“In the big barrel of fine people I have met in magic, here was one bad apple.” So reads the opening comment from Stuart Cramer, longtime magician, author and biographer of Karl Germaine, speaking of magician, Ralph Emerson Powell, of Cleveland. His comments were printed in James Hagy’s entertaining historical journal Perennial Mystics in 1989.
Cramer was recalling his experiences with Powell (1905 – c 1952), the son of the prominent Cleveland surgeon and nephew of a federal judge. Powell was a professional magician and if you go by Cramer’s account and those of others, not a very good one. He did have a scaling card with a Roterberg back.
