* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * New Zealand's MagicNZ e-zine * www.watson.co.nz/ezine.html * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Issue Number: #79 Date: Sunday 24th June 2001 Editor: Alan Watson www.magician.co.nz www.alan-watson.com e-mail AW@Alan-Watson.com ================================ Hi here is the latest news ================================ 1. Editor's Message 2. One of those "dream" jobs in San Francisco 3. The Johannesburg Magic Circle 4. Pacific Princess in Burmuda 5. Hello from Bilbao 6. Things That Make You Go Hmmm.... 7. Mike Rogers a Real Friend to Magic 8. Looking to Purchase 9. Chinese/Japanese Lanterns 10. Women Escapes Acts 11. Tex Morton's Sharp-Shooting Act 12. Vancouver Sun about Juliana Chen 13. I'm on the cover of the June MUM 14. Here in Dubai, United Arab Emirates 15. Kind remarks from Timothy Hyde 16. The Orchante Saga #35 17. Diarise these events 18. MagicNZ e-zine archives 19. Subscription Management ------------------------------------ 1. Editor's Message ------------------------------------- Message from Alan Watson - The Magic One Ted Salter, the initial artist for the Magic Castle Wall of Fame, passed away peacefully on June 19, 2001 after a lengthy illness. He was 86. Condolences may be sent to: Eileen Salter PO Box 228 Hillsboro OH 45133. From Saturday 30th June through to Friday 13th June I will be performing at Bayfair Shopping Centre in Tauranga and I will send out the e-zine remotely from my laptop. ------------------------------------- Remember if you have any magic news drop me a line: AW@Alan-Watson.com ---------------------------------- 2. One of those "dream" jobs in San Francisco ---------------------------------- Message from Alison (US) Daryl and I have just returned from one of those "dream" jobs in San Francisco and it was so much fun we wanted to share the story! We were booked for a conference that was attended by the top 5 - 7% of America's wealthiest business people. They were people who have reached the very top of their profession and are committed to staying there. This was the final day of a conference that seemed largely based on the theories of creativity and the pursuit of perfection in business. Each year they bring in a guest speaker who has reached the top of their own profession and who been recognized by their peers as "World Class". This year they booked Daryl and asked him to speak on the subject of creativity and practice. He was also interviewed on stage by the President of the company to seek out answers on how to make it to the top of any profession and what kind of commitment that requires etc. It was a fascinating morning, with Daryl performing some great magic to demonstrate his points throughout. The audience was fantastic and gave Daryl two standing ovations! In the afternoon the business people were sent away to change for the "Chocolate Social". The theme was "Over the Top Blue Jeans!" and each of the 500 guests had to bring along a large bouquet of flowers. Picture the scene... a previously formal conference room, transformed with balloons and streamers, 500 bouquets of flowers and the most amazing chocolate creations you have ever seen. We were in heaven! Daryl and I had both been employed for the "Chocolate Social" to teach the delegates some very basic magic with every day objects. Their enthusiasm and determination to get the tricks just right was thrilling. Each with our own magic station, we were teaching a constant flow of people how to perform simple bar bets and tricks with items they have in their offices - for example the jumping rubber bands and the linking paper clips. As they mastered each effect their faces lit up and might have been reward enough... although the check was nice too :-) We were informed that the average net worth of the individuals in the room was $1.2 billion! And yet they were as delighted with their new found skills as any 10 year old with their first Svengali deck. In fact we became so absorbed with teaching these people that we almost missed our flight home! We came back to Las Vegas feeling rejuvenated by the enthusiasm we had experienced from these people, an enthusiasm not only for magic, but also for living life to the full. We love magic! Alison. http://www.FoolerDoolers.com ---------------------------------- 3. The Johannesburg Magic Circle ---------------------------------- Message from David J O'Connor (South Africa) The Johannesburg Magic Circle will be hosting the South African Magic Convention in Johannesburg from September 21 through September 24, 2001. The Convention will feature Lectures, Children's Charity Show, Gala Show, Close Up Sessions, and International award winning guest artiste from Formosa. For more details go to the South African Magical Society website at: www.sams.org.za and follow the links to Johannesburg Magic Circle Convention. Would love to have you join us for that real African experience. ------------------------------------- 4. Pacific Princess in Bermuda ------------------------------------- Message from Paul Romhany (NZ) Just a quick note