by Mandrake » Mar 4th, '04, 17:55
Scarne’s Magic Tricks by John Scarne – Dover Publications
Price: £7.49 or thereabouts
Avaiable from: Bookshops, both 'on-line' and 'in reality' types.
Those of you who like the Ian Fleming James Bond novels may recall the bit in Moonraker where, as 007 prepares for his card battle with Hugo Drax at Blades, M says he’d leave Bond to ‘sandpaper his fingertips or whatever cardsharps do’. Instead, Bond settles down with his favourite book on card sleights and moves, ‘Scarne on Cards.’ Thus it was that I forever associated the Scarne name with mystery, intrigue, high flying adventures, and gorgeous female Russian spies. It was a bit of a shock to find out later that Scarne was not, as I asumed, an expert gambler but a magician!
Originally written and published in 1951 and faithfully reproduced in the 2003 printing by Dover, some of the text is dry, some of the effects seem out of time – several routines assume that the performer will not only be a smoker but will be smoking or have a cigarette in the hand whilst performing. Illustrations are of that time, clear pen and ink drawings (very similar to the original ‘Superman’ comics and many of the spectators strongly resemble Clark Kent!) but some seem to be superfluous – page 221 shows the performer standing in front of two specs concentrating hard on the serial number of their dollar bill - the performer ‘divines’ the number and they reply, ‘That is correct!’. Great picture, guys!
What It Says On The (Introduction) Tin: Quite a lot and it covers Scarne’s work for the US War Department, appearances entertaining G.I.’s and so on. In response to many requests, Scarne decided to compile a book of Magic covering many aspects, routines, props with very simple goals:
1) Easy to do – all complex moves were removed or replaced.
2) Great variety but see also point 5.
3) Any gimmicks required must be easy to make or obtain.
4) Tricks must be suitable for ‘every’ conceivable occasion, from close up to stage. Offhand I can’t think of many tricks that would truly be suitable at a funeral but I think I know what he means.
5) Tricks must use items which are commonly found in the house and home – which just about rules out the enormous Buzz Saw thing used by D.Copperfield.
As well as prop based tricks, there must also be mentalist, hypnotism, fortune telling and similar effects.
Review/Overall: Well, did Scarne do it? I have to admit he did and he did it in style. OK I can’t see any reason for him to include trick number 3 which presents the ‘mystifying and humorous’ (his words) effect called Smoking Sleeve whereby the performer blows smoke down one jacket sleeve and it comes out of the other sleeve - no prizes for guessing that a length of rubber tube is involved – but I’m just being picky!
There are 155 tricks, which cover the promised very wide assortment of props and routines. Some of them are probably more correctly classed as gags or jokes rather than tricks but most are extremely worth while trying out. There’s the usual one with a book of matches where the same number of matches remain after one has been torn out and burned, there’s Cut & Restored ropes, plenty of mathematical and mentalist effects, lots of colour divination items and, as mentioned above, enough smoking effects to keep John Player in business for a while. Coin effects, tricks with hankies, matches, liquids, bottles, boxes, pencils, string, rulers, pins (not quite Dreamweaver but close!), currency notes, tables, chemical reactions (!) and lots more far too numerous, as they say, to mention. If you’re looking for an effect involving specific items, there’s a good chance that there’s one in this book either smack on or very close to what you want.
Value for money: 9/10 – one point lost because of that turkey number 3 trick!
C.U.P.S. Rating: At £7.49 (or less) – possibly an 8 out of 10.