Sherms's Super Playing Cards Offer a Clue!

Robert Sherman (1892 - 1969) was a magician who ran several enterprises including, as relevant here, a magic and puzzle manufacturing business located in Bridgeport, Connecticut known as "Sherms."  Sherman had a fascinating magic career, which included running the Martinka magic shop, partnering with Hardeen Jr.,  inventing numerous tricks and designing effects and promotions for Howard Thurston, Ed Wynn and Eddie Cantor.  His career could fill a book, and in fact did: historian David Haversat wrote a volume entitled Sherms.

 But it is a particular Sherms product that inspired this post.   Recently, I came across a card box being auctioned by Meir Yedid on eBay, which caught my eye.   The item features a card back design which seemed familiar - and a quick search of this site revealed several cards belonging to Chet Karkut that utilize this design.   And there are most certainly others. 

Was this design proprietary to Sherms?  Well, examination of the card box suggests as much.  As the detail photo shows, Sherms claimed exclusive trademark rights to the back design (as well as the case and Ace of Spades).   And dating the design is quite interesting: the Linking Ring for November 1927 provides a review of the deck, indicating that they had just been put on the market.  Two months earlier, that magazine provided a fascinating teaser, suggesting the Sherms deck was forthcoming, and the company claimed that the "plates alone cost $5,500."

So, card scholars and magic historians, here's another back design that can be used to help identify those throwout cards....

Photo courtesy Meir Yedid. 

Harry Stork, The Man With the Devil in his Fingers

This piece, more of an ad card than a throwout, is an extremely rare piece representing the remarkable, albeit short, magic career of Henry Stork, known on the stage as Harry Stork.  The card, showing a tuxedo-clad Stork holding a small devil, is in noticeably poor condition, having suffered from significant scrapbook damage.  However, the piece is so very unusual, and the subject equally interesting, that I'm proud to have this in my collection.

Stork was born in Rochester, New York in 1864.  He was, by all accounts, a gifted manipulator and magic inventor, building a regional reputation based upon unique stage routines.  His original inventions included an "incomparable flag trick," an invisible two-handed pass with cards and a marketed "Flying Aces" effect, the latter being marketed for more than a decade after Stork's death.    By 1881, he headed to Detroit, where he opened his own magic emporium.  His dealership was frequented by such great luminaries as Alexander Herrmann and Harry Kellar, who often sought his help developing new illusions.  

He travelled the country as a vaudeville performer, and was, according to John Northern Hilliard, "a prince of good fellows."  He befriended many of magic's leading performers, including T. Nelson Downs, Harry Houdini and Howard Thurston.  Most notably, in 1902, he became an advisor to Kellar, traveling with the master magician for several seasons.   Kellar described Stork as the most valuable assistant with whom he had ever worked.  Stork later returned to Rochester and left magic for other business pursuits.   Tragically, Stork contracted spinal meningitis, succumbing to the disease in 1907 at age 43.    

J.W. Wilson

I've long had a particular fondness for this card featuring J.W. Wilson, perhaps drawn by the incredibly cheesy devil-costume clad assistant whispering in this performer's ear.  This particular piece of ephemera dates to an era when artists like Thurston and Kellar distributed promotional pieces adorned with gorgeous lithography sporting imps, devils, owls and other familiars imparting secrets to the performer. Wilson went decidedly low-tech and low-rent on this piece, offering a friend in a devil get-up in this black-and-white photo. The Deland back suggests that Wilson may have hand-printed these himself.  

A group of Deland backs.  Wilson's is on the left.

So who was J.W. Wilson?   That Wilson is a common surname, and he insisted (generally) on only using the initials J.W.. made him somewhat difficult to track down.   (Consider the fact that these pages also feature a contemporary named John Darrell Wilson).  Scattered references reveal that together with the famed A.M. Wilson (ed. of the Sphinx), he was admitted to the Society of Buffalo (New York) Magicians in 1921. Later that year, the Sphinx reported that J.W. performed something intriguingly entitled his "Black Box Mystery" but left tantalizingly undescribed. (Additional research suggests it was a put-together production box).    In 1922, the Sphinx reported that Wilson was performing magic and Punch and Judy shows for American Legion halls.  By 1928, he hosted a group of Buffalo magicians, now using the name "John W. Wilson" and performed a spirit seance, and by 1933, this group elected him "stage manager."

