Welcome to Cardopolis 41. Cardopolis is a monthly newsletter devoted to the history and craft of card magic with the occasional side quest into mentalism and close up. You can subscribe for $5 a month, receive an issue each month, and access the entire archive online. I haven’t counted but, there must be a couple of hundred videos by now. You can subscribe here:
Let’s begin with this post on the CardopolisMagic instagram channel. Paintings tell a story. They capture a moment in time. Caravaggio’s painting of two cardsharps makes you wonder what happened next? Clicking the image below will take you to the CardopolisMagic instagram channel where all will be revealed.
THIS MONTH’S CARDOPOLIS
This month we are looking at the Angel Card Rise. I published this in 1979 and showed it a lot at magic conventions back when I was working with Paul Stone’s The Ace Place. It was a simple system for making cards rise from the deck. In 1986, I updated the instructions as Angel Card Rise Plus, and in 1988 wrote Card Kinetics, which developed the idea further. It’s time for a revisit.
You’ll find several tricks in this issue in which cards become animated. There is the original Angel Card Rise effect using a slightly updated gimmick and some simpler handlings as in Take it Easy Angel. David's Jumping Aces pays tribute to David Devant, with aces magically appearing from the deck. Snap is a literal ‘twist’ on the gimmick that allows a card to pop up from the deck at the snap of the fingers and Static brings all the techniques together to create a startling appearance of the selection. In the next issue, I’ll also detail a version of the Haunted Deck with some new additions.
Also in this issue is a refinement of a U. F. Grant trick called Cheek to Cheek. Grant marketed Cheek to Cheek as a ‘foolproof method’ for causing a selection to reverse in the deck. It uses a gaffed deck, which I’ve changed and believe enhances the effect.
But first some history. Clayton Rawson was not only a well-known magician but famous as a mystery author. He created the magician-detective character Merlini. I became a fan of the Merlini novels after seeing the 1939 movie Miracles for Sale which was an adaptation of Clayton Rawson’s book Death from a Top Hat. It was directed by Tod Browning who was well versed in magic and sideshows.
A MYSTERY SOLVED
Last year, Richard Wiseman asked if I knew the method behind Clayton Rawson’s most famous publicity photograph, one in which he is springing a deck of cards above his head. Many articles about Rawson have featured the photo. I did some research and uncovered the method which also involves Irving Desfor. It’s a story that seems to have been forgotten since it hasn’t appeared in any of the many pieces written about Clayton Rawson and his work.
I contacted Rawson’s son, Clayton Rawson Jr, and it’s with his permission I publish the following video that explains the story. It’s a short video but the end might surprise you. Check the link:
https://youtube.com/shorts/L8Uc1jC5jAg
Clayton Rawson Jr tells me that there is an annotated edition of the Merlini stories in the works written by author and magician Neil Tobin. It won’t be available for a while, but if you enjoy magician-detective fiction I’m sure it’ll be worth waiting for. Meanwhile, check out Clayton Rawson’s contributions to magic. You’ll find plenty in the magazines of the 30s and 40s and that’s besides the books he wrote.
THE ANGEL CARD RISE
Here is the basic card rise. Any card selected rises from the deck. The gimmick costs very little and takes about fifteen minutes to construct. Furthermore, you can easily add or remove the gimmick, leaving only a regular deck of cards.