HEARING THE CURRENT TALK in the media of a double-dip recession reminds me of the famous American magician/silhouettist Dai Vernon. Vernon was an artist who invented many of today’s best-known magic tricks, but who actually supported himself and his family throughout the 1920’s and 30’s as a street silhouettist.
During the long years of the Great Depression he would set up a stall – in whatever city he happened to be working at the time – under a banner saying “No Depression Here”. Legend has it that he invariably had a long queue of customers!
The Ambitious Card
Almost every close-up magician working today will perform at least one Dai-Vernon effect on a regular basis. One of the best known is a trick called The Ambitious Card, in which the same card repeatedly appears at the top of the deck no matter how often it is pushed back into the middle. This was one of the tricks which made him famous. Vernon used it to fool Houdini, after Houdini had made a bet that nobody could fool him with a trick he hadn’t seen before or couldn’t work out.
It was through studying the work of Dai Vernon that my friend Michael Herbert first became interested in silhouettes.
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by Charles Burns