The other textual clue on the card was the reference to The New York Clipper.  This periodical, it turns out, was a theater newspaper published in New York City through 1924, when its coverage was assumed by Billboard.  This helps date the card, and suggests that Wilson was playing the theater circuit.

Fortuitously, I came across this image of a 1918 issue of The Magic World on an Internet antique dealer's site, and Tom Ewing was able to secure a copy of the article for me.   It adds a few details: Wilson was born September 29, 1876 in Buffalo.  He developed a magic program and eventually added some large stage illusions, leading to a contract with United Booking Offices.  The illusions included Black Art and The Haunted House.  The Magic World found him working in Delaware and developing a new, Asian-themed act.  

 Despite my derisive comments about the production values of Wilson's throwing card, it turns out the image he used was a magazine cover portrait, which makes it a pretty cool collectible.

Finally, there is a coin move called the "JW Wilson Grip."  For a time, I assumed it was attributable to this performer.   However, continued searching led me to a September 2010 article in M-U-M by inventive magician Nathan Kranzo.  Fascinated by the JW Wilson move, he dug into the question, and came to believe that it had been developed by a Jimmy (sometimes spelled "Jimmie") Wilson, Jr. whose father, J.W. Wilson Sr. was also an accomplished magician.  Yet Richard Kaufman credits "Jimmy Wilson, Sr." for developing a coin grip in 1946 (see Genii, June 2003).  And the Conjurer's Magazine for May 1946 does contain  an effect called the "Five Coin Vanish" by one Jimmy Wilson.

The J.W.'s -  father and son - have left us with a few mysteries.

Ted Colteaux - The "Secret Man"

You may never have heard of Theodore "Ted" Colteaux.  I hadn't before coming across his throwing card.  Yet The Linking Ring noted in 1995 that "his influence in magic was so prevalent that it is impossible to measure."   Thus, I've borrowed the moniker "The Secret Man" from a classified ad run by Colteaux in that same periodical in 1925 -- some seventy years earlier -- as it's a particularly fitting appellation.

Colteaux was born in 1907, and started performing magic while attending elementary school in Bloomington, Il.  By 1924, while still a young teenager, he began contributing pieces to magic magazines, offering workman-like hints, tips and suggestions to fellow practitioners.   He met Houdini and Thurston, and corresponded with legendary magicians including Ted Annemann.  By 1926, he began offering equipment for sale in The Sphinx, and by the 1930s created the Colto Magic Trick Company, which offered standard equipment and original effects.


But was Colteaux any good?  This is a question I sometimes grapple with when writing about lesser-known performers.  Here I found an unusual answer:  Colteaux was a featured performer at the 1932 IBM convention, where he shared the stage with, among others, John Booth, Len O. Gunn, Brush, Harry Cecil and Marquis.  In the months that followed, his presence on that stage (along with these others), created a small controversy in magic magazines as some complained that less skilled performers would be discouraged from participating in Convention contests, when magicians like Gunn, Brush, Booth and Colteaux, described as "tough competitors" were "stealing the cake."  Having been compared to some top names in the field, once can assume that Colteaux was a formidable presence on stage.  

Colteaux touring with his sister, c. 1935.

In 1931, a columnist in The Linking Ring observed that Colteaux "has been on a buying spree, and we think he intends to put on a full evening's show."  Indeed, he soon hit the road, becoming a performer with the Wiere and Wayne Vaudeville Troupe and later performing in Chautauqua.  He became known for scriptwriting, ventriloquism and classic magic pieces, like rag pictures (featured on his throwing card below), nested alarm clocks, card flourishes and billiard ball manipulation.

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He had two throwing cards, both of which are seen here.  Both cards feature "Jimmy," his ventriloquist dummy.   One card has a vintage Bicycle back and is standard size; the second is oversized with a printed text back with period graphics.  Over the years, I've encountered a great deal of Colteaux memorabilia.  