to say that I am booked after Dubai and Bahrain to work on Pacific Princess in Bermuda until end of October, so I will be in the USA and hope to take some time out to visit friends. ------------------------------------- 5. Hello from Bilbao ------------------------------------- Message from Paul Romhany (NZ) Here I am on another cruise, another group of new people to meet and greet and have fun with. Actually I´m taking it easy this trip because I've been doing tours all last week and am very tired, so finally get a chance to sit down and email. Just visited the famous Guggenheim Museum here in Spain, wow, what a fantastic place. Last cruise I visited Paris, and will be doing again a few times before heading off so hope to catch up with Jason Burns as I have toured with him and he is working in Paris. The sites of Paris were amazing; my photo album is building up. The tour before I visited the tour of Pisa, and now the Eiffel Tower etc. Also managed to get in a great game of golf in Vigo. I played with the cruise director Jim Everett and JJ King, the show singer on board. Berny Fields, an amazing harmonica player has joined the ship this cruise´. My shows are going well, I am now on opening night and have a double spot with Berny Fields. This week I am doing a crew show which will be fun. The other day while in South Hampton I was able to catch up with my brother Peter and his wife Amanda and my friend Jonathon. They drove down to see me, it was fantastic to catch up. We are heading off to Amsterdam this week, which I'm excited about, catching up with friends. ------------------------------------- 6. Things That Make You Go Hmmm.... ------------------------------------- Message from Don Costanza We have just "inked" a deal with a local dinner theatre to present our " Things That Make You Go Hmmm...." illusion show. The "we" I refer to is my partner Launda Lee, our stage crew and myself, Don Costanza. We comprise the illusion company of Magical F/X. We will be featuring small exotic animals, our largest at this time is a serval (smaller version of a leopard) a host of large illusions and the show will be supported by numerous pyrotechnics and theatrical lights, including a green laser system. We are excited about this development, as we are the only "illusion show" in the area. Not only that, there has never been anything like this before in Fort Wayne Indiana. ------------------------------------- 7. Mike Rogers a Real Friend to Magic ------------------------------------- Message from Blair Wallace (Northern Ireland) Back in 1998 I came to the 'wonder' of the Internet for the first time! I posted requests for a supplier of White Casino Dice, seemingly a very rare request. Guess who took the time and trouble to pick up my query?....none other than Mike Rogers! Two years later, once again on a 'quest', I tried to find a supplier of one and a half inch Chop Balls only to find that this size was unknown in the 'Magic' world. Once again I was contacted by Mike who very generously offered to actually make me a set of his own exclusive Baseballs in the size I was looking for! The task was more difficult than either of us could have anticipated but Mike insisted in persevering and today I am the proud, and privileged, owner of a set of perhaps the only set of one and a half inch Chop Baseballs and sadly, the last! That was Mike, a real friend even across the miles of the Atlantic. I will miss him! ------------------------------------- 8. Looking to Purchase ------------------------------------- Message from Sefton Pryce (NZ) I am Looking to purchase the following can anyone help please: Feature / Feature close-Up Illusion Show in the Round, A The Wizard's Secrets Author: Stan Allen Page: 32-33 Issue Date: 7/1994 Features / Inside Magic Secrets of Magic & Illusion, Page: 26-27 Issue Date: 12/1997 Feature / Feature Blue Room, The History of the Blue Room Author: Mike Caveney Page: 52-55 Issue Date: 1/1996 Features / Letters Blue Room Author: Tim Ellis Page: 13 Issue Date: 3/1996 Sefton Pryce 231 Mangorei Road New Plymouth rpryce@xtra.co.nz ---------------------------------- 9. Chinese/Japanese Lanterns ---------------------------------- Message from Bev Bergeron (US) You asked about Chinese/Japanese Lanterns that would open automatically. A secret that I used as a teenager was to put a weight in the bottoms of the lanterns. They would pop open quickly with the weight. In the mid-1970s, I wrote a column in the M.U.M. (S.A.M. magic magazine) in which I put a trick where a box or glass of rice would change visibly into a paper lantern. The tray that carried the box and rice was really a folded-up lantern. After filling the box with rice and covering with a silk scarf - attach the scarf to the bottom of the lantern, allow the weight of the rice and box to pull open the "tray" and you are holding a large paper Chinese lantern. It will still work. ---------------------------------- 10. Women Escapes Acts ---------------------------------- Message from Bev Bergeron (US) Someone from India asked about women who uses escapes in their act. There