection, producing a remarkable quantity of material in a very short period of time.   The materials he gathered about Herman included the wizard offering "Oriental Mysteries" and performing in different characters and costumes.

The levitation graphic in a book
authored by Herman Weber.

And then Jay found what I thought would be the silver bullet: he found the "Levitation" graphic, not on a throwout card, but in a booklet published by Weber!  And, Jay added, he had seen this graphic nowhere else.  While he expressed interest in my theory, he had his doubts as to whether the two men appeared to be one and the same, and raised some concerns about the ages of the performers pictured compared to certain biographical facts.

So we called in the rest of the Propelled Pasteboards team.  Tom Ewing -- our resident expert on Pennsylvania-based magicians -- advised that, unbeknownst to us,  he's currently working on a book about Herman Weber, having come across a trove of materials on the Allentown native.   While he had not come across anything about Eng Sung, Tom confirmed that Weber was an exponent of Chinese-themed magic, devoting half of his stage show to that style of performance.  Tom liked the theory, but thought we needed to do more work on the question.  He supplied a vintage ad for the sale of Namreh's show, reproduced here, which makes it clear that a large portion of the show was devoted to  "Oriental" magic.

Enter Gary Frank.  Using nothing but his keen powers of observation (which could perhaps characterized as superpowers) Gary provided a point by point facial analysis of the Namreh and Eng Sung cards -- too long to reproduce here -- that included details such as the "flow of contour" of facial characteristics, "cupids bows," hairline shape, etc.   Suffice it to say that Mr. Frank concluded they were different fellows.  An Internet based facial recognition program into which I fed the two photos reached the same conclusion.  Everyone was sold that my theory was wrong ... even though I continued to hope.

Based on the evidence we had assembled, Mr. Frank theorized that they were pals and knew each other, and he focused on a critical clue: the initial reports of Eng Sung's performance noted that one of his assistants was someone named "Miss Snyder."   Using this clue, I was able to formulate more Ask Alexander searches.  And this time, I hit pay dirt.  Herman Weber did indeed have a pal named Edgar Snyder, who had acted as Weber's assistant at one time.   Reports also noted that Edgar Snyder's wife was an accomplished magician's assistant.

Armed with this new fact, I found our man: Eng Sung was Edgar Snyder (d. 1970), who also hailed from Allentown.  He was specifically identified as such in several magic magazines, but never spelled correctly: writers listed him as "En Sing," "En Sung" and even "Yen Sen."  These misspellings explain why initial searches didn't turn up his identity.   Having completed the record, it turns out that Snyder has a fairly long career in magic, performing a s "Eng Sung" during the 1930s, and later moving to Florida and becoming an officer and important organizing force in the S.A.M.

Here's one description of his performance as "Eng Sung" from the Linking Ring in 1933:

"Then came Edgar Snyder (En Sing) of Allentown, doing Oriental Magic, using large Chinese Blocks, and a production silk act from large tube, finish- ing with a 30 foot silk banner. He also used a new idea in Chinese rice bowl. Mr. Snyder's apparatus has been decorated by a real expert in Chinese art."

Oh, and just as "Namreh" is Herman spelled backwards, Snyder left us a similar clue: Eng Sung and Ed Snyder both have the initials "E.S." 

Keystone State Federation of I.B.M. Rings

The benefit of having a large, representative accumulation of magic memorabilia is that it provides you the opportunity to excavate your collection and uncover hidden gems. One such is the subject of this blog, a spread of lovely playing cards that chronicle an important organization that began small and spread across the eastern seaboard.

The spread of ten cards above are held together with