From Billboard, 1948

Eventually, when full-time magic could not support his family, he became a salesman for the Beich Candy Company, a position he would hold for the next 40 years, and used magic to further his sales. And his passion for magic never waned.
He became deeply entrenched in the International Brotherhood of Magicians, holding membership number 365 and was part of the Order of Merlin. Reputed for his "infectious and lovable approach to performing,"

Colteaux continued to practice and teach the art that he so loved until the 1990s. He died in 1995 at age 88, having been active in magic for three quarters of a century.

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Howard Thurston – 150 Years Old Today!

Some months back I had a post entitled Thurston - Some Throw-Out Card Trivia concerning items that I had found on Howard Thurston, arguably magic’s greatest “Throw-Out Card King” of all time. Since then, I have continued my research for additional items of interest in terms of trivia. Here is some of what I found.

 

On January 31, 1926, the Pittsburgh Press ran an ad in the newspaper for Thurston’s “Perfect Breather”. This was an anti-snoring device that Thurston was marketing in hopes of financial gain. Like many of his investments outside the magic arena, it was not a success, and finding one of these devices today is difficult as they are quite rare. Below is the ad, an image of an actual “Breather”, and a throw-out card also used to advertise the device.

 

The Morning Call of Allentown Pennsylvania for December 6, 1928 wrote about Thurston, “He is still regarded as the greatest card magician in the craft”. They went on to say, “In the difficult feat of throwing cards to all parts of the theatre, Thurston has no rival.”

I particularly like when I can find images of Thurston in action with his cards. Below are a couple of new ones that I have found. These are from very early in Thurston’s career.

Thurston gave a demonstration of his card throwing skill on September 22, 1931, by throwing cards from the top of a skyscraper, the Foshay Tower in downtown Minneapolis. According to the Minneapolis Star, "Thurston hurled 1,000 cards from the tower to demonstrate his prowess, and 100 of these contained free admissions to two persons each to see his performance at the Minnesota”.

I have done further research on the lawsuit brought against Thurston when an errant throw of a card injured a spectator in the audience at one of his shows in Detroit. The following article appeared in the News-Palladium in Benton Harbor, Michigan on April 14, 1927.

Thurston had a number of throw-out cards made advertising Miller Tires. He even created a revolving tire illusion to be used in company promotions. It spun “in the air with no apparent means of support”. Below is an advertisement and an article from the Harrisburg Telegraph for November, 1916 in which the illusion was being shown at the Sterling Auto Tire Company. For good measure I am including one of Thurston’s Miller Tire Cards.





Finally, today is the anniversary of Howard Thurston’s birth. He would have been 150 years old today. In recognition of this historic occasion, I have been saving this post for today. Happy Birthday Howard!

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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Pierce-ing the Mysteries of Scrapbook Damage

Recently, I was admiring this marvelous keepsake -- assembled in 1928 by some long-forgotten fan of  Howard Thurston's -- that was up for auction on eBay.   It was a kind of collage with a throwing card at its heart -- the card and two show ticket stubs had been glued to the face of a newsprint theater program.  While I made a half-hearted attempt to bid on the piece, I was somewhat relieved not to win it. After all, its owner faces a conundrum -- does one keep this unique assemblage together -- possibly the best curatorial thing to do -- or give in to the temptation to try to remove the card from its ancient and likely acidic bonds?   Without doing so, one might not even be able to tell which Thurston card is showcased here -- is it a Perfect Sleep card or the Spirits Return variant?  (You can see both varieties, which share a common face, on the Howard Thurston page).

Considering approaches to this problem brought to mind another difficulty faced by nearly every throwing card collector: how to handle a scrapbook-damaged card.   Because of the 20th Century fascination with slathering glue on collectables, including postcards, playing cards and photographs, and sticking them into scrapbooks and albums, hence making them a "collection," if you collect enough cards you will eventually encounter this issue.  Many of the best pieces in my collection came to me from an auction held by George Hawley (1920-2000), a kind and generous collector and performer who privately sold off his collection in the late 1990s, and from whom I was able to obtain scores of incredibly rare cards.  Unfortunately, many of them had been pulled roughly from a scrapbook at some point in time, probably before George got them. The result is a variety of injuries, ranging from spots and clumps of paper, cardboard and glue on the reverse to, in some cases, tears affecting the images themselves, including irreparable paper loss.  Conservation sources on the Internet suggest that the acidic content of scrapbook remainders could leach into the card itself, destroying the collectible.  Plus, of course, such an accumulation obscures the back of the card.