have been several women in the past who have used escapes. Presently working in a theme park in New York lake area, is Yvonne Carman, Vince Carman's wife. The two of them have worked scores of shows in New Zealand. Yvonne is doing a 50-foot rope tie escape and also an exchange with a man's coat from another rope tie. ---------------------------------- 11. Tex Morton's Sharp-Shooting Act ---------------------------------- Message from Bev Bergeron (US) Tommy Orchard related a funny tale of Tex Morton and his sharp-shooting act in a bar. Having been born and raised in Texas, people seem to think that we are all sharpshooters. Not true. I laughed at a casting director who was casting a western movie in Hollywood when she said that she wanted real old Western accents in the motion picture. The truth is that there was no old Western accent back then. The Westerners were from all parts of the world and spoke English with an accent from wherever they came from. The quick draw gun fighters of the West came from Europe or were born in an Eastern city. The great gun fighter, Billy the Kid, was from New Jersey. But getting back to Tex Morton and his act, it makes me think of John Calvert and his gun act. He too uses a 22 rifle and a target similar to Tex. A lot of magicians who have seen John do his act around the world think that it is faked. Tommy can tell you that Tex's act was for real, and I' ll tell you that John Calvert's act is using real ammunition. Many times I've told John that I would not work a show with him doing this act. John, as of now, is with Tammy doing shows and lectures in the California area and will be heading towards Abbott's for their conclave. After that and several stops they will finish out this tour that started in New York City, in Texas for the TAOM convention. John is driving a large bus and pulling a 15-foot trailer - he will be 90 in Aug. Now that is magic! ---------------------------------- 12. Vancouver Sun about Juliana Chen ---------------------------------- Message from Clive Court (Canada) A copy of the story in yesterday's Vancouver Sun about Juliana Chen. She begins a six-months contract in Frankfut in August. And in November, she takes a week out to host a TV special in Bejijing for the Central China Network. Juliana's official web site is at www.julianachen.com one of the world's finest visual entertainers. She is also one of Canada's three world-champion magicians. Quick, name the other two! (clue: one is from Ontario, the other from Quebec). They all appear on television in the United States and around the world. Just about everywhere but Canada. Pity! What's wrong with Canada? I would say it's still stuck in the late sixties, entertainment-wise. The following article is from The Vancouver Sun newspaper in Vancouver BC, one of Canada's most respected dailies. Its website is at www.vancouversun.com Queen of the inexplicable Though she's practically the invisible woman in Vancouver, Juliana Chen may be the greatest magician in the world Yvonne Zacharias Juliana Chen can turn a stage into a blizzard of cards. They appear out of nowhere; they go everywhere -- across the stage, up to the rafters, to the back of the hall. It's the kind of act that can bring a room to its feet -- even a room full of magicians. Yet, mention her name in Vancouver and you'll likely get the response, "Juliana who?" The fiercely competitive Chen is considered one of the best magicians in the world. A bit of history. She was top magician in China in 1986. She came to Vancouver in 1988, first as a student, then as a clerical worker in a furniture shop, only to rise again to the top ranks of the magic world where she now reigns, a queen of the inexplicable. Chen was the first woman and first Asian to capture top prize for manipulation, or sleight of hand, in the 50-year history of the World Congress of Magicians in 1997. Think of it as the magicians' equivalent of the Olympic Games. Since then, she has been dancing her way around the globe, pulling off one trick after another. If we're lucky, she stops in once in a while in her south Vancouver condo just so we can still claim her as our own. Her shows have a hypnotic effect on her audience. People sit spellbound while she works her magic on stage, then spring to their feet with frantic applause, not quite sure what they have seen but knowing it was special. Trying to describe a Chen magic show is a bit like trying to capture a butterfly in one's hand for closer examination. But here goes. Wearing a mask, she comes on stage in a big cape and dances around in flat ballerina-style shoes, fluttering the garment. Smoke rises around her. She keeps changing masks while exotic music plays. Finally, her own face appears. It isn't so much the magic in this act but the aura of mystery, the scintilla of suspense, that is so captivating. One senses this isn't just a show; it's a statement. About life. About the female persona. About facades. Her trademark is her ability to flick cards into the air at lightning speed. Because so many appear so quickly, she looks like a fountain erupting