My card for J.E. "Mysterious" Pierce, seen above, is one example of a badly affected card -- though largely a buildup of cardboard, some of the original card backing had been torn off in places.  Compare this to the pristine red back on the card in Tom's collection reproduced here, as seen on our original Pierce page.


Over the years, I have attempted to remediate damage to some of the cards.  All of my cards are stored in archival sleeves, protecting them from further insult.

In some cases, though, I made more active efforts to remediate the damage. PLEASE NOTE THAT I HAVE HAD A VARIETY OF RESULTS WITH THESE TECHNIQUES, AND HAVE AT TIMES CAUSED DAMAGE TO CARDS.  THEREFORE, I DO NOT ENDORSE TRYING ANYTHING MENTIONED HERE WITH A CARD OF SIGNIFICANT ECONOMIC OR PERSONAL VALUE.   TRY ANY OF THESE IDEAS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

The Bicycle Expert Back

One technique I used was to gently rub the backs of cards with a dampened Q-Tip.  Though slow going, this technique proved effective particularly in cases where the card was glazed or laminated, and the card's surface was largely intact. The red Bicycle Expert back of a T. Nelson Downs card, seen here, was the beneficiary of this treatment.  As can be seen from the photo, I was able to remove accumulated debris and reveal almost all of the back.  While still spotted and faded in places, the result was not bad.


The Pierce card, seen above, was far more problematic. Although most of the back was intact, it has been so thoroughly saturated with glue that the face even bears damage, including brown glue stains. and the upper left corner of the card has been torn off.  As a result, I was hesitant to apply water to the back as it would likely result in water stains.

Trolling around the Internet for a solution took me to a variety of card and photo collecting sites, These sites tout several approaches including chemicals (one that looked promising is called Undu), dental floss, blades, and soaking in water or other solutions.  (Notably, one that I tried, CitraSolv, did not damage the cards but also didn't remove the glue).  Finally, I decided on a fix recommended by a postcard collector, which seemed least risky and most promising: steam.

So I fired up the kettle and gave it a try.  Holding the card back up to the stream of vapor, I steamed small areas at a time.  After a moment, the card curled in my hand, but it was easy to flatten it by blotting on a clean, dry washcloth. Though I tried several tools, including a Q-Tip and a dental flosser, a paring knife proved most valuable, though I mainly used the dull edge of the knife to gently remove the accumulation of cardboard from the card as the steam permeated successive areas.

The white areas turned out
 to be a white glue.

Endeavoring to avoid removing anything other than the dark brown cardboard, I got a bit of a scare when a clump of white came off in my hand -- but that turned out to be a layer of white glue, as can be seen in this close-up.   That glue peeled off easily, revealing the rich blue color and elaborate engraving work of the original card design.

The result?  Overall, not bad. While a few gouges emerged which made the work difficult, the before and after photos below show just how much I was able to improve this card with a bit of work.   It's not perfect, but it allowed me to reveal most of the detail on the back design, and does not appear to have negatively affected the card.  This approach is certainly not suited for every situation, but it helped me restore a touch of grandeur to Pierce the Mysterious.

Before

After: The J.E. Pierce Blue Back

Having gained some confidence and skill with the process, I decided to give it a try with an Ovette "Magic Wand" card -- perhaps the most inappropriate in my collection.  I learned to trust the steam to do more of the work, finding that the glue layer would, properly permeated with heat and moisture, easily peel from the back of the card, leaving it nearly perfect.   Though I again used a knife to help gently scraped the adhered mess from the card back, at times I could even use my finger to gently rub it off.  As you'll see in the before and after pictures below, the result was even better.