snowflakes. Her eyes dance back and forth from one hand to the other as they produce cards in a synchronized back-and-forth motion, as though she herself can't quite believe what she is seeing. As though this ephemeral madness has Nothing to do with her but is coming from some magical force within her over which she has no control. Chen sums up one of the key differences between herself and other magicians with these prosaic words: "I make a mess." She does some of the traditional stuff, too, like vanishing acts and other illusions. For example, in one act, it appears as though another person's hands are cutting through her body. But her magic show isn't just a magic show; it's pantomime, it's pure theatre. And the magic isn't just in her hands as she flicks cards. It ripples through her body, from her toes to her eyes, as she bobs and weaves around the stage. Often playing the role of beguiling temptress, she doesn't hesitate to use her sex to full advantage. And why not? There are so few female magicians of note in the world. She has been known to dress in skimpy outfits and, in one act, to invite men to bind her up with rope, then invite them behind a curtain where she strips them of their suit jacket and dons it herself, underneath all the rope. There is something vaguely erotic about it. So, who is this queen of cards? Alas, the answer to that question is as elusive as her magic. Chen struggles a bit with English. And then there is this endearing, if somewhat maddening, way she has of derailing an interview, at every turn. It's this need of hers to be in control. But then how can you get angry with someone who knows how to pull 700 cards into the air in a matter of minutes. As I reach for my list of 25 questions, Chen plops a couple of pictures down on the table. They are of a dog, Christina, to be exact, a miniature Manchester terrier who accompanies her for much of her globe-trotting. "This is my baby," she says like a proud parent. "She is my family." Well, almost. Her 75-year-old mother lives in Vancouver's Chinatown and sews her costumes for her and her sister, who is visiting from China and trying to move here. Her age is a mystery. She doesn't divulge it, although various biographies suggest she is in her 30s. And what about her childhood? Well, she really didn't have one, she explains. And we are off on a magic-carpet ride, travelling back in time to communist China and a classroom in Hunan province where she sat, a little girl of 11. One day, this lady from the Communist Party showed up wearing an army-green jacket and a red T-shirt, looking for talent. "Can you sing?' she asked Chen. Oh, yes, Chen could sing. "Can you dance?" Oh, yes, Chen could dance. "Can you smile?" She could do that, too. And she smiled one of her prettiest smiles. And the little girl became one of the chosen ones. She was off to the Hunan School of Ballet and Acrobatics to become a ballerina. At 5:30 every morning, the alarm would sound in the theatre school and the little girl was out of bed for a day of exercise. It was so hard, she would cry. Every Saturday, her parents would pick her up at noon, take her home and return her to the school at 6 p.m. Sunday. That's all she saw of them. When she returned, the teachers would check her bags for junk food. It wasn't allowed. It made little girls fat. But her mother would sew money inside her dress, just in case she needed it. Chen joined government-sponsored entertainment troupes, but Communist Party history, the death of Chairman Mao and a severe knee injury forced her to move in a new direction. Prior to this change, Mao's wife, who controlled cultural activities, didn't like acrobatics, preferring ballet and opera. So, acrobats were banished to the countryside and other cultural arts flourished. But when Mao died and his wife was jailed, acrobatics came back into vogue. They were moved in from the countryside and some students of the arts, like Chen, were forced to change to acrobatics from ballet. Reluctantly, she became a foot juggler, afraid all the while that her body would become deformed because the art causes some muscles to build while others atrophy. At this point in the interview, Chen reached for the teapot at the lunch table and said, "I didn't want to look like this." To counter this tendency, she would take care to "tighten my butt" and do other exercises after getting up from the foot-juggling act. One night, Chen happened to see a magic show on TV and she was enthralled. After that, she began watching the magician in her entertainment troupe. While cleaning up the stage after a show, she would steal flowers that had been used by the magician, sneak them into the bathroom, lock the door and examine them to see how they were made. By the end of 1982, she began performing magic, excelling to the point that in 1986 and 1987, she won first and second prize in the all-China Best Magician Competition. Then communism was to pull its own sleight of hand. In her home country, as she aged, she knew she would be forced to become a teacher rather than an entertainer. She knew, too, she would