Ovette's Back Before

Ovette's Back: After

A quick word on Joseph Ovette (1885-1946), an Italian immigrant, began his career as a medicine show performer, eventually becoming a fixture of vaudeville.  Billed as The Great Ovette in his stage show, he also offered Asian-themed show under the name Lung Chang Yuen and performed mentalism as Mar-Jah.  Ovette wrote several books on magic.

Those who collect posters have professional restorers to whom they can turn, and I have used such services in the past with satisfying results.   If there are professional restoration services available for cards, I am unaware of such.   Perhaps one day, if the value of the card warrants it, that may prove an option.  In the meanwhile, under the right circumstances, I found that using steam was a fairly good method which seemed -- in these cases -- to do little harm to the cards.  Again, though, please use caution -- and prepare yourself for heartbreak -- if you try this on your own.... 

Thurston – Some Throw-Out Card Trivia

It is amazing how many magicians used a throw-out card, or playing card, or a “Good Luck” card to advertise themselves. Without a doubt, the king of throw-out cards was Howard Thurston. From the time early in his career when he started to throw them out to his audience, until he had to stop performing, he literally sent thousands upon thousands sailing out into the theatres in which he played.  

 

From Adventures in Magic by Henry Ridgely Evans, (1927).



As one can imagine, Howard Thurston has been covered on this blog many, many times. Co-contributor Gary Frank wrote a fine post on Thurston and included many examples of his cards. I thought I would offer up, on this post, some interesting items of trivia that I have found on Thurston related to his throw-out cards, and his card scaling.

One early reference I have found concerning Thurston’s card throwing was found in the Black and White Budget for January 12, 1901 shortly after he had arrived in England. Like Harry Houdini and T. Nelson Downs, Thurston’s career first took off when he went to London. The following is a small sampling from that article.

Thurston’s inclusion of card throwing appears to have been inspired by having seen Alexander Herrmann while a young man. Thurston scaled cards from the start of his career when he billed himself “The World’s Premier Card Manipulator”. On one of his earliest throw-out cards from the beginning of his days as a performer, he had a card produced with an image of him about to throw a card. While I don’t have this particular card in my collection, Harry Houdini had this one shown below in a scrapbook.  This scrapbook now resides, and is through the courtesy of the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

Courtesy of Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

We can get a general idea of the time frame of Thurston’s cards by seeing how he aged on the card over the years. This is not a hard and fast rule, as he would use older cards for long periods to keep himself looking youthful. He was rather vain about his appearance, even to the point of having face lifts.

For me, extra special Thurston cards are those where the audience member who received the card would often write the date of getting the card and sometimes the theatre as well. By searching old newspapers, I was able to find the location and even an ad for Thurston’s  performance  for the throw-out card below.

Acquired at the Crown Theatre in Chicago on January 9, 1913.

Another bit of trivia that I had heard for years, was that Thurston could throw a playing card over an 8 story building. The late John Booth mentioned this in his monthly column in The Linking Ring back in 1999. I was able to nail down the source of this story some years back, when I acquired a vintage newspaper page with the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not cartoon that first stated this fact. It ran in newspapers all over the country on December 23, 1930.

In Hugard’s Magic Monthly, Fred Braue wrote; “What is entertainment? Thurston would throw good-luck cards into the audience for perhaps two minutes – and they loved it!” In the same magazine, but a different issue, the magazine’s namesake Jean Hugard wrote the following; “Thurston would throw these to those at the back of the theatre or in the galleries. These cards were much heavier than ordinary playing cards and were therefore easier to throw to a distance. On one occasion, however, Thurston had the misfortune to have one of these cards strike a spectator in the eye and had to face a suit for damages”. Further research indicates the  member of the audience was awarded $500.00 in damages. So scaling cards out into the audience was not without its perils. (I would like to thank co-contributor Judge Brown for reminding me about this incident.)

There is no doubt that the overwhelming quantities of “Good Luck” throw-out cards that Thurston scaled out to his appreciative audiences was a great marketing tool in terms of advertising. He wanted to make those audiences remember him, and to keep them coming back for repeat performances of “The Wonder Show of the Universe”.