always feel like a dog on a leash in China. That just wasn't in the cards. So, she walked into an office in a hotel that had been opened by a group of Vancouver businessmen and forked over the $10,000 she would need to come as a student to a language school in Vancouver, for a type of billeting known as a "home stay," for a new life. On her flight to Canada, she was so happy. "I thought I had found the wind." But life here at first wasn't easy. The "home stay" proved to be a house crammed with 10 students. She was billeted in the basement where she was bitten all over her body by some type of insect. The language school proved next to useless in terms of learning English. "Everyone's English was so bad. It was a hard time. One day, you're the star in China. You've moved from the top to the bottom." But Chen is an iron butterfly. Pretty on the outside; tough on the inside. She says she intended to return to China but changed her mind after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 when Chinese citizens residing in Canada were offered refuge. She worked for a time in the office of a furniture store on Homer Street. She then set up a graphics business, catering to the Chinese market. Meanwhile, word of her presence in Vancouver was circulating through Chinatown where some people had remembered her from stories in Chinese papers from home. In late 1989, two events got her back into the world of magic. One was an invitation to perform at a Christmas party at the Chinese Cultural Centre. The other began as a simple visit to a magic shop. "I was like a kid in a candy shop," she recalled, her eyes gleaming. Shawn Farquhar, a former world champion magician himself, remembers the day she walked in. He was working behind the counter. He invited her to the Vancouver Magic Circle's Christmas dinner where he agreed that she could do a stage act near the end of a repertoire of performers. Watching her stretching in the corner, he thought she might do a little foot juggling. Once she got on stage, suddenly there were cards shooting everywhere. The audience of magicians rose in applause. Farquhar never did go on stage. Chen was too hard an act to follow. Since then, local magicians like Farquhar and Clive Court have taken an interestin this rare talent and have tried to help her along in her adopted country. "Quite simply, she is the best in the world at what she does," said Court, who was a magician and now teaches public relations at Kwantlen University College. "Winning [in 1997] has put her in demand around the world." Her level of choreography and her over-all presentation surpass those of other magicians, Court said. He suspects that success has also sharpened her business skills. "There is no other Juliana Chen," he says simply. She is a perfectionist who practises each act over and over. She has taken magic to a new level." The accolades have rained down on her like a shower of cards. In 1991, she was named British Columbia's top magician. In 1992, after selling her graphics business to devote herself full time to the art, she won first prize at the International Brotherhood of Magicians convention in Salt Lake City, Utah. Then came the top honour for manipulation, or sleight of hand, in 1997. Both on stage and off, she is a master illusionist and chameleon. On stage, she began performing in what was then a very male world by giving herself a male persona, wearing a tuxedo and black tights. Since then, she has played the part of temptress. Yet, off stage, she is a woman with no sex life. No time, she explains with a disarming laugh. She loves children, has performed at least one children's hospital and hopes one day to do a show here to raise money for the B.C. Children's Hospital. Yet she has had none of her own. No time, she explains. She fled communism, yet credits it for having made her as good as she is. It was that rigorous government training that made magic a whole-body affair. She has been known to let adoring little boys kiss her when they seek her out backstage. But don't dare to enter her space 30 minutes before she is due to go on stage or when she is cloistered in a special rehearsal. She needs the time to prepare herself mentally for the performance. I look down at my list of 25 questions. I'm not sure she has answered them, although I have been tricked into believing she has. Profile of Juliana Chen. The article you just read is from The Vancouver Sun newspaper in Vancouver BC. Looking for a job in Vancouver? Try our Career click site at www.careerclick.com/bc Canucks fan? Follow the team at www.thecanucks.com ---------------------------------- 13. I'm on the cover of the June MUM ---------------------------------- Message from Don Drake (US) The issue was devoted to black art, so I sort of have a one man parade type of thing in there. I'm booked for back surgery on July 10th and will be unable to tour or lecture until Fall DONDRAKE is A.K.A. Don Drake 1412-A Santa Margarita St. Las Vegas, NV 89146 Ph. (702) 880-5370 ---------------------------------- 14. Here in Dubai, United Arab Emirates ---------------------------------- Message from Michael Bairefoot It is hot! The ice magic show called Planet Ice is going very good. I have been practicing and doing interviews. This Thursday is opening night. I will be back in the US June 7. ---------------------------------- 15. Kind remarks from Timothy Hyde ---------------------------------- Message from Tommy Orchard (Orchante)(UK ex-pat Kiwi) I appreciated the kind remarks from Timothy Hyde in last week's e-zine #78, regarding my saga, and his suggestion of a CD Rom is quite a good idea. I have been under pressure from various quarters, to consider having the saga published in book form, for the general public. I am a little concerned that the fact that I have sent my Saga for publishing in Alan's e-zine, may be misconstrued as being free to anyone to use - either in CD Rom form, or otherwise, for their own purpose. May I remind everyone that the e-zine, which included my saga, is copyrighted. To date, 33,000 words gone into this 'labour of love', and I am still in the 60s - I didn't retire until 1996, so there's a hell of a lot more to come. As I've mentioned often in the e-zine, I have photographs, newspaper right-ups/clippings etc., galore, and when I finally do get it finished, (assuming I live that long), I will, more than likely, have it published. As far as being a written documentary of a part of New Zealand's entertainment history - apart from the photos, etc., it's all being recorded here on Alan Watson's brilliant Magic e-zine. I know that there are 2,700 plus, magicians who read this e-zine, and hopefully my Saga - it would be helpful to know how many of you would be interested in purchasing a book of the Saga in its entirety. ---------------------------------- 16. The Orchante Saga #35 ---------------------------------- Message from Tommy Orchard (Orchante)(UK ex-pat Kiwi) TEX MORTON plus The Great Orchante Prelude: The other day I was asked why the page headings read "Tex Morton plus The 'GREAT' Orchante, and not The 'AMAZING' Orchante, which has been my stage name since the 60s. Tex billed me as 'The Great' in his advertising, so for the sake of completeness, I've kept it the same. Conclusion Tex's first recordings were made in New Zealand in 1932 when he was 16 years old. They were aluminium and were played with a thorn/bamboo needle. They were the fore-runners of the half dozen wax recordings of 78s he made in Australia, 3 or 4 years later, at the old Homebush studios in Sydney. Tex, being a great story teller, delighted in telling me the story of his life, as we travelled from town to town. Here is one of the dozens of tales he related to me - I just wish there had been such a thing as a battery cassette recorder, but they hadn't yet been invented, at that time. Quote "I made my first records for a flat fee - around £10 - or something like that, but that didn't make any difference, I'm a big recording star one day, and a couple of weeks later, if you looked real hard around the back alleys of Kings Cross, you would have found me Street singing, and passing the hat around. I can always remember making a trip home to New Zealand to see my parents. I'd made these records and forgotten all about them, had my picture on a couple of issues of Sheet music at the time, and that was about as far as I thought I would ever get. So, when I got near to Nelson, my home town, I found that I was once again broke, so I pulled out the old guitar and went Street singing again. I was singing in this town - New Plymouth, or whatever it was - and I'm working my way along the main street, and going into the shops, as was the custom in those days - asking "anything for the street singer" - and I found myself outside this music shop. While I'm singing, I looked in the window, and there was a huge cut-out figure of some bloke in a country and western shirt, cowboy hat on, with his guitar, his mouth wide open, showing his tonsils; and I looked at him, and I thought 'he's a lucky bloke - he's a big recording star', and in six inch letters across the bottom, it said TEX MORTON - THE YODELLING BOUNDARY RIDER - AUSTRALIA'S LATEST SINGING SENSATION. And here I was, singing outside the record shop, passing the hat around, trying to get my fare down to Nelson.!" Unquote. After the Tex Morton tour had finished, and I'm back home, in Auckland City, Tex gives me a call asking if I'd meet up with him in this little pub in Vulcan Lane, which just happened to be the favourite watering hole for all the newspaper reporters etc. So I turn up, and there's Tex, wearing his famous hat, holding the place entranced with his humorous tales. The place was in a total uproar of laughter. Tex introduces me to the crowd, and gets me started on my Close up magic (which didn't take much prompting, really). Also present was a very famous New Zealand writer/raconteur, BARRY CRUMP! He wrote the books "Bastards I Have Met", with the sequel "More Bastards I Have Met". Apart from Barry telling funny stories, his main party piece for that afternoon, was the telling of the complete, unabridged, utterly filthy, 'Ballad of Eskimo Nell and Deadeye Dick'. It must have gone on for at least half an hour - all totally from memory. It was one of the funniest, most hilarious and entertaining afternoons I've ever had in my life. Jump now to 1983 - Veronica and I are living in Sydney, Australia (since 1976). It's July, and we, as are thousands of others, are watching a new series that has just started on T.V., called 'Goodbye Paradise', in which Tex Morton has a major part, playing a crooked politician. I have a cutting from the Sunday Telegraph, dated July 24th 1983. It is headed: - "TEX MORTON DIES AT 67. COUNTRY MUSIC KING RULED FOR 50 YEARS. One of Australia's greatest showmen, Tex Morton, died yesterday in Sydney's Royal North Shore hospital. He was admitted last Monday suffering from pneumonia and pleurisy and lapsed into a coma soon after. Hospital officials confirmed his death shortly after 3pm yesterday. In a career covering 50 years, the man who was born Robert William Lane 67 years ago in Nelson, New Zealand, became Australia's first country and western star. At his peak, he was selling more records in Australia than Bing Crosby. When he arrived in Australia in 1932, the eager 16-year-old possessed little more than an old guitar, with which he used to busk, and occasionally appeared on amateur radio talent shows. He worked as a dishwasher, a labourer on the Harbour Bridge, and - as the Depression worsened - became a virtual hobo, jumping trains up and down the East Coast. He managed to record a song called "You're Going to Leave the Old Home, Jim," and talked a Sydney radio station into playing it. It was a sad song that fitted the mood of the times - and it launched Morton's long and varied career. His style of singing, mixed with yodelling, was copied by scores of other aspiring singers. Tex Morton became a house-hold name in his own and his adopted country. In the 1960s he was earning as much as $20,000 a week in the U.S. and Canada as a hypnotist and magician, billing himself as The Great Morton. He was an excellent pistol and rifle shot, a prolific writer and recorder of songs, bush poet (he once recited Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson verse at Carnegie Hall to full houses) and a whipcracker. In recent years he devoted most of his energies to acting, playing in such TV series as Matlock Police, Homicide and the ill-fated Waterloo Station. He secured character roles in a number of Australian feature films, including F.J.Holden, Stir and We of the Never Never. None won him any great critical acclaim until the release this week of 'Goodbye Paradise' , in which he played a crooked politician. This week he lay unconscious in hospital, unaware of the rave notices this had brought him." It's now 18 years since Tex died, and what I've written about him is by no means the whole story of the man - that would take a rather large book. (It's a shame Tex didn't write his autobiography). I learned much from Tex in the short time we worked together, the most valuable, to me, was the "show before the Show " - as in, heading for the best pub/hotel in town, and entertaining the patrons, including the Owner/Manager, and also in my case, the show, after "The Show". "TEX MORTON" One of New Zealand's Greatest Showmen. FINIS Postscript: I am, according to some, an accomplished Magician, but the mainstay of my income, as a professional entertainer for over 30 years, was as a Fakir - I took what was regarded (and probably still is) as cheap side-show stunts - Fire-eating, Beds of Nails, etc., and with a little help from a professional choreographer and stage producer, transformed them into an International Stage/Cabaret show, but Magic - (Sleight of Hand) has always been my first love. It was my Sleight of Hand which got my foot in the Hotel doors, impressed the punters and the Managers/Owners, and got me all of my work in the major hotels throughout New Zealand - hence, the show before the show, and the show after, The Show. As I've said before, this was a most valuable lesson, which I learned from Tex Morton. ------------------------------------- 17. Diarise these events ------------------------------------- Joshua Jay (US) NZ Lectures: Auckland Friday 10th August 2001 Christchurch Monday 13th August 2001 The 26th NZ Magician's Convention Auckland Friday 28th to Monday 31st December 2001. The registration form and information is now available on the web go to: www.magician.co.nz/convention1.html ------------------------------------- 18. MagicNZ e-zine archives ------------------------------------- Back issues of the MagicNZ e-zine go to: www.watson.co.nz/ezine.html Both the User Name and Password MUST be entered in lower case to gain access. User Name: ezine Password: newzealand When you enter the archive the e-zines are in issue order and are coded. Eg 001nov0699.txt first three numbers (001) denote issue number, then the date (nov06) and the last next two numbers the year (99) If you want to print copies of MagicNZ e-zine go to: www.watson.co.nz/ezine-archive ------------------------------------- 